Ps. 74.4 (sign of crucifixion?)

Your foes / have roared / in the midst / of your meeting-place
they set up / their own signs / as signs. 

Here we come to perhaps the most troubling aspect of the psalm, even more troubling than the Temple’s “total ruin”—God’s silence in the face of his foes mockery of him and his Temple. In other words, the real heart of this psalm lies not so much in the Temple’s destruction but in the fact that it is intentionally and flagrantly now used as a place of humiliation. The Temple was not merely destroyed and abandoned; it was destroyed and inhabited by God’s enemies (“foes”). The psalmist conveys this initially through the image of his foes “roaring in the midst of your meeting-place.” The act of speaking in the ‘meeting-place’ is not something uncommon in the psalms. However, in every other psalm it has been the place where the psalmist will declare the mighty works of God after he has been redeemed. It is the place of liturgical praise. Here, praise is filled not only with disordered noise but a “roar”. This vocal act is clearly intended to convey both the sense of conquering and of humiliation. It is the antithesis of what the ‘meeting-place’ is designed to house. God has not only allowed his foes to destroy his own house, but he has permitted them to humiliate and mock him. Further to the vocal humiliation is their erecting of their emblems (signs) of their gods. It is probable that what this refers to is that once a people are conquered, their Temple is destroyed and, in its place, is erected a new temple to the invading party’s gods. Here, something like that is at work. They have made Yhwh’s house into a house of their own gods. It can probably not be stated how devastating this would be for God’s people as they watch the Temple turned into a place of idolatry and mockery. To summarize, it seems as if everything is upside down. Nothing makes sense, especially God’s seeming indifference to his own honor. Why, if he has the power (which he clearly does) to vindicate his own honor, would he permit such a flagrant desecration of his own house (why would he permit such a crucifixion)? As we will see in the following verses, this question is only compounded by the incredible ease with which his foes defiled his dwelling.