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Psalm Seventy
Psalm 70
Chapter Contents
The speedy destruction of the wicked, and the
preservation of the godly.
This psalm is almost the same as the last five verses of Psalm
40. While here we behold Jesus Christ set forth in poverty and
distress, we also see him denouncing just and fearful punishment on his Jewish,
heathen, and antichristian enemies; and pleading for the joy and happiness of
his friends, to his Father's honour. Let us apply these things to our own
troubled circumstances, and in a believing manner bring them, and the sinful
causes thereof, to our remembrance. Urgent trials should always awake fervent
prayers.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Psalms》
Psalm 70
This psalm is copied almost word for word
from the eleventh psalm, and perhaps is for that reason entitled, A psalm to
bring remembrance. For it may sometimes be of use to pray over again the
prayers we have formerly made to God on like occasions. David here prays, that
God would send help to him, shame to his enemies, and joy to his friends. To
the chief musician, a psalm of David, to bring to remembrance.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Psalms》
Exposition
Explanatory Notes and
Quaint Sayings
Hints to the Village
Preacher
TITLE. To the
Chief Musician, A Psalm of David. So far the title corresponds with Psalm
40, of which this is a copy with variations. David appears to have written the
full length Psalm, and also to have made this excerpt from it, and altered it
to suit the occasion. It is a fit pendant to Psalm 69, and a suitable preface
to Psalm 71. To bring to remembrance. This is the poor man's memorial.
David personally pleads with God that he may not be forgotten, but David's Lord
may be heard here also. Even if the Lord seems to forget us, we must not forget
him. This memorial Psalm acts as a connecting link between the two Psalms of
supplicatory expostulation, and makes up with them a precious triad of song.
EXPOSITION
(The
Reader is referred for full Exposition
and Notes to Ps 40:13-17, in "Treasury of David, "Vol.
2, pp 267-268.)
Verse
1. This is the second Psalm which is a repetition of another, the
former being Psalm 53, which was a rehearsal of Psalm 14. The present differs
from the Fortieth Psalm at the outset, for that begins with, "Be pleased,
"and this, in our version, more urgently with, Make haste; or, as in the
Hebrew, with an abrupt and broken cry, O God, to deliver me; O Lord, to help
me hasten. It is not forbidden us, in hours of dire distress, to ask for
speed on God's part in his coming to rescue us. The only other difference
between this and verse 13 of Psalm 40, is the putting of Elohim in the
beginning of the verse for Jehovah, but why this is done we know not;
perhaps, the guesses of the critics are correct, but perhaps they are not. As
we have the words of this Psalm twice in the letter, let them be doubly with us
in spirit. It is most meet that we should day by day cry to God for deliverance
and help; our frailty and our many dangers render this a perpetual necessity.
Verse
2. Here the words, "together, "and, "to destroy it,
"which occur in Psalm 40, are omitted: a man in haste uses no more words
than are actually necessary. His enemies desired to put his faith to shame, and
he eagerly entreats that they may be disappointed, and themselves covered with
confusion. It shall certainly be so; if not sooner, yet at that dread day when
the wicked shall awake to shame and everlasting contempt. Let them be ashamed
and confounded that seek after my soul: let them be turned backward, and put
to confusion, that desire my hurt: turned back and driven back are merely
the variations of the translators. When men labour to turn others back from the
right road, it is God's retaliation to drive them back from the point they are
aiming at.
Verse
3. Let them be turned back. This is a milder term than that
used in Psalm 40, where he cries, "let them be desolate." Had growing
years matured and mellowed the psalmist's spirit? To be "turned back,
"however, may come to the same thing as to be "desolate; "
disappointed malice is the nearest akin to desolation that can well be
conceived. For a reward of their shame that say, Aha, aha. They thought to
shame the godly, but it was their shame, and shall be their shame for ever. How
fond men are of taunts, and if they are meaningless ahas, more like animal
cries than human words, it matters nothing, so long as they are a vent for
scorn and sting the victim. Rest assured, the enemies of Christ and his people
shall have wages for their work; they shall be paid in their own coin; they
loved scoffing, and they shall be filled with it—yea, they shall become a
proverb and a byword for ever.
Verse
4. Anger against enemies must not make us forget our friends, for it
is better to preserve a single citizen of Zion, than to kill a thousand
enemies. Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee. All true
worshippers, though as yet in the humble ranks of seekers, shall have cause for
joy. Even though the seeking commence in darkness, it shall bring light with
it. And let such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified.
Those who have tasted divine grace, and are, therefore, wedded to it, are a
somewhat more advanced race, and these shall not only feel joy, but shall with
holy constancy and perseverance tell abroad their joy, and call upon men to
glorify God. The doxology, "Let the Lord's name be magnified, "is infinitely
more manly and ennobling than the dog's bark of "Aha, aha."
