Old Testament Exegetical Psalm 74 Essays - David, Ketuvim, Psalms

Old Testament Exegetical: Psalm 74 Old Testament Exegetical Paper: Psalm 74 For my Old Testament exegetical paper I have chosen Psalm 74. This passage was hard for me to read because it rebukes God for letting temples and other holy places be destroyed. In this paper I hope to gain a better understanding of this chapter. I will define two terms that I find to be key to understanding this passage. Reading two commentaries on Psalm 74 I will discuss the authorship, date and place of writing, audience and purpose of this passage. The term congregation is defined by The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary as a gathering of various types. More specifically congregation is defined as the popular assembly or the Israelite religious community (Meyers 232). The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible says that congregation expresses the assembly of the people of Israel (Carey 939). Congregation is used 138 times in the Old Testament (Kohlenberger 265). I examined five other passages outside of Psalms to try to gain a better understanding of the term. All the passages I Kings 8, 2 Chronicles 5, 7, 24, and Ezra 10 use the term congregation to describe a specific group of people. Ezra 10 is the only passage that does not use congregation to describe the people of Israel. The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible defines deliver as the saving, rescuing, redeeming, or setting free of material and temporal things, but also of spiritual and eternal things (Barker 89). W. R. F. Browning uses deliverance to describe the saving of Gods people, as well as the giving over of traditions (96). In the Old Testament the word deliver or one of its derivatives is used 107 times, predominantly in Psalms (Kohlenberger 319). I read Genesis 32, Exodus 3, Deuteronomy 32, Amos 6, and Micah 5 to find out how the term is used in other passages throughout the Bible. In Genesis 32 Jacob uses deliver as a plea. He says, Deliver me, please, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him. God uses deliver to describe his preserving of the Israelites from Egypt in Exodus 3. However in Deuteronomy 32 God uses deliver to say that no one can be saved from his judgment. Micah 5 uses a metaphor with a young lion amongst the sheep with no one to deliver or save the sheep. God refuses to protect the inhabitants of earth from evil in Zechariah 11. Derek Kidner breaks Psalm 74 down into 5 parts. Verses 1 3 deal with the cast-off heritage, 4 8 speak of the pillaged temple, verses 9 11 convey the impenetrable silence. In verses 12 17 the ancient exploits are reviewed and 18 23 concentrate on the continuing ordeal (264). 1 O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture? 2 Remember your congregation, which you acquired long ago, which you redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage. Remember Mount Zion, where you came to dwell. 3 Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins; the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary. The psalm takes as its starting-point the protest of the people against their God, a protest based on their belief in their election (Weiser 518). It is faith, more than doubt, that precipitates the shower of questions which begins and ends this half of the psalm, since the real perplexity is not over the bare fact of punishment but over its apparent finality. Is it for ever?yet how can it be when this is thy pasturethy congregationthy heritage (Kidner 265)? With the sanctuaries in ruin, the enemy laying siege to the land of the Israelites they question their faith in Gods promises in verses 1 3. Verses 4 8 show the destruction and violation of the sanctuaries of God. 4 Your foes have roared within your holy place; they set up their emblems there. 5 At the upper entrance they hacked the wooden trellis with axes. 6 And then, with hatchets and hammer, they smashed all its carved work. 7 They set your sanctuary on fire; they desecrated the dwelling place of your name, bringing

Speech on Hamlet Essay

Speech on Hamlet Essay Speech on Hamlet Essay ‘Speak to me. Speak to me. Oh speak. For which they say you spirits oft walk in death, speak of it. Stay and speak!’ Already in the first scene of the play Shakespeare begins to forewarn the audience against the evils of revenge. Horatio, the most loyal, cautious friend of Hamlets, witnesses the appearance of the ghost. In the renaissance period, those who believed in spirits, trusted that the presence of one meant that they had unfinished business to attend. Though this idea was both supernatural and horrifying to the Elizabethan audience, it made clearly evident that the ghost, ‘In the same figure, like the Kind that’s dead’, came back for a reason and one that was unpleasant. Hamlet’s perception is that the prior King was the ultimate father; he was his idol and ‘his fathers brother, but no more like his father’. As the conversation with Claudius, Gertrude and himself, he begins to communicate his disgust for Gertrude and says s o with, ‘to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets.’ Here, the audience recognizes the actions of his mother can never be forgiven by Hamlet and that Claudius will never replace his father. ‘Foul deeds will rise’, and ‘So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear’. These thoughts establish the foreshadowing events of revenge throughout the entire play. When Hamlet commences his descent into madness, his thoughts create the idea to assemble a play within a play, the murder of Gonzago. He justifies the reasoning by stating that if Claudius is disturbed, he will then reveal guilt for his actions, ‘Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King’. Shakespeare stages this for the audience and the characters in the play are able to understand the validity of Claudius as the murderer of the late King and the potential outcomes of this revenge against evil. As death is the primary concern within the play and the worst result of most revenge tragedies at the time, Hamlets differentiation is that his madness is ‘deeply ambiguous’. This manipulative plot instigates the actions of revenge feigned by the evils that madness can induce. As Hamlets disgust and loathing of Claudius develops in Act 1, scene 3, his pace and short phrases hasten to match his quicken thoughts. Shakespeare does this to alert the audience of the suspense that arises with hamlets tone. His unfinished lines portray the irrationality of his thoughts that lead to, ‘take him in the purging’, of Claudius’ soul. His forceful, commanding dialogue towards Gertrude in the next scene, ‘come, come and sit you down, you shall not budge,’ allude to the action being taken to avenge Claudius and perform his murder. As he kills Polonius,’ thou wretched, rash,