Psalms 74:5,6 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

A man was famous, &c. The meaning, according to this translation, is this: The temple was so noble a structure, that it was a great honour to any man to be employed in the meanest part of the work, though it were but in cutting down the trees of Lebanon. And this interpretation is favoured by the opposition in the next verse. But now, &c. Some learned expositors, however, translate the first words of this verse, יודע, not, He was famous, but, as is more literal, It is, or will be, well known; and they interpret the two verses thus: “It is, or rather, will be, known or manifest; it will be published to all posterity, as matter of astonishment and admiration, that, as one lifteth up axes in the thick wood, or upon thick trees, to cut them down; so now they, the enemies above mentioned, break down the carved wood thereof, namely, of the sanctuary, with axes and hammers.” It has been ingeniously observed by some, that the two words thus rendered are not Hebrew, but Chaldee or Syriac words, to point out the time when this was done, even when the Chaldeans brought in their language, together with their arms, among the Israelites. Dr. Horne thinks that the Hebrew word above mentioned may be translated a knowing, or skilful person; and then the sense is, “As a skilful person, who understands his business, lifteth up the axe in the thick wood, so now men set themselves to work to demolish the ornaments and timbers of the sanctuary.” They neither regard the sacredness of the place, nor the exquisite curiosity and art of the work, (here signified by the term carved work,) but cut it down as indifferently and rashly as men cut down the thick and entangled boughs of the trees of the forest. “The words,” adds Dr. H., “suggest another reason why God should arise and have mercy upon Zion, lest his name should be blasphemed among the nations, when they saw and heard of the sacrilegious and horrible destruction wrought by the enemy; whom neither the majesty of the temple, nor the reverence of its divine inhabitant, could restrain from defacing the beauty of holiness. The ornaments of the internal and spiritual temple sometimes suffer as much from the fury of inordinate affections, as the carved work of the sanctuary ever did from the armies of Nebuchadnezzar or Antiochus.”