Psalm 70

Psalms 70:1

Make haste, O God, to deliver me: The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, reads To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, to bring to remembrance, the same designation carried at the head of Psalm 38, and the bench reads it as a psalm meant for the memorial offering or simply for calling the matter to God's remembrance. This psalm repeats Psalm 40:13-17 almost word for word, an earlier doorway shortened and set to stand alone. Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord opens with haste stated twice in one verse, the psalm's whole temper given before anything else is said.

Psalms 70:2-3

Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul repeats Psalm 40:14 with only small wording changes, the plea against those who want him dead carried into this shorter psalm unaltered in substance. Aha, aha catches the enemies' own taunt in Hebrew, a sound of mockery the psalm quotes rather than merely describes. Gill reads the imprecation as a prayer that the enemies' own shame return upon them rather than a curse invented beyond what they already intended for him, the same measure turned back on its source.

Psalms 70:4-5

Let God be magnified: Let all those that seek thee rejoice turns from imprecation to blessing in one line, the same structure Psalm 35 and Psalm 69 both follow, curse for the enemy and joy for those who love God's salvation held side by side without contradiction. But I am poor and needy returns to the psalm's own opening urgency, and make no tarrying closes the psalm on the same haste that opened it. Barnes notes the psalm's brevity itself, five verses that open in haste and close in haste with no pause to rehearse the deliverances of the past the way longer psalms often do.