This Psalm contains (1) a complaint; (2) a prayer; (3) several pleas for that prayer.
I. The complaint. It was a complaint of desolation and oppression. God's temple was lying waste; God had departed from it, and there was as yet no sign of His return. There was also a positive oppression, an enemy who had done wickedly in the sanctuary, and into whose hand the soul of God's people was all but utterly and for ever delivered. (1) The language in which the psalmist complains of the desolate condition of God's sanctuary at Jerusalem should become on our lips a confession of separation from God through sin. (2) No man in this world can be the enemy against whom we are to pray. Our foes are invisible and inward. Sins are the enemies for whose discomfiture God and Christ would teach us to pray.
II. The prayer: "Lift up Thy feet unto the perpetual desolations." It is Christ's promise that God will do so: "I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you."
III. The pleas by which the psalmist enforces his prayer. (1) God is a God of power. If He will save, at least He can. (2) The psalmist draws comfort from the remembrance of that which God had already done for Israel: "God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth." (3) The psalmist could appeal to an express word of promise: "Have respect unto Thy covenant, and let not the oppressed return ashamed."
C. J. Vaughan, Harrow Sermons,1st series, pp. 37, 50.
Reference: Psalms 74:3. E. A. Abbott, Cambridge Sermons,p. 121.