Ps. 74.8 (works of the heart)

They / said in their hearts
let us / destroy them altogether
so they / burned every meeting-place / in the land. 

The wicked make noise: they “roar” (vs. 4), the make “clamor” and a “din” (vs. 23). Their noise is one of “taunt and scorn” (vs. 18). The goal, we have seen, is conquering through humiliation and shame. All of these ‘noises’, however, are external. They are public expressions and acts. Here, by contrast, we, for the only time in the psalm, move to the interiority of the wicked. We move into their “hearts”, the well-spring of their actions. The point of describing this speaking as “in their hearts” is not to portray them as silent. It is to portray the real source of their wickedness. This is their “way”. And, the words of their hearts are destruction; more than that, complete destruction. This sense of total-destruction is, again, something we have sensed throughout the psalm: God’s “unrelenting anger” (vs. 1); “total ruin” (vs. 3); “defiling to the ground” (vs. 7). These men’s hearts of totality mimic the totality of God’s anger and “total ruin” he called upon to deliver. Perhaps most disturbingly, but not unpredictably, their heart’s objectives are immediately and effortlessly accomplished: “…so they burned every meeting-place in the land”. With the same abandon that they attacked the Temple (“like men with axes in a forest”) do they now perpetuate that attack throughout the land and against every “meeting-place”. The will of their hearts is given full reign in the land, unimpeded and seemingly unchallenged. This total freedom is what has made the psalmist see in their destruction the “unrelenting” and “smoldering” anger of God against his flock (vs. 1). The effortless totality observed points to a potential totality in God’s turning away from his covenant, a turning away that leaves the psalmist (and the people) with only a question of “how long” (vs. 10) and “why” (vs. 11). We must remember, in light of all of this, that the psalm is not merely a reporting of events but a carefully crafted prayer designed to motivate God to move on their behalf. The totality of verse 1 and this verse is to be countered by God observing the “total ruin” and “remembering” his people and his dwelling. In other words, these words are to make God ‘turn’—the focus of the second portion of the psalm (vs. 18-23).