Christ Reigns Even Amidst The Rubble (Psalm 74)

by on July 19, 2025 | Comment

The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem just as the Lord warned.

Thus says the LORD, Behold, I will bring disaster upon this place and upon its inhabitants, all the curses that are written in the book that was read before the king of Judah. Because they have forsaken me and have made offerings to other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands, therefore my wrath will be poured out on this place and will not be quenched. (2 Chron 34:23–25)

In 587 BC, Nebuchadnezzar’s army marched into Jerusalem (Jer 19:21). The psalmist, Asaph the brother of Levi (1 Chron 6:39), according to the superscription, himself describes the scene graphically enough:

Your foes have roared in the midst of your meeting place; they set up their own signs for signs. They were like those who swing axes in a forest of trees. And all its carved wood they broke down with hatchets and hammers. They set your sanctuary on fire; they profaned the dwelling place of your name, bringing it down to the ground. They said to themselves, “We will utterly subdue them”; they burned all the meeting places of God in the land. We do not see our signs; there is no longer any prophet, and there is none among us who knows how long. How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever? Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand? Take it from the fold of your garment and destroy them! (Ps 74:4–11)

As he pleads for mercy on behalf of the covenant people to the Lord who had warned about this outcome, he speaks of “perpetual ruins.” The holy place, where the Lord met with the representatives of his people, has been destroyed (Ps 74:4).

By the time Jerusalem fell, Jehoiachin had been deposed and Zedekiah had been placed on the throne.1 Zedekiah had rebelled against his masters and now Jerusalem and the temple were in ruins and the church was in her Babylonian Captivity.2 “All of the tangible institutions and powerful people were gone or crippled. The state of Judah, its long history so closely associated with Yahweh and His servant David, was no longer.”3 This is the setting of Jeremiah’s Lamentations.4 Calvin describes the psalmist as bewailing “the desolate condition of the Church.”5

As Bob Godfrey observes, the “personal crisis of faith of the Psalmist in Psalm 73 was resolved . . . when he entered the temple.”6 Now, however, there is no temple to which God’s people might go. Where Psalm 73 records the crisis of one person, this is a crisis for the whole church.7 This is a turning point for the church under the types and shadows. “The whole Psalter seems to be arranged around this center of crisis.”8

The Psalmist’s Plea

“O God, why do you cast us off forever?” (Ps 74:1). This prayer does not begin with the sort of language we usually use when addressing almighty God. There is no polite or formal address. It is the cry of a man who has nowhere else to turn, who is running out of time. Cops, emergency medical technicians, emergency room personnel, and even lifeguards know what desperation sounds like. When a swimmer begins to realize that he is literally in over his head, when it becomes harder to get to the surface to get a breath, panic sets in. The drowning swimmer cries out one last time hoping that someone, anyone will help. So it is with Asaph.

He knows who can save him. He knows that the gracious covenant Lord is exercising his wrath against his church. “O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?” (Ps 74:1). Has the Lord forgotten the congregation that he delivered out of Egypt and into Canaan? Has he forgotten Mt. Zion, where he draws near to his church? (v. 2)

The Psalmist’s Condition

That this prayer begins as it does tells us something about the condition of the church under Babylon. The enemies of God have replaced his institutions with their own (v. 4). They are exulting in the midst of Yahweh’s meeting place with his people (v. 4). They have cut down Jerusalem the way a skilled lumberjack cuts down trees (v. 5). The wood carved according to God’s command has been broken down (v. 6).9 The pagans have burned the holy place, where God’s name dwells, and they have defiled it (v. 7). They arrogantly announced their intention to subdue the church and to burn all the churches (v. 8).

Worse than all this, there is no prophet, no Word from God (v. 9). No one knows how long this desolation will last. How long will Christ’s people have to suffer the indignity of living under the oppression of these pagans? Why do you wait, O Lord? “Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand? Take it from the fold of your garment and destroy them!” (Ps 74:11).

The psalmist cries out for deliverance from earthly captivity and for deliverance from the oppression that God has sent upon them, but they had broken the national covenant and Yahweh has turned them over to the nations. His anger smokes against them (Ps 74:1).

The Psalmist’s Hope

For many Christians today, the Lordship of Christ is tied to observable, palpable success against the enemies of Christ. That is how they measure the Kingdom of God. In that way of thinking, it has not really begun. But this is not how the psalmist thinks. Even though everything is rubble, he announces that God is still King (Ps 174:12). He is the ancient King, “working salvation in the midst of the earth” (v. 12). The God who saves is the God who created, who “divided the sea” by his might, who “broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters” (v. 13). Leviathan, that great sea creature, is made food for the other creatures (v. 14). The Lord opens up the springs, he establishes the day and the night. In short, he is the God who spoke into nothing and by the power of his Word made all that is (vv. 15–17).

It is that God who can save his people from their enemies (v. 18). The psalmist knows that God reigns despite the circumstances. Nebuchadnezzar is nothing before God. If God rules the deeps, the Babylonian captivity is nothing to him (vv. 19–20).

That God, our God, the God of the psalmist made a covenant with his church (v. 20). The dark places, the “habitations of violence” in which the church now dwells are not beyond the reach of the Lord. He is trustworthy. He keeps his covenant.

The psalmist cries for deliverance and vindication. “Arise, O God, defend your cause!” (v. 22). Remember those who scoff and do not forget “the clamor of your enemies, the noise of those who rise against you” (v. 23).

The psalmist’s prayer is ours. The new covenant church, which lives in the last days (Heb 1:2), is in the same condition, and we have the same hope. Listen to the apostle Peter,

Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. (2 Pet 3:3–7)

Mockers mock but Jesus saves. He answered the psalmist’s prayer in a way that perhaps the psalmist never imagined: by becoming incarnate. He became the Israel of God and obeyed. He was taken into captivity, not because of his disobedience, but because of ours. He was exiled and killed, but being God the Son incarnate and righteous, he was vindicated in his resurrection (1 Tim 3:16). His new covenant church is in a kind of Babylonian captivity awaiting the consummation of our deliverance. Peter understands. The fiery judgment and deliverance is coming.

The ungodly will be destroyed on that day, but this is not that day. This is the day of salvation. Christian, do not despair about the ruins. Christ reigns. He is conquering his enemies. He conquered you did he not? He has conquered others by his Word and Spirit, and when he is done conquering, then comes the judgment. Then, but not until then, the foolish who reviled his name and never repented will meet the Lord whom they scorned, whose holy place they desecrated.

Notes

  1. D. F. Morgan, “Captivity,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Revised, ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979–18), 614.
  2. Morgan, “Captivity,” 614.
  3. Morgan, 614.
  4. Derek Kidner, Psalms 73–150: A Commentary on Books III–IV of the Psalms (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1975), 264–65.
  5. John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, trans. James Anderson, vol. 3 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 158.
  6. W. Robert Godfrey, Learning to Love the Psalms (Orlando: Reformation Trust, 2017), 132.
  7. Godfrey, Learning, 132.
  8. Godfrey, Learning, 132.
  9. E.g., Exodus 26: 26–30; 1 Kings 6:18, 29–35.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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