Nevertheless, it is all a puzzle, a bewildering maze in which faith seems walking blindfold, like the Lord Himself when the malice of the high-priest's servants bandaged His eyes and smote Him in derision and bade Him prophesy! The light of God's presence seems to have gone out of the world:
Wherefore hidest Thou Thy face:
And forgettest our misery and trouble.
Very similar is the 74th Psalm, with its same high consciousness of faithfulness to God, the same agonising sense of contradiction in the enemies of God being suffered to break down the carved work of the sanctuary, the same feeling of helplessness and lack of guidance. The adversaries' banners are manifest enough, their tokens are clear; but with the faithful it is otherwise:
We see not our tokens, there is not one prophet more.
O God, how long! ... Remember! ... Arise! ... Forget not!
Probably of the same period is the 79th, written apparently in the very hour of the heathen triumph, when the Temple is defiled, Jerusalem "an heap of stones," the blood of the righteous flowing on every side like water. And there is still the characteristic turning away from self and personal humiliation to the thought of the dishonour done to God Himself. For to the faithful the honour of God is dearer than their own liberty or life.
Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy Name:
O deliver us, and be merciful unto our sins, for Thy Name's sake.
The 83rd belongs perhaps to an earlier age. It seems to recall the great confederacy of the nations against Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. xx.). The Psalmist cries out to God against the gathering hordes who have no interest in common, except their mutual hatred of Israel and Israel's God. It is a sorry catalogue: Edomites, Ishmaelites, Moabites, Hagarens; Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek; Philistines, Tyrians, Assyrians:
"All the warring hosts of error
Sworn against her, move as one."
But the hot indignation which prays that this rabble of malice and mischief may be swept like the stubble before the whirlwind, consumed like the dry grass before the mountain fires, is yet tempered with a higher thought. Defeat may lead to conversion and to a better mind: