Psalms 74:8

They have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land.

The synagogues of God

We do not know the precise circumstances under which this psalm was written. But we thank God our synagogues are not destroyed as were those of the Jews.

I. Let us glance at the synagogues of Judaea and in the ancient world. And we note--

1. That they express one of the greatest marvels of Providence. They were to be the places where, and by means of which, the message of the Gospel was to be delivered. The Jews had synagogues everywhere, and thus God by His providence had prepared the field in which first the Gospel seed was sown.

2. They were intimately connected with our Lord’s work.

3. And with the ministry of the apostles.

II. At the synagogues of God to-day. The word means a coming together, and it expresses an essential idea of Christian worship. And they are synagogues of God. This the main thing. There God works and blesses souls. And think of them all, and of those especially in our own land. May God’s power be manifested in them more and more. (J. Aldis.)

The synagogue a post-exilian institution

Dr. Prideux affirms that the Jews had no synagogues before the Babylonish captivity; for the main service of the synagogue being the reading of the law unto the people, where there was no book of the law to be read, there certainly would be no synagogue. How rare the book of the law was through all Judaea before the captivity, many texts of Scripture tell us. Dr. Fairbairn, in support of the same view, says, “There is every reason to think that this psalm was composed during the Babylonish captivity, and was intended to describe the desolation which had been brought by the Chaldeans upon all the sacred spots of Palestine. The word for synagogue in the original, however, properly expresses the places of the revelation of God, and can refer only to the temple, that one place on which God had chosen to put His name.”