Have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.
Parallel translations
- WEB Honor your covenant, for haunts of violence fill the dark places of the earth.
- BSB Consider Your covenant, for haunts of violence fill the dark places of the land.
- NKJV Have respect to the covenant; For the dark places of the earth are full of the haunts of cruelty.
- NASB Consider the covenant; For the dark places of the land are full of the places of violence.
- NLT Remember your covenant promises, for the land is full of darkness and violence!
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Asaph asks God to honor His covenant, for the dark places of the land are filled with violence.
Overview
The plea now rests squarely on God's covenant faithfulness as the ground of hope. Amid widespread violence and oppression, the psalmist appeals to the binding promises God made to His people. God's covenant loyalty is the unshakable foundation of prayer, a faithfulness that culminates in the new covenant sealed in Christ's blood.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 18
- Gen 17:7–8And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.
- Ps 106:45And he remembered for them his covenant, and repented according to the multitude of his mercies.
- Heb 8:10For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
- Ps 89:34–36My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.
- Jer 33:20–26Thus saith the LORD; If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season;
- Ps 105:8He hath remembered his covenant for ever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations.
- Ps 89:28My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him.
- Deut 12:31Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.
- Eph 4:17–18This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
- Ps 89:39Thou hast made void the covenant of thy servant: thou hast profaned his crown by casting it to the ground.
- 2 Sam 23:5Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow.
- Ps 5:8Lead me, O LORD, in thy righteousness because of mine enemies; make thy way straight before my face.
- Luke 1:72–75To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant;
- Lev 26:40–45If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me;
- Deut 9:27Remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; look not unto the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin:
- Rom 1:29–31Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
- Exod 24:6–8And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar.
- Gen 49:5–7Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 74:20 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.