Psalms 74:2

Remember thy congregation That is, the Israelites, who are thy church, and whom at the expense of so many miracles, thou didst make thy peculiar people; show by thine actions that thou hast not utterly forgotten and forsaken them; which thou hast purchased Hebrew, קנית, kanita, rendered bought, Deuteronomy 32:6, but which also signifies acquired or procured, though without price, as Ruth 4:9. Of old When thou didst bring them out of Egypt, and form them into a commonwealth; gavest them laws, and didst enter into covenant with them at Sinai. The rod of thine inheritance That people which thou hast measured out, as it were, by rod, to be thy portion: or, the tribe (as the word שׁבשׂ, shebet, here rendered rod, commonly signifies) of thine inheritance, that is, the tribe of Judah, which thou hast, in a special manner, chosen for thine inheritance, and for the seat of thy church and kingdom, and the birth of the Messiah. And thus here is an elegant gradation from the general to particulars: First, the congregation, consisting of all the tribes; then the tribe of Judah; and lastly, mount Zion. Nor is it strange that he mentions this tribe particularly, because the calamity and captivity here lamented principally befell this tribe and Benjamin, which was united with it, and subject to it; and those who returned from the captivity were generally of this tribe. This mount Zion Which is often put for the temple, or the hill of Moriah, on which it was built.