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Psalm 74:5

They behaved like men wielding axes, cutting through a thicket of trees.

3Lift up your feet to the perpetual ruins, all the evil that the enemy has done in the sanctuary.
4Your adversaries have roared in the middle of your assembly. They have set up their standards as signs.
5They behaved like men wielding axes, cutting through a thicket of trees.
6Now they break all its carved work down with hatchet and hammers.
7They have burned your sanctuary to the ground. They have profaned the dwelling place of your Name.
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← Psalm 74:4Psalm 74:6 →
Notice

Axes swing through the sanctuary as though it were a thicket, exposing the violence of treating a place of worship as something to clear away.

Questions to write on. Each one opens a new entry with this verse already attached.

What does the comparison to cutting a thicket reveal about the attackers’ treatment of the sanctuary?

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What would you want to say to God after seeing a place of worship destroyed?

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Connect

Where else Scripture says this

3 passages readers most often link with this verse, and the thread each one shares with it.

This verse's connections, by chapterThe Bible's strongest chapter linksHover or tap a book to trace it
Jeremiah 46:22–23Its sound will go like the serpent, for they will march with an army, and come against her with axes, as wood cutters.Both passages compare attackers to woodcutters wielding axes, portraying an assault through the work of felling trees.
1 Kings 5:6Now therefore command that cedar trees be cut for me out of Lebanon. My servants will be with your servants; and I will give you wages for your servants …Both mention cutting trees, though Kings describes the skilled gathering of timber and the psalm uses tree cutting to picture destruction.
2 Chronicles 2:14the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan; and his father was a man of Tyre. He is skillful to work in gold, in silver, in bronze, in iron, in stone, in …The connection is woodwork: the psalm’s surrounding lines describe its destruction, while Chronicles names a craftsman skilled in timber and engraving.
Where this verse fits

Injustice and anger. grief.

What the Bible says about anger →What the Bible says about grief →
One step

Something small to carry out of this verse

Name one act of destruction before God

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Encouragement

Such destruction belongs in prayer without softened language. In this lament, the ruined sanctuary and the violence done there are brought before God.

Now put it in your words.

Start an entry on Psalm 74:5. Write what it stirs. Psalmlog sets your words beside Scripture and gives you one next step. Your first entry is free, no account needed.

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Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).