Ps. 74.6-7 (a division?)

So then / they hacked away
all its carved work / with axes and pikes
they /set you’re  sanctuary / on fire
they / defiled to the ground / the dwelling place / of your name. 

The degree of profanity in these verses is almost without parallel. The psalmist now recounts, in very vivid detail, the act of sacrilege performed by God’s foes. In a troublingly confident manner they first are portrayed as “hacking away” at the ‘carved work’. These two descriptions should be seen as antitheses. One, an act of destruction; the other (carving) the act of creation. Here, the act of destruction is the greater as the Temple stands open in utter vulnerability to its annihilation. Further, this act of attacking the artwork of the Temple is to be understood as an act of humiliation (similar to the ‘tearing down of the icons’ in the middle ages). They first attack those things created and shaped to give honor and glory to God. They are triumphant assertions, intended to create shame. It would be similar to parading around an idol of a god in embarrassment. Once the shame has been inflicted, then the total destruction can emerge. They burn the Temple to the ground. Importantly, however, the psalmist here refers to the Temple in a unique way—“the dwelling place of your name”. Vs. 2 described it as “Mount Zion, where you have dwelt”; vs. 3 it is the “sanctuary” and the “meeting-place”. As vs. 2 makes clear, this ‘dwelling place of the name’ is the ‘dwelling of God’. However, do we sense here something important in the shift from verse 2 to here, from the dwelling of God to the dwelling of his name? Might it be that what is happening here is the beginning of the sense that the destruction of the Temple is not the destruction of God himself, but the ‘dwelling of your name’? This is not to lessen the impact of what is occurring. It is, however, to suggest that the psalmist is here acknowledging that God’s ‘name’ is in the Temple but the Temple does not contain God. Verse 1 makes clear that this ‘fire’ of destruction is, in fact, the ‘flame’ that rises in the Temple. This points to the ultimate concern of the psalmist. The central concern of the psalmist is this: how does God relate to his covenant? Are there, in a sense, two facets to God, the one that brings the covenant and the one in covenant? The one that ‘dwells in the Temple’ yet it is only the ‘dwelling place of his name’? Is God unified or is he double? Can the place of the covenant be subjected to shame without that being a reflected shame on God himself? Has God ‘kept to himself’ part of himself when entering into covenant with Israel such that they only entered covenant with part of Him, and that this deeper ground of God is, in fact, what is at work here? How much did God hand over when he handed over to Israel his Name? Is he bound to it? The Temple was the emblem of the covenant between God and Israel. Its destruction suggests not that God himself has been destroyed but that God may have revoked the covenant. That in the place of his face there is now a perpetually smoldering flame of anger at his flock (vs. 1). Does, therefore, the shame of the covenant truly reflect a shame upon God? Is the point of the psalm to ‘bring God’ back into union with the covenant? Is this why the ‘genesis’ appealed to in verse 2 is the genesis of the covenant with the pinnacle being Zion? To unite these seemingly disparate aspects of God? To make the God of the covenant the God in covenant? The God whose name dwells in the Temple the God who dwells in the Temple?