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Pour out thy wrath upon the nations that do not know thee,
And upon the kingdoms that call not upon thy name.
For they have devoured Jacob,

And laid his homestead waste.

O remember not against us the iniquities of our ancestors; Let thy tender mercies speedily come to meet us:

For we are brought very low.

Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name: And deliver us, and purge away our sins, for thy name's sake.

Wherefore should the nations say, 'Where is their God?' Let there be made known among the nations in our sight The revenging of the blood of thy servants which hath been shed.

Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee;

According to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to die;

And render unto our neighbours sevenfold into their bosom Their reproach, wherewith they have reproached thee, O Lord.

So we thy people and sheep of thy pasture

Will give thee thanks for ever:

We will shew forth thy praise to all generations.

$32. Psalm seventy-four: 'Ut quid, Deus, repulisti.'-The following Psalm (lxxiv) evidently reflects the same historical situation as its predecessor.

O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever?

Why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?

Remember thy congregation, which thou didst acquire of old ; Which thou didst redeem to be of thine inheritance;

Yon mount Zion, whereon thou hast dwelt.

Lift up thy feet unto the perpetual desolations;
The enemy hath ill used all in the sanctuary.

Thine adversaries roar in the midst of thy Place of Meeting;
They set up their signs for signs. (?)

They destroy as they who lift up

Axes in the forest thicket. (?)

They break off the carved work thereof;

They hew down with axes and hammers. (?)

THE BURNING OF THE SYNAGOGUES 485

They have set on fire thy sanctuary,

They have defiled the dwelling place of thy name unto the ground.

They said in their hearts, 'Let us destroy them altogether': They have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land.

We see not our signs:

There is no more any prophet:

Neither is there among us any that knoweth how long.
O God, how long shall the adversary reproach,
Shall the enemy blaspheme thy name for ever?

Why withdrawest thou thy hand;

And keepest thy right hand within thy bosom?

But God is my King of old,

Working deliverances in the midst of the earth. Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength:

Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood:

Thou driedst up everlasting rivers.

The day is thine, the night also is thine:
Thou didst establish luminary and sun.
Thou didst set all the bounds of the earth:
Thou didst make summer and winter.

Remember how the enemy hath reviled thee, O Lord,
And how a foolish people have blasphemed thy name.
O deliver not unto death the soul of thy turtledove:
Forget not the lives of thine afflicted for ever.
Look upon thy covenant:

For the dark places of the earth are full of cruelty.
O let not the oppressed be turned back ashamed:
Let the poor and needy praise thy name.

Arise, O God, plead thy cause:

Remember how the fool revileth thee daily.

Forget not the voice of thine enemies,

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The tumult of those that rise up against thee mounteth up continually.

They set up their signs for signs.' A difficult and perhaps corrupt line. Are these signs military banners or heathen images and symbols And how are the signs set up as signs? Signs

of what? Of supremacy? The Place of Meeting is the Temple, and the difficult and corrupt verse with the axes describes its spoliation and ruin.

'Synagogues'; the translation is literal. For the Hebrew is 'meeting-places,' and that is the meaning of synagogues.

In the third stanza there are allusions to the Exodus and the subsequent events.

"The dark places of the earth': a doubtful verse. Is it that the earth is darkened by cruelty, or does it literally refer to the secret hiding-places in which the Jewish fugitives took refuge? But these were shelters from cruelty, filled with its victims.

§ 33. The forty-fourth Psalm: 'Deus, auribus nostris audivimus.-The last of these four Psalms (xliv) seems also clearly Maccabean. Note the emphasis laid on the religious character of the persecution under which the people are labouring. For thy sake are we killed all the day long.'

We have heard with our ears, O God,
Our fathers have told us,

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What work thou didst in their days, in the times of old. Thou didst drive out the nations with thy hand, and didst uproot them;

Thou didst afflict the peoples and cast them out.

For they got not the land in possession by their own sword, Neither did their own arm save them:

But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance,

Because thou hadst a favour unto them.

Thou art my King, O God;

Command deliverances for Jacob.

Through thee will we push down our enemies:

Through thy name will we tread them under that rise up against us.

For I will not trust in my bow,

Neither shall my sword save me.

But thou hast saved us from our enemies,

And hast put them to shame that hated us.

In God we boast all the day long,

And praise thy name for ever.

But thou hast cast off, and put us to shame;
And goest not forth with our armies.

'FOR THY SAKE'

Thou makest us to turn back from the enemy:
And they which hate us plunder at their will.
Thou hast made us like sheep for meat;

And hast scattered us among the nations.
Thou sellest thy people for nought,

And makest no gain by their price.

Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbours,

A scorn and a derision to them that are round about us. Thou makest us a byword among the heathen,

A shaking of the head among the people.

My confusion is continually before me,

And the shame of my face hath covered me,

For the voice of him that reproacheth and blasphemeth;
By reason of the enemy and avenger.

All this is come upon us; yet have we not forgotten thee,
Neither have we been false to thy covenant.

Our heart is not turned back,

Neither have our steps declined from thy way;

487

That thou shouldest have crushed us in the place of jackals, And covered us with the shadow of death.

If we had forgotten the name of our God,

Or stretched out our hands to a strange god;

Would not God search this out?

For he knoweth the secrets of the heart.

Nay, but for thy sake are we killed all the day long;
We are counted as sheep for the slaughter.

Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?

Arise, cast us not off for ever.

Wherefore hidest thou thy face,

And forgettest our affliction and our oppression? For our soul is bowed down to the dust:

Our body cleaveth unto the earth.

Arise for our help,

And redeem us for thy lovingkindness' sake.

The beginning of the third stanza seems to show, as Professor Wellhausen says, that 'hitherto the fight with the heathen has been successful, but now the Israelite army (which all through the Psalm is the speaker, and rightly regards itself as the reprosentative of the people) has suffered a severe defeat which has placed everything in danger.'

'For thy sake are we killed all the day long.' So spake the Maccabean warriors. And even now, after more than 2,000 years have elapsed, many millions of Jews can still say, 'For thy sake are we persecuted, for thy sake do we suffer all the day long.' As for us in English-speaking lands, where liberty and enlightenment prevail, should we not strive to change the verb and to say, 'For thy sake, for thy cause do we live our lives?'

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