Psalms · 23 verses
Psalms 74
Every verse links to the people and places named in it, and to the passages readers connect it with.
The chapter
What happens here
Atlas's own reading, written from this chapter and nothing else, and published only once a person has approved it. Each scene names the verses it covers; the names inside it link to the people and places they name.
Leviathan has many heads, yet the poem feeds him to the creatures of the desert as one.
The sanctuary made a thicketvv. 1–11
The plea opens with rejection, anger, and the bewildering fate of the sheep of God's pasture. The enemy has entered the meeting place, raised its banners, and attacked the sanctuary as if it were timber in a thicket: carvings are smashed, the dwelling place burned, and every place of meeting consumed. Then comes a particularly bleak inventory: no signs, no prophet, and no knowledge of how long the silence will last. Even the enemy's taunt seems to have acquired an endless supply of breath.
The ancient King and the many-headed creaturevv. 12–17
Against the wreckage, God is remembered as King from ancient times, working salvation on the earth. The memory runs through the sea, its dragons, Leviathan, fountains, floods, rivers, moon, sun, and the boundaries of the earth. Leviathan arrives with heads in the plural and departs as a singular him, handed over to the creatures of the desert—a wonderfully unannotated end for so formidable a creature.
A plea beneath the silencevv. 18–23
The closing appeal brings the enemy's mockery back before God and asks that the afflicted not be forgotten. A dove is set against beasts, the poor and needy against shame, and the covenant against lands filled with violent hiding places. The final request is not quiet: God is summoned to rise, defend His cause, and attend to an uproar that keeps ascending.
The text
Read it
Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Names the Hebrew and Greek put in the verse link to the person, place or people they name; the address beside each verse is a link to that verse, which is what a reader copies and shares.
Ps 74:1A Maskil of Asaph. Why have You rejected us forever, O God? Why does Your anger smolder against the sheep of Your pasture?
Ps 74:2Remember Your congregation, which You purchased long ago and redeemed as the tribe of Your inheritance—Mount Zion, where You dwell.
Ps 74:3Turn Your steps to the everlasting ruins, to everything in the sanctuary the enemy has destroyed.
Ps 74:4Your foes have roared within Your meeting place; they have unfurled their banners as signs,
Ps 74:5like men wielding axes in a thicket of trees
Ps 74:6and smashing all the carvings with hatchets and picks.
Ps 74:7They have burned Your sanctuary to the ground; they have defiled the dwelling place of Your Name.
Ps 74:8They said in their hearts, “We will crush them completely.” They burned down every place where God met us in the land.
Ps 74:9There are no signs for us to see. There is no longer any prophet. And none of us knows how long this will last.
Ps 74:10How long, O God, will the enemy taunt You? Will the foe revile Your name forever?
Ps 74:11Why do You withdraw Your strong right hand? Stretch it out to destroy them!
Ps 74:12Yet God is my King from ancient times, working salvation on the earth.
Ps 74:13You divided the sea by Your strength; You smashed the heads of the dragons of the sea;
Ps 74:14You crushed the heads of Leviathan; You fed him to the creatures of the desert.
Ps 74:15You broke open the fountain and the flood; You dried up the ever-flowing rivers.
Ps 74:16The day is Yours, and also the night; You established the moon and the sun.
Ps 74:17You set all the boundaries of the earth; You made the summer and winter.
Ps 74:18Remember how the enemy has mocked You, O LORD, how a foolish people has spurned Your name.
Ps 74:19Do not deliver the soul of Your dove to beasts; do not forget the lives of Your afflicted forever.
Ps 74:20Consider Your covenant, for haunts of violence fill the dark places of the land.
Ps 74:21Do not let the oppressed retreat in shame; may the poor and needy praise Your name.
Ps 74:22Rise up, O God; defend Your cause! Remember how the fool mocks You all day long.
Ps 74:23Do not disregard the clamor of Your adversaries, the uproar of Your enemies that ascends continually.
01 — Also here
Who else the chapter reaches
Names written in the English are linked in the text above. These are the ones that are not: an entity the Hebrew or Greek names under a spelling the translation does not use, or one reached only by an assertion about a verse of this chapter.
Named in the Hebrew or Greek somewhere in this chapter, under a form the English renders differently — the registry's Ludim against the translation's Ludites — so there is no word in the sentence to hang the link on.
Reached by an assertion Atlas extracted from a verse of this chapter rather than by a name written in it — a pronoun, a title, or a participant the sentence carries without naming. This layer is model-read and measured at 88.6–90.3% precision, and it is kept separate from the names above for that reason.
02 — Read alongside
Where this is echoed
Readers' own connections, from OpenBible's crowd-voted cross-references — agreement about relevance, and not scholarly confidence. 246 passages were voted onto 23 verses of this chapter; the 16 shown lead on votes, and each is listed at the verse it was voted onto most strongly.
- 1Deuteronomy 29:20The LORD will never be willing to forgive him. Instead, His anger and jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse written in this book will fall upon him. The LORD will blot out his name from under heaven
- 14Isaiah 27:1In that day the LORD will take His sharp, great, and mighty sword, and bring judgment on Leviathan the fleeing serpent—Leviathan the coiling serpent—and He will slay the dragon of the sea.
- 17Deuteronomy 32:8When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He divided the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.
- 4Lamentations 2:7The Lord has rejected His altar; He has abandoned His sanctuary; He has delivered the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy. They have raised a shout in the house of the LORD as on the day of an appointed feast.
- 17Acts 17:26From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands.
- 1Psalms 79:13Then we Your people, the sheep of Your pasture, will thank You forever; from generation to generation we will declare Your praise.
- 1Psalms 100:3Know that the LORD is God. It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.
- 13Exodus 14:21Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the LORD drove back the sea with a strong east wind that turned it into dry land. So the waters were divided,
- 17Genesis 8:22As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall never cease.”
- 17Acts 14:17Yet He has not left Himself without testimony to His goodness: He gives you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness.”
- 1John 10:26–30But because you are not My sheep, you refuse to believe.
- 2Jeremiah 10:16The Portion of Jacob is not like these, for He is the Maker of all things, and Israel is the tribe of His inheritance—the LORD of Hosts is His name.
- 9Amos 8:11Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.
- 11Lamentations 2:3In fierce anger He has cut off every horn of Israel and withdrawn His right hand at the approach of the enemy. He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire that consumes everything around it.
- 14Job 41:1–34“Can you pull in Leviathan with a hook or tie down his tongue with a rope?
- 14Psalms 72:9May the nomads bow before him, and his enemies lick the dust.
Onward