Devotional
Short Note to Psalm 70: If you are going to say that David wrote Psalm 70, you
have to say he also wrote Psalm 40 because there is a doublet here.
70:2a O God that You deliver me 40:14a
BE PLEASED O LORD that You deliver me
70:2b O Lord, to help me, make haste 40:14b
O Lord, to help me, make haste
70:3a Let them be ashamed and abased 40:15a
Let them be ashamed and abased together
70:3b Those that seek my soul 40:15b
Those that seek my soul TO SWEEP IT AWAY
70:3c Let them be turned backward and 40:15c
Let them be turned backward and
brought to confusion brought to confusion
70:3d Those that delight my hurt 40:15d Those that delight my hurt
70:4a Let them be turned upon bowing 40:16a
Let them be SET UP upon bowing
in their shame in their shame
70:4b The ones saying: Aha! Aha! 40:16b
The ones saying: Aha! Aha!
70:5a All those that seek You will rejoice 40:17a All those that seek You will
rejoice
and be glad in You and be glad in You
70:5b And they will say continually: 40:17b
And they will say continually:
“Let God be magnified” “Let the LORD be magnified”
70:5c the ones that love Your salvation 40:17c the ones that love Your salvation
70:6a And I, I am poor and needy 40:18a
And I, I am poor and needy
70:6b O God make haste to me 40:18b
The LORD WILL RECKON to me
40:18+ YOU ARE MY HELP AND MY DELIVERER
70:6c The Lord will not delay 40:18c
O my GOD do not delay
It
rejoiced the Holy Spirit to allow in the canon the poem of David but not only
that, to repeat it once more. As it was with important officials or kings in
those days, they had a scribe who wrote down every word he uttered carefully.
So what we can conclude from the differences in this doublet, is that David
used the same Psalm in another occasion again and the scribe wrote it again
down. Since David is the author when it was written first, he is entitled and
authorized by the Spirit to “panelbeat” his own work. Some people in the Julius
Wellhausen tradition of 1888 will be quick to say that a “God-lover” wrote
Psalm 70 but a “Lord-lover” wrote Psalm 40. Not so at all. In 70:6c and 40:18c
the names are reversed so that the Poet in 70 used Lord and the Poet in 40 used
God. Psalm 40 is a more elaborated version of Psalm 70 and the natural
understanding in typical Hegelian evolutionary thinking to suggest: the shorter
first and the longer later. But it is not always the case. Imagine a
grandfather pulling his long poem (Psalm 40) closer to him and cite only parts
of it since he is out of breath. Psalm 70 will then be shorter because Psalm 40
was written when he was young and Psalm 70 when he was older. Psalm 40
elaborated slightly from what is given in Psalm 70. Some translators want to
make the whole Psalm a prayer-request but that is not possible. 70:5a-b is a
statement. He is not asking that God change His character and be kind to those
who seek Him. He knows that God will be kind to those who seek Him because God
is kind and not other. The prayer-request in modern translations here do
injustice to the character of God.
The
meaning of 70:4a needs again investigation since Arabic cannot be a source for
meaning of the word agab that is used in the original here. When one sees that
Hebrew Dictionaries are using Ar. = Arabic for the meaning of an Old Testament
word and so far back as Moses, or David, in fact the whole Old Testament
period, the dictionary can be put back on the shelve. It is useless. David did
not speak Arabic at all. In the Metternich Stele (see Golénischeff 1877) that
is in New York in the Metropolitan Museum of Art dating also too late to
380-342 BCE, this magical-medical text used the word ageb at 179 meaning “to
weep, to cry out”. An older and long-known meaning in Egyptian and until Coptic
Christianity is the word ἰgbb which means “to bow, to be subdued”. This is a
better option than the Arabic word “wonder, admired, beloved” [sensuous love]. Translate
rather “Let them be turned upon bowing in their shame”. The first thing the
victims had to do after a war is to bow to the new victor in shame.
There is
an addition in 40:b and 40:18+ where David is confident that the Lord will
reckon to him His righteousness on David’s behalf and David will be helped and
delivered. In 40:14b there is a ringing of