The Cultic Situation of Psalm Lxxiv

Abstract

To the scholars the main problem of psalm lxxiv-and of psalm lxxix-has been the date of the supposed destruction of the Temple. A going-through of the various commentaries will show that they all agree in assuming a historical reality behind these psalms, 1) the fixation of it ranging from the possibility of a preexilic date (BENTZEN) to the time of the Maccabaeans (WELLHAUSEN, MOWINCKEL and others), but none has been able to demonstrate his view as opposed to that of others in a convincing manner. In the following pages I hope to indicate that the psalms have no relation whatsoever to any historic occurrence, but are completely cultic. If this be true, the determination of their type as national psalms of lamentation must fall, and it will come out that originally they were ritual laments with a fixed position in the cult drama of the New Year Festival. In speaking of the original use I have in no way anticipated the postexilic understanding-it is highly probable that later ages took them to be laments of the disasters bearing upon the Temple in the course of time. Undoubtedly owing hereto they got a place in the Psalter. Introductorily I consider it necessary to make a short phenomenological statement of the role played by the dwelling of the god in ancient Semitic conceptions. As the topic is uncultivated from my point of view, 2) such a statement can only touch the rough outlines of this ideology in its cultic significance-on account of the limited space a thorough-going argumentation must be omitted. Solutions of this problem ought not to be looked for in the O.T. exclusively, as there will always exist the possibility of maintaining