Psalms 70
What Happens in This Chapter
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.
Hurry, God, and rescue me. Hurry and help me, LORD.
1MAKE HASTE, O GOD, TO DELIVER ME; MAKE HASTE TO HELP ME, O LORD.
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.
2May the people who are trying to kill me be put to shame and disgraced. May the people who want to hurt me be driven back and humiliated.
2Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let them be turned backward, and put to confusion, that desire my hurt.
"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.
3May the people who say to me, "Aha! Aha!" turn back because of their own shame.
3Let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say, Aha, aha.
"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.
4May everyone who looks for you be full of joy and gladness because of you. May those who love the rescue you give always say, "God is great!"
4Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified.
"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.
5But I am poor and needy. Hurry to me, God. You are my help and my rescuer. LORD, do not wait.
5But I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: thou art my help and my deliverer; O LORD, make no tarrying.
"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."
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