God is not of places but of righteousness

For there was no pretext for anger against the places themselves, and it is as if, by sparing the place, he prepares mercy to come upon the people. This is not because any spot of ground can be beloved by God; for God belongs not to places but to righteousness.

Symmachus puts it this way: “You dried up the ancient rivers” (Psalm 74:15) (Psalm 74:15; LXX 73:15). For the fact that springs gush up and rivers pour out from them, while elsewhere the streams of ancient rivers are dried up—this displays the power that works wonders. He says the same in another psalm: “He turned rivers into a desert, and streams of water into thirst” (Psalm 107:33). For it is easy for him to divert the flow of waters wherever he wishes. Through this, however, the word also hints at something else: that to the Jews, because of their lawlessness, he will not bring the streams of the prophetic rivers, but the nations that were long a desert he will water with the torrents from the rock. “And the rock,” says the divine apostle, “is Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4). And all the things said from “He worked salvation in the midst of the earth” (Psalm 74:12) contain the pattern of the good things done for us. So much for these matters. Isidore of Pelusium says in a letter that Etham was a place so named, not far distant from Jerusalem, well-watered, spacious, and shaded; it was dried up by the wrath of God during the Roman war, as Josephus also says in the Antiquities (Psalm 74:15).

Remember your covenant, and bring back those who have been led away into dark places to dwell in your enlightened land again, receiving the prayer of those humbled by evils and put to shame, and granting them to sing hymns with gladness.

Christ, the cause and maker of incorruption, speaks now to the prophet the words that are spoken—he who saves as God and offers thanks for salvation as a human being to the Father (Psalm 75:1). “To you, then,” he says, “we will offer confessions and thanksgivings for salvation; we will recount your wonders, Father. When the church assembled from all humanity,” he says, “can hear the things concerning you, and all people are brought near to serve you.” “Mine also,” he says, “is the discernment over all things, saving those worthy of salvation from those who are perishing: those who have set their minds on earthly things dissolve together with the earth, but those who have set their minds on heavenly things remain like pillars for the establishment of the new creation.”

One must not dare against God, nor be made bold by a conceit of wisdom, nor exalt oneself, saying terrible and unjust things against God—as though he does not provide, nor judge each one righteously, but hands over affairs to the risings and settings of the stars, and as though the stars dispose human affairs either well or badly, and not only the stars but also the demons worshiped in the high places. For these things are not so, not even close; rather, all things are encompassed by the righteous judgment of God, concerning both the humbling and the exalting of human beings—some being cast down, others raised up. Didymus says the same.

At such an end, he says, in which the wicked perish together with their wickedness, I will make the recounting of God's wonders, and I will cut down the strong things of the impious as if lopping off horns; but the horns of the righteous will be exalted, since they have received from God a power that cannot be cut down. Then they will be exalted when they reign together with their own king.

A good end and a victory of the righteous according to God is prophesied, the prophecy previously declared in the preceding psalm having been brought forward to greater clarity and brightness.

He calls the sanctified things “mountains of prey,” that is, mountains of food. For he called food “prey” also in Psalm 131 (132), saying, “Blessing I will bless her prey,” which Symmachus rendered there as “provision.” And in “He gave food to those who fear him” in Psalm 110 (111), Aquila and Symmachus said “prey.”