What Does Psalm 74:8 Mean in the King James?
They said in their hearts, Let us destroy them together: they have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
What is burned is more than a building: it is an appointed place of encounter that gathers a people together.
THE MEANING
This verse names a pattern still legible now: a people can be attacked through the destruction of the places where they meet God together. Its language keeps the intent stark, collective destruction, enacted by burning every appointed gathering place in the land.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the lie that destroying a meeting place is only about the building; the verse shows that it is an assault on a people’s shared life.
THE ROOT
מוֹעֲדֵי
moʿadei
GROWS FROM
יעד
y-ʿ-d
To appoint or designate; in this word family, to meet by appointment.
The KJV word “synagogues” can sound like a building category, while מוֹעֲדֵי (moʿadei, “appointed meeting places of”) carries the sense of places set for encounter. The verse shows the violence reaching toward the appointed meeting between God and a gathered people, not merely toward architecture.
ALSO GROWS
moʿed: An appointed time, meeting, or place of assembly.
מוֹעֵד
This is the singular form behind “synagogues”; the burned places are named by their purpose as appointed meeting places.
noʿad: To meet by appointment.
נוֹעַד
This verb from the same root appears in the promise of a place “where I will meet you,” tying appointed place to encounter.
THE PATTERN
When hostility seeks to erase a people, it reaches for the places and bonds through which they gather.
A Psalm of Asaph. O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.And conspired all of them together to come and to fight against Jerusalem, and to hinder it.And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judæa and Samaria, except the apostles.THE THREAD
This shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your generations at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD: where I will meet you, to speak there unto thee.The word behind “synagogues” here is מוֹעֲדֵי (moʿadei, “appointed meeting places”), from יעד (yaʿad, “to appoint”). Exodus uses that same root for God’s promise, “where I will meet you,” so the places being burned are appointed places of encounter.
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