Today’s Passage: Psalm 70
This short psalm will feel familiar to anyone who has already read Psalm 40 in this series. That familiarity is the point.
Context A prayer worth repeating
This series already noted, back on the day covering Psalm 40, that its closing five verses closely echo this exact psalm, “Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me; hurry, O LORD, to help me” there, “Make haste, O God, to deliver me! Hurry, O LORD, to help me!” here. Scholars are not certain which came first, whether this stood alone before being folded into Psalm 40, or whether it was later lifted out to serve as its own urgent prayer. Either way, someone judged this specific plea important enough to preserve twice, once inside a longer testimony and once standing entirely on its own.
As you read, hold this: unlike many psalms that build slowly toward their request, this one opens already at full urgency and never slows down.
Psalm 70:1 (BSB)
For the choirmaster. Of David. To bring remembrance.
¹ Make haste, O God, to deliver me! Hurry, O LORD, to help me!
Word study Hurry — chush (Psalm 70:1, 5)
“Hurry” translates חוּשׁ (chush, khoosh) — Strong's H2363, chush, “to make haste, to act quickly.” The word opens the psalm and closes it, framing the entire five-verse prayer with the same single, urgent request. This is not a psalm asking for eventual help. It asks for immediate help, and says so twice.
Psalm 70:2-4 (BSB)
² May those who seek my life be ashamed and confounded; may those who wish me harm be repelled and humiliated. ³ May those who say, “Aha, aha!” retreat because of their shame. ⁴ May all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; may those who love Your salvation always say, “Let God be magnified!”
Study notes The one line that survives completely unchanged
Of everything shared between this psalm and Psalm 40’s closing verses, one specific line carries over word for word, with no variation at all.
"May those who seek my life be ashamed and confounded; may those who wish me harm be repelled and humiliated." Psalm 40:14 (BSB)
Nearly every other line in this psalm varies at least slightly from its counterpart in Psalm 40, “Be pleased” against “Make haste,” “The LORD be magnified” against “Let God be magnified.” This one plea alone was apparently important enough to David to preserve exactly, unchanged, in both versions of the prayer.
Psalm 70:5 (BSB)
⁵ But I am poor and needy; hurry to me, O God. You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay.
The psalm’s final word is, fittingly, urgency itself, “do not delay,” the same insistence the opening line already carried, repeated once more as the prayer closes.
Personal Application
- This psalm’s urgency is not softened or explained away, “hurry,” “do not delay.” Is there a current need you have been praying about calmly when what you actually feel is genuine urgency you have not let yourself express?
- David apparently valued this specific prayer enough to preserve it twice, in two different forms. Is there a prayer you keep returning to, one worth praying again and again rather than only once?
Decision of the day: Pray this psalm’s exact urgency today, “hurry, O LORD, to help me,” about one specific need, without softening the request into something more patient than you actually feel.
Pray to Close
The truth to carry from this psalm: honest urgency in prayer is not a lack of faith. Sometimes the most faithful prayer is simply, “hurry.”
Praise: for the LORD who is help and deliverer, worth calling on with real urgency.
Confess: any tendency to pray more calmly than you actually feel, out of a sense that urgency seems less faithful.
Ask: for God’s help without delay, in whatever specific need currently feels most urgent.
Worship for Today
Cry Out to Jesus · Third Day
This song’s invitation to cry out honestly in the middle of real need matches this psalm’s own unashamed urgency, a prayer that never pretends patience it does not actually feel.
Listen: