Susan Gillingham - Psalms Through the Centuries, Volume 3

The ending of the psalm, with its suggestion of the afterlife, has inspired several musical arrangements. Heinrich *Schütz arranged verses 25–26, using a double chorus, as the second of three motets (1636): this was commissioned by Prince Heinrich von Reuss, to be used at his funeral. 27Dietrich *Buxtehude (c. 1668) composed ‘Herr, wenn Ich nur Dich habe’ on the same verses, as a plaintive solo with strings. The Hungarian composer Franz Liszt’s ‘ Mihi autem adhaerre ’ (1868) is another example, composed for the Mass of St. Francis, based on verse 28 of this psalm.

The other prominent theme of the psalm, namely its vision of the wicked oppressors who are finally destroyed by God, is found in Lauryn *Hill’s track ‘The Final Hour’, on her 1998 solo album ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’:

You can get the money

You can get the power

But keep your eyes on the Final Hour…

And I remain calm reading the 73 rdPsalm

Cause with all that’s going on I got the world in my palm. 28

Much of this reception has been specifically Christian; there is little use of the psalm in Jewish music or art, and not much evidence of it in Jewish or Christian liturgy, despite its twin themes of injustice and life beyond death. But since the Second World War there have been several post-Holocaust reflections on the psalm, of which Martin *Buber’s ‘Why do the Wicked Prosper?’ is particularly pertinent. Given that the wicked clearly do not ‘fall’ in this life, as the psalmist hoped, Buber considers that the problem for the suppliant and for those using the psalm today is as much psychological as theological: he protests that God is not absent, even if we perceive him to be so. Buber’s interpretation of the whole of Psalm 73 has influenced several later post-war Jewish writings. 29From this the psalm might also be applied to the history of white privilege and black oppression, where verse 17 (‘until I went to the sanctuary of God’) has a real force. 30

It is nevertheless surprising to find that a psalm with such a clear theme of justice and injustice, with so many universal implications, has not produced a richer history of reception.

Psalm 74, like Psalm 78, is entitled ‘A Maskil of Asaph’ and each has an instructional element. Each looks back to the past as a means of facing the future, but whilst Psalm 78 is more positive, Psalm 74 does this by way of lament, using mythical traditions, with Babylonian and Canaanite associations, concerning God’s battle with the chaotic sea (the ‘ Chaoskampf’ ). It falls into three strophes: verses 1–11, beginning and ending with the question ‘why?’; verses 12–17, which is a hymn on God’s kingship; and verses 18–23, which form a series of imperatives, echoing verses 2–3. We have already noted its links with its neighbouring psalms, pointing to the probability that its inclusion here was deliberate. 31

Although the setting is most probably the Babylonian attack in 587/6 BCE, later Jewish reception applies the theme of grief for a city torn apart with strife to new situations. One obvious period is when Antiochus Epiphanes took over the Temple, burnt swine’s flesh on the altar and erected a statue to Zeus in c. 167 BCE. The *Targum’s addition to verse 22 (‘remember the dishonour of your people by the foolish king all the day’) seems to be an implicit reference to this Gentile king. 32Another period of strife was the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE: later Jewish commentators on this psalm refer explicitly to Titus’ acts of desecration (lying with a prostitute on a Torah scroll, slashing the curtains of the Temple) as if the psalm were a prophetic witness to this period. 33Other Jewish comments on verse 1 (‘O God, why do you cast us off forever?’) interpret the psalm in the light of the experience of ongoing exile, still under ‘Rome’, but now symbolised, even after Alaric’s sack of Rome in 410 CE, as all hostile Gentile powers: ‘The first (Babylonian) exile was limited to seventy years; but this second (Roman) Exile still continues, with no end in sight.’ 34

The Christian reception also has examples of using the psalm as part of an expression of grief over a lost homeland. Such a literal appropriation is found, for example, in the Huguenots’ use of it, when in the seventeenth-century, under Louis XIV, they were driven out of their homes, and entered Geneva singing this psalm. 35In the twentieth-century we read of a comment pencilled by *Bonhoeffer in his Bible against verses 8–11 (‘…they burned all the meeting places of God in the land…’). He simply wrote 9.11.38—the date of Kristallnacht and the start of the pogroms, so in this case we see a Christian empathy with the Jewish cause: Bonhoeffer’s identification with the Jews, even though it took him to his death, is well known. 36

Christian reception in the earlier commentary tradition has, however, usually read the psalm allegorically. *Athanasius viewed the psalm as about Christ’s incarnation and crucifixion; *Augustine developed this and explained the phrase ‘Yet God my King is of old, working salvation in the earth’ (verse 12) as a reference to the pre-existent Christ who achieved such salvation ‘in the midst of the earth’ through the womb of a Virgin, by his incarnation. 37*Cassiodorus read ‘God my King’ in the same verse also as a reference to Christ, and verse 13 (‘you divided the sea by your might’ as not only an allusion to the crossing of the Red Sea but also a prefiguring of Jesus’ Baptism, when the water was purified by ‘breaking the power of the heads of the dragons’ (unclean spirits), also in verse 13. 38

The *Utrecht Psalter (fol. 42r) connects verse 12 with the incarnation. Here we see an image of the birth of Christ, and two midwives are bathing the Christ Child in the presence of Mary and Joseph; at the bottom of the image the sea is writhing with serpents. 39The same interpretation is captured more clearly in the related * Eadwine Psalter (fol. 128v), as seen in Plate 1.

An example of an image of baptism is found in the historiated initial letter for Psalm 74 in the * St Albans Psalter . The image is of a haloed Christ, with a hammer, slaying a dragon held by a figure personifying the waters. 40

Visual exegesis in the Byzantine tradition, with its propensity for anti-Jewish polemic, focusses neither on the incarnation nor on Jesus’ baptism but on the cross. Both the *Khludov and *Pantokrator Psalters (fol. 82v and fol. 98r respectively) use this image. 41The illustration next to verse 12 depicts Jerusalem at the centre of the cosmos (referring back to verse 2: ‘Remember Mount Zion, where you came to dwell’) but the image is also of Christ on the cross outside the city, with Mary and John on the right, and a figure (apparently a Jew) stabbing with a spear at the cross. This is a statement against both Judaism, which denied the passion of Christ, and Islam, denying Christ actually died on the cross. The reference in verse 9 (‘we do not see our emblems.,’) is read as the refusal to see the cross, specifically the ‘emblem’ of the Greek letter Tau , as pertaining to Christ. A similar image is also found in the * Theodore Psalter (fol. 96r). 42

These different illustrations also reveal the use of the psalm in various forms of Christian liturgy: at Christmas in the western churches, at Easter in the eastern churches, and at Epiphany in both traditions when the Baptism of Christ was commemorated.

An interesting musical association of this psalm with Christmas is found in J. S. *Bach’s ‘Gott ist mein König’, composed in 1708 for an annual church service in Mühlhausen. Parts I and IV were based on Psalm 74, verses 12 and 16: God in Christ has been born as a King, working salvation from of old.