Psalm 74:23

Forget not the voice of thine enemies: the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

74:18-23 The psalmist begs that God would appear for the church against their enemies. The folly of such as revile his gospel and his servants will be plain to all. Let us call upon our God to enlighten the dark nations of the earth; and to rescue his people, that the poor and needy may praise his name. Blessed Saviour, thou art the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Make thy people more than conquerors. Be thou, Lord, all in all to them in every situation and circumstances; for then thy poor and needy people will praise thy name.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Forget not the voice of thine enemies - The voice of thine enemies clamoring for the destruction of thy people. Compare Psalm 137:7. The prayer is, that God would bring deserved chastisement upon them for their purposes and their aims against his people. It is not necessarily a prayer for vengeance; it is a prayer for just retribution.

The tumult of those that rise up against thee - Of those that make war on thee, and on thy people. The word ""tumult" here means clamor or shout - as the shout of battle. The reference is to the movement of a host pressing on to conquest, encouraging and exciting each other, and endeavoring to intimidate their enemies by the loud clamor of the war-cry. It is a description of what had occurred among the main events referred to in the psalm, when the enemy came in to lay waste the capital, and to spread desolation throughout the land.

Increaseth continually - Margin, as in Hebrew, "Ascendeth." That is, it seems to go up; it is the swelling clamor of a great multitude of warriors intent on conquest. A cry or clamor thus seems to swell or rise on the air, and (as it were) to ascend to God. The prayer here is, that God would regard that cry, not in the sense that he would grant them the fulfillment of their wishes, but in the sense that he would recompense them as they deserved. It is in this sense that the clamors of the wicked ascend to heaven - in this sense that God will regard them, as if they were a prayer for just retribution.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

22, 23. (Compare Ps 3:7; 7:6). God hears the wicked to their own ruin (Ge 4:10; 18:20).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The voice; their insulting and reproachful expressions against time, as well as against us.

The tumult, i.e. the tumultuous noise of the loud clamours.

Increaseth, Heb. ascendeth, to wit, into heaven, being either directed thither by them; their mouth being set against heaven, as theirs was, Psalm 73:9; or at least being perceived there by God, whose ears were pierced with the loud cry of their sins. See Genesis 4:10 18:20. Or ascending may be here put for increasing, as it is Isaiah 55:13 Jeremiah 46:7. So the sense is, They grow worse and worse, encouraging and hardening themselves in their wicked courses by their continual success and prosperity, and by thy patience extended to them.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Forget not the voice of thine enemies,.... Their roaring in the midst of the sanctuary and the congregation, Psalm 74:4, their reproaching and blaspheming voice, Psalm 74:10,

the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually, or "ascendeth" (i); goes up to God, and is taken notice of by him; the cry of their sins, like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, and of the city of Nineveh, Genesis 18:20, was continually going up to God; wherefore it might be hoped and expected that vengeance in a little time would come down; see Revelation 18:5, the Septuagint, and the versions that follow that, render it, "the pride of those", &c. all these petitions are prayers of faith, and are, or will be, heard and answered; upon which will follow thanksgivings, with which the next psalm begins.

(i) "ascendens semper", Montanus; "ascendit semper", V. L. Musculus, Gejerus.

Geneva Study Bible

Forget not the voice of thine enemies: the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

23. thine enemies] Thine adversaries, as in Psalm 74:4.

increaseth] Rather, ascendeth (R.V.), to heaven, challenging Thee to act. Cp. Isaiah 37:29.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 23. - Forget not the voice of thine enemies. God does not forget insults of this kind, but punishes them (see 2 Kings 19:28, "Because thy rage against me, and thy tumult, is come up into my ears, therefore I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou earnest"). He punished Babylon after a time with extreme severity (see Jeremiah 50 and 51). The tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually; rather, ascendeth continually - goes up before God's throne, crying for vengeance (comp. Genesis 4:10; Genesis 18:20, 21; Exodus 3:9, etc.).



Psalm 74:23

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The poet, after he has thus consoled himself by the contemplation of the power of God which He has displayed for His people's good as their Redeemer, and for the good of the whole of mankind as the Creator, rises anew to prayer, but all the more cheerfully and boldly. Since ever present facts of creation have been referred to just now, and the historical mighty deeds of God only further back, זאת refers rather forwards to the blaspheming of the enemies which He suffers now to go on unpunished, as though He took no cognizance of it. חרף has Pasek after it in order to separate the word, which signifies reviling, from the most holy Name. The epithet עם־נבל reminds one of Deuteronomy 32:21. In Psalm 74:19 according to the accents חיּת is the absolute state (the primary form of חיּה, vid., on Psalm 61:1): give not over, abandon not to the wild beast (beasts), the soul of Thy turtle-dove. This is probably correct, since לחיּת נפשׁ, "to the eager wild beast," this inversion of the well-known expression נפשׁ חיּה, which on the contrary yields the sense of vita animae, is an improbable and exampleless expression. If נפשׁ were intended to be thus understood, the poet might have written אל־תתן לנפשׁ חיּה תורך, "give not Thy turtle-dove over to the desire of the wild beast." Hupfeld thinks that the "old, stupid reading" may be set right at one stroke, inasmuch as he reads אל תתן לנפש חית תורך, and renders it "give not to rage the life Thy turtle-dove;" but where is any support to be found for this לנפשׁ, "to rage," or rather (Psychology, S. 202; tr. p. 239) "to eager desire?" The word cannot signify this in such an isolated position. Israel, which is also compared to a dove in Psalm 68:14, is called a turtle-dove (תּור). In Psalm 74:19 חיּת has the same signification as in Psalm 74:19, and the same sense as Psalm 68:11 (cf. Psalm 69:37): the creatures of Thy miserable ones, i.e., Thy poor, miserable creatures - a figurative designation of the ecclesia pressa. The church, which it is the custom of the Asaphic Psalms to designate with emblematical names taken from the animal world, finds itself now like sheep among wolves, and seems to itself as if it were forgotten by God. The cry of prayer הבּט לבּרית comes forth out of circumstances such as were those of the Maccabaean age. בּרית is the covenant of circumcision (Genesis 17); the persecution of the age of the Seleucidae put faith to the severe test, that circumcision, this sign which was the pledge to Israel of God's gracious protection, became just the sign by which the Syrians knew their victims. In the Book of Daniel, Daniel 11:28, Daniel 11:30, cf. Psalm 22:32, ברית is used directly of the religion of Israel and its band of confessors. The confirmatory clause Psalm 74:20 also corresponds to the Maccabaean age, when the persecuted confessors hid themselves far away in the mountains (1 Macc. 2:26ff., 2 Macc. 6:11), but were tracked by the enemy and slain, - at that time the hiding-places (κρύφοι, 1 Macc. 1:53) of the land were in reality full of the habitations of violence. The combination נאות חמס is like נאות השׁלום, Jeremiah 25:37, cf. Genesis 6:11. From this point the Psalm draws to a close in more familiar Psalm - strains. אל־ישׁב, Psalm 74:21, viz., from drawing near to Thee with their supplications. "The reproach of the foolish all the day" is that which incessantly goes forth from them. עלה תּמיד, "going up (1 Samuel 5:12, not: increasing, 1 Kings 22:35) perpetually," although without the article, is not a predicate, but attributive (vid., on Psalm 57:3). The tone of the prayer is throughout temperate; this the ground upon which it bases itself is therefore all the more forcible.