Biblion Bible Commentary
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Make Haste to Help Me
Psalms 70:1-5
1 For the Chief Musician. By David. A reminder. Hurry, God, to deliver me. Come quickly to help me, Yahweh. · WEB
Five verses, four of them borrowed from another psalm, and the one thing added is urgency.
Hurry, God, to deliver me. Come quickly to help me, Yahweh Psalms 70:1.
This psalm is the closing section of the fortieth Psalms 40:13–17, lifted out and given a heading of its own. The collection contains it twice, as it contains the fourteenth psalm twice, and the duplication is again evidence of a working hymnbook rather than a tidy edition.
What changes between the two versions is small and consistent, and it is worth noticing because it shows an editor at work on a real need. The longer psalm began with I waited patiently and took twelve verses to reach the crisis. This one has no patience in it at all. It opens on the emergency, and both the first and last verses carry the word for hurry.
Let them be turned because of their shame who say, "Aha! Aha!" Psalms 70:3.
The taunt is the same one quoted in the thirty-fifth psalm. It is not an argument — just the noise people make when something they wanted to see happen has happened to someone else.
Let all those who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. Let those who love your salvation continually say, "Let God be exalted!" Psalms 70:4.
Half of this short psalm is spent asking for other people's joy. A man in enough trouble to write the rest of it takes two of five verses to pray for everyone who is not in trouble.
But I am poor and needy Psalms 70:5.
The self-description is the whole basis of the appeal. He offers no merit, no argument, and no record — only a condition, and it is the one this collection consistently says God attends to.
Come to me quickly, God. You are my help and my deliverer. Yahweh, don't delay Psalms 70:5.
The psalm ends where it started, and the last word is a request about timing. Nothing has been resolved inside it. It is a prayer for the interval before an answer, which is the situation most prayers are actually made in, and the collection thought it worth keeping twice.
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