Verse
5. But I am poor and needy. Just the same plea as in the
preceding Psalm, Ps 69:29: it seems to be a favourite argument with tried
saints; evidently our poverty is our wealth, even as our weakness is our
strength. May we learn well this riddle. Make haste unto me, O God. This is
written instead of "yet the Lord thinketh upon me, "in Psalm 40: and
there is a reason for the change, since the key note of the Psalm frequently
dictates its close. Psalm 40 sings of God's thoughts, and, therefore, ends
therewith; but the peculiar note of Psalm 70 is "Make haste, "and,
therefore, so it concludes. Thou art my help and my deliverer. My help in
trouble, my deliverer out of it. O Lord, make no tarrying. Here is the name of
"Jehovah" instead of "my God." We are warranted in using
all the various names of God, for each has its own beauty and majesty, and we
must reverence each by its holy use as well as by abstaining from taking it in
vain. I have presumed to close this recapitulatory exposition with an original
hymn, suggested by the watchword of this Psalm, "MAKE HASTE."
Make
haste, O God, my soul to bless!
My help and my deliverer thou;
Make haste, for I am in deep distress,
My case is urgent; help me now.
Make haste, O God! make haste to save!
For time is short, and death is nigh;
Make haste ere yet I am in my grave,
And with the lost forever lie.
Make
haste, for I am poor and low;
And Satan mocks my prayers and tears;
O God, in mercy be not slow,
But snatch me from my horrid fears.
Make haste, O God, and hear my cries;
Then with the souls who seek thy face,
And those who thy salvation prize,
I will magnify thy matchless grace.
EXPLANATORY
NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
Verse
2. Let them be confounded; viz., among themselves, and in
their own understandings: and put to shame; viz., in the sight and
presence of men before whom they think to attain great glory, in banding
themselves against me. Thomas Wilcocks.
Verse
3. Aha, aha. In describing his human foes, our Saviour
represents them as saying to him, Aha, aha. These exclamations are
ebullitions of exulting insolence. They can escape from the lips of those only
who are at once haughty and cruel, and insensible to the delicacies and decorum
of demeanour. Doubtless, they would be the favourite expressions of the rude
rabble that accompanied the traitor in his ignoble campaign against Incarnate
Love, and of the rude aristocratic mob that held over the Apostle of Heaven the
mockery of an ecclesiastical trial, and of the larger, more excited, and more
rancorous multitude that insultingly accompanied him to the cross, and mocked
him, and wagged their heads at him, and railed upon him as he meekly, but
majestically, hung on the accursed tree. The prescient Saviour would, no doubt,
catch in his ears the distant mutter of all the violent and ruthless
exclamations with which his foes were about to rend the air; and, amid these
heartless and sneering ejaculations, he could not but feel the keen and
poisoning edge of the malevolent and hilarious cry, Aha, aha. O miracle
of mercy! He who deserved the hallelujahs of an intelligent universe, and the
special hosannas of all the children of men, had first to anticipate, and then
to endure from the mouths of the very rebels whom he came to bless and to save,
the malicious taunting of Aha, aha. James Frame.
Verse
4. Such as love thy salvation. They love it for its own sake;
they love it for the sake of him who procured it by his obedience until death;
they love it for the sake of that Holy Spirit who moved them to seek it and
accept it; and they love it for the sake of their own souls, which they cannot
but love, and which, without it, would be the most miserable outcasts in the
universe. No wonder that in the light of its intrinsic importance, and of its
intrinsic relations, they should be "such as love God's salvation."
All men are lovers as well as seekers; for all men love. Some love money more
than God's salvation; others love pleasure, even the pleasures of sin, more
than God's salvation; and others love bustle and business more than God's
salvation. But, as the stamp of the material, the temporal and the evanescent,
is on all these earthly objects of men's love, the friends of Jesus elevate
above them all, as the worthier object of their regard and embrace, the
salvation of God. James Frame.
