Psalms 74:5,6

The R.V. gives the probable sense of these verses, but does not reproduce the pictorial tenses, which represent the work of destruction as though it were going on before the reader's eyes. Render:

They seem as men that lift up

Axes upon a thicket of trees.

And now the carved work thereof together

They are battering down with hatchet and hammers.

The enemy are compared to wood-cutters hewing down a forest (Jeremiah 46:22-23); and the simile may have been suggested by the fact that the carved work on the Temple walls represented "palm trees and open flowers" (1 Kings 6:29).

The P.B.V., "He that hewed timber afore out of the thick trees was known to bring it to an excellent work. But now they break down &c.," introduced into the Great Bible from Münster, gives a suggestive contrast between the skill of the artist and the vandalism of the destroyer; but the present Heb. text cannot bear this meaning.