Today’s Passage: Psalm 70
Make haste. Hurry. Do not delay. The whole psalm is only five verses long, and it never warms up. It begins at full speed and it ends there, still running. Even the heading belongs to the prayer: of David, written to bring remembrance. What David asks is that God would shame the men who are hunting him, and it is worth noticing that he never reaches out to take that shame into his own hands. He leaves it with God.
As you read, hold this: Hurry, O LORD, to help me.
Context To bring remembrance
The same plea already sits at the end of Psalm 40, and the book has kept it twice. We need not settle here which one came first. Today the prayer stands on its own, urgent and short and remembered.
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!
Make haste, and then chush, pronounced khoosh. Strong's H2363, to hurry, make haste. The word opens the psalm and closes it again at the very end, so that the whole prayer is held inside it. Not help later, but help now. The frame is itself the prayer. . Two names for God, and a single request laid between them: help me, and help me now.
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!”
May they be ashamed, David prays, and may they retreat. The mockers are the ones who say, “Aha, aha!” as though the victory were already theirs. Learn these lines by heart, because even here, even while he hands his enemies over, David does not take the hunt into his own hands. He gives it to God.
Study notes The line kept twice
Psalm 40 carries this same plea almost whole, and one line of it is repeated here word for word.
"May those who seek my life be ashamed and confounded; may those who wish me harm be repelled and humiliated." Psalm 40:14 (BSB)
So teach the line, but do not baptize revenge with it, and do not sand it down into a passing mood either. David hands the shame over to God and leaves it there. Then comes the other half of the prayer, turned the opposite direction: may those who seek You rejoice, and let God be magnified.
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.
I am poor and needy, he says, and there is the reason for all the haste. The urgency does not rise because he has grown strong; it rises because he has not. You are my help and my deliverer, he prays, so do not delay. The last word of the psalm is the first word all over again.
Hurry, O LORD, to help me.