to be high actively · verb, hiphil imperative, 2nd person masculine singular + paragogic he
feet
פְ֭עָמֶיךָFe.'a.mei.kha
H6471
a stroke · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
perpetual
נֶ֑צַחNe.tzach
H5331
properly · noun, common masculine singular absolute
desolations
לְמַשֻּׁא֣וֹתle.ma.shu.'ot
H4876
ruin · preposition + noun, common feminine plural construct
enemy
אוֹיֵ֣ב'o.Yev
H341
hating · verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
wickedly
הֵרַ֖עhe.Ra'
H7489
properly · verb, hiphil perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
sanctuary
בַּקֹּֽדֶשׁba.Ko.desh
H6944
a sacred place or thing · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Lamentations 1:10 The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom tho…
Psalms 79:1 O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.
Daniel 9:17 Now therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of thy servant, and his supplications, and cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary that is deso…
Isaiah 64:10-11 Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.
Mark 11:17 And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den o…
Luke 21:24 And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gen…
Joshua 10:24 And it came to pass, when they brought out those kings unto Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said unto the captains…
2 Samuel 22:39-43 And I have consumed them, and wounded them, that they could not arise: yea, they are fallen under my feet.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 74:1-11
This psalm is entitled Maschil - a psalm to give instruction, for it was penned in a day of affliction, which is intended for instruction; and this instruction in general it gives us, That when we are, upon any account, in distress, it is our wisdom and duty to apply to God by faithful and fervent prayer, and we shall not find it in vain to do so. Three things the people of God here complain of: -
I. The displeasure of God against them, as that which was the cause and bitterness of all their calamities. They look above the instruments of their trouble, who, they knew, could have no power against them unless it were given them from above, and keep their eye upon God, by whose determined coun…
Lift up thy feet unto the perpetual desolations,.... That is, arise, hasten, move swiftly, and in the greatness of strength, and come and see the desolations made by the enemy, which look as if they would remain for ever; meaning either the desolations made in the city and temple of Jerusalem, either by Nebuchadnezzar, or by Titus; or the havocs and devastations made in the church of God by the tyranny and persecutions of antichrist; which have continued so long, that an end of them has been almost despaired of. So Jacob is said to "lift up his feet"; which we render went on his way, Genesis 29:1. Some take these words in a different sense, as a prayer for the destruction of the church's ene…
Psalm 74:1-8
1. O God! why hast thou cast us off for ever? why doth thy anger smoke against the flock of thy pastures? 2. Remember thy congregation, which thou hast possessed of old, the rod of thy inheritance which thou hast redeemed, this mount Zion on which thou hast dwelt. 3. Lift up thy strokes to destroy for ever every enemy that worketh mischief to thy sanctuary. 4. Thy adversaries have roared [213] in the midst of thy sanctuaries; they have set up their signs for signs. 5. He who lifted up the axes upon the thick trees was renowned as doing an excellent work. 6. And now they break in pieces the carved work thereof with axes and hammers together. 7. They have set on fire thy sanctuar…
The Church Fathers
"Lift up Thine hand upon their pride at the end" (ver. 3). As Thou didst repel us at the end, so "lift up Thine hand upon the pride of them at the end." The pride of whom? Of those by whom Jerusalem was overthrown. But by whom was it, but by the kings of the Gentiles? Well was the hand of Him lifted up upon the pride of them at the end: for they too have now known Christ. "For the end of the Law is Christ for righteousness to every one believing." How well doth he wish for them! As if angry he is speaking, and he is seeming to speak evil: and O that there would come to pass the evil which he speaketh: nay now in the name of Christ that it is coming to pass let us rejoice. Now they holding the sceptre are being made subject to the Word of the Cross: now is coming to pass that which was foretold, "there shall adore Him all the kings of the earth, all nations shall serve Him." Now on the brows of kings more precious is the sign of the Cross, than the jewel of a crown. "Lift up Thine hand upon the pride of them at the end. How great things hath the enemy of malice wrought in Thy holy places!" In those which were Thy holy places, that is, in the temple, in the priesthood, in all those sacraments which were at that time. In good sooth the enemy at that time wrought. For the Gentiles at that time who did this, were worshipping false Gods, were adoring idols, were serving demons: nevertheless they wrought many evil things on the Saints of God. When could they if they had not been permitted? But when would they have been permitted, unless those holy things, at first promised, were no longer necessary, when He that had promised was Himself holden? Therefore, "how great things hath the enemy of malice wrought in Thy holy places!"
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
The poet begins with the earnest prayer that God would again have compassion upon His church, upon which His judgment of anger has fallen, and would again set up the ruins of Zion. Why for ever (Psa 74:10, Psa 79:5; Psa 89:47, cf. Psa 13:2)? is equivalent to, why so continually and, as it seems, without end? The preterite denotes the act of casting off, the future, Psa 74:1, that lasting condition of this casting off. למה, when the initial of the following word is a guttural, and particularly if it has a merely half-vowel (although in other instances also, Gen 12:19; Gen 27:45; Sol 1:7), is deprived of its Dagesh and accented on the ultima, in order (as Mose ha-Nakdan expressly observes) to…
Like a guide, the psalmist points out to the Lord what took place during the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC.
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 74:3
Lift up thy feet unto the perpetual desolations; even all that the enemy hath done wickedly in the sanctuary.
Lift up thy feet unto the perpetual desolations. The ruin made had already long been an eyesore to the suppliant, and there seemed no hope of restoration. Havoc lorded it not only for a day or a year, but with perpetual power. This is another argument with God. Would Jehovah sit still and see his own land made a wilderness, his own palace a desolation? Until he should arise, and draw near, the desolation would remain; only his presence could cure the evil, therefore is he entreated to hasten with uplifted feet for the deliverance of his people. Even all that the enemy hath done wick…
