Psalms 70: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

A short psalm asking God for urgent help. The writer asks God to hurry and rescue him, to shame and turn back the people who want to kill him and who mock him, and to give joy to all who seek God. He ends by calling himself poor and needy and asking God, his help and rescuer, not to delay.

Claim by Claim

1. 70:1
   • The speaker asks God to hurry to deliver him.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to hurry to help him.
2. 70:2
   • The speaker asks that those who seek his life be put to shame.
   • The speaker asks that those who seek his life be disgraced.
   • The speaker asks that those who desire his harm be turned back.
   • The speaker asks that those who desire his harm be humiliated.
3. 70:3
   • The speaker asks that those who say 'Aha, aha' be turned back.
   • The speaker asks that their turning back be the consequence of their own shame.
4. 70:4
   • The speaker asks that all who seek God rejoice and be glad in him.
   • The speaker asks that those who love God's salvation say continually that God is to be magnified.
5. 70:5
   • The speaker says he is afflicted and needy.
   • The speaker asks God to hurry to him.
   • The speaker says God is his help.
   • The speaker says God is his deliverer.
   • The speaker asks the LORD not to delay.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

70:1

Where the King James prints LORD in small capitals it is standing in for God's personal name in Hebrew, YHWH, which Jewish readers did not say aloud; "God" translates the ordinary Hebrew word for a deity, Elohim. This psalm is almost word for word the same as the closing lines of Psalm 40 (verses 13–17), which is why the two passages sound so alike.

70:2

"Seek after my soul" is the King James rendering of a Hebrew idiom that means to hunt for someone's life: that is, to try to kill them; "soul" here is a person's life, not a spirit separate from the body. "Ashamed and confounded" is about public standing rather than private feeling: to be shamed was to be exposed and humiliated in front of everyone, and "confounded" in 1611 meant thrown into confusion or utterly defeated.

70:3

"Aha, aha" translates a Hebrew shout, he'ach, used for gloating over someone else's disaster, closer to a jeer than to surprise. "For a reward of their shame" is old English for "as the payment their shame earns them": the taunters get back what they handed out.

70:4

"Thy salvation" here translates a Hebrew word for rescue or deliverance, being pulled out of present danger, rather than salvation in the later sense of the afterlife. "Let God be magnified" means "let God be declared great"; to magnify someone in 1611 English was to enlarge their reputation, not to enlarge an object under a lens.

70:5

"Poor and needy" is a fixed pair in the Psalms describing someone with no power and no protector, dependent on others to survive, the emphasis is on helplessness rather than on money alone. "Make no tarrying" simply means "do not delay."