Verse
4. Let God be magnified. Not only The Lord be magnified,
but also alway. Behold, when thou wast straying, and wast turned away
from him; he recalled thee: Be the Lord magnified. Behold, he hath
inspired thee with confession of sins; thou hast confessed, he hath given
pardon: Be the Lord magnified.... Now, thou hast begun to advance, thou
hast been justified, thou hast arrived at a sort of excellence of virtue; is it
not a seemly thing that thou also sometime be magnified? No! Let them
say, Be the Lord alway magnified. A sinner thou art, to be magnified in
order that he may call; you confess, be he magnified in order that he may
forgive: now thou livest justly, be he magnified in order that he may direct;
you persevere even unto the end, be he magnified in order that he may glorify. Be
the Lord, then, alway magnified. Let just men say this, let them say
this that seek him. Whosoever doth not say this, doth not seek him... Be the
Lord magnified. But, wilt thou thyself never be great? wilt thou be
nowhere? In him was something, in me nothing; but if in him is whatsoever I am,
be he magnified, not I. But, what of thee? But I am poor and needy:
he is rich, he abounding, he needing nothing. Behold my light, behold whence I
am illumined, for I cry, "Thou shalt illumine my candle, O Lord; my God,
thou shalt illumine my darkness. The Lord doth loose men fettered, the Lord
raiseth up men crushed, the Lord maketh wise the blind men, the Lord keepeth
the proselytes." Ps 18:28 146:7. What, then, of thee? But I am needy
and poor. I am like an orphan, my soul is like a widow destitute and
desolate; help I seek, alway mine infirmity I confess. But I am poor and
needy. There have been forgiven me my sins, now I have begun to follow the
commandments of God; still, however, I am needy and poor. Why still needy and
poor? Because I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my
mind. Ro 7:23. Why needy and poor? Because, "Blessed are they that hunger
and thirst after righteousness." Mt 5:6. Still I hunger, still I thirst. Augustine.
Verse
5. But I am poor and needy. He had been rich, but for our
sake he had become poor, that we, through his poverty, might be rich. Out of
the fulness of his grace he had voluntarily entered, for our sakes, into a
state in which he had experience, and most bitter experience, of the want of
the means of enjoyment... But the word here rendered poor is often
elsewhere, translated afflicted; in various ways he was afflicted. He was
despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and the acquaintance of grief.
He was reproached, and "reproach broke his heart." James Frame.
Verse
5. I am poor and needy. By this I hold to be meant the
chastisements, and fiery trials that come from God the Father; the
temptations and bitter assaults of that foul and fell fiend, Satan; the
persecutions and vexations inflicted by the hands of unreasonable and wicked
men; and (but in this following Christ must be exempted) the inward
corruptions, disordered motions, unsettled affections, and the original
pollutions brought from the mother's womb; with the soul and body's inaptness
and unableness with cheerfulness and constancy to run the direct and just paths
of God's commandments. Many of these made the Head, all of these (and more,
too) the members, poor and needy. John Barlow. 1618.
Verse
5. O Lord, make no tarrying. His prayer for himself, like his
prayer for his foes and for his friends, was answered. The Lord made no
tarrying. Ere four and twenty hours had rolled past, his rescued spirit was in
Paradise, and the crucified thief was with him. O, what a change! The morning
saw him condemned at the bar of an earthly tribunal, sentenced to death, and
nailed to the bitter tree; before the evening shadowed the hill of Calvary, he
was nestling in the bosom of God, and had become the great centre of attraction
and of admiration to all the holy intelligences of the universe. The morning
saw him led out through the gate of the Jerusalem below, surrounded by a ribald
crowd, whose hootings rung in his ear; but ere the night fell, he had passed
through the gate of the Jerusalem above, and his tread was upon the streets of
gold, and angel anthems rose high through the dome of heaven, and joy filled
the heart of God. James Frame.
Verse
5. (third clause). Helper, in all good works; Deliverer,
from all evil ones. Make no long tarrying: it is the cry of the
individual sinner. Dionysius the Carthusian (1471) quoted in Neale and
Littledale's Commentary.
HINTS TO THE
VILLAGE PREACHER
Verse
1.
1.
Occasion of his prayer.
(a)
Affliction.
(b) Helplessness.
2.
Subject of his prayer. Deliverance, help.
3.
Importunity of his prayer. The time of deliverance may be an answer to prayer,
as well as deliverance itself.
Verse
1.
1.
Times when such urgent prayer is allowable, praiseworthy, or faulty.
2.
Reasons for expecting a speedy reply.
3.
Consolations if delay should occur.
Verse
2.
1.
There are those who seek our soul's hurt.
2. We must oppose them, not dally or yield.
3. Our best weapon is prayer to God.
4. Their defeat is here described.
Verse
3.
1.
Who are these who cry "shame"?
2. What master do they serve?
3. What shall their wages be?
Verse
4. Joy for seekers, and employment for finders.
Verse
4. (last clause).
1.
The character.
2. The saying.
3. The wish.
Verse
5.
1.
Who needs help?
2. Who renders help?
3. What it comes to: "deliver."
4. What prayer it suggests.
Verse
5.
1.
Confession! I am poor and needy.
2. Profession: Thou art my help, etc.
3. Supplication: Make haste; Make no tarrying.
── C.H. Spurgeon《The Treasury of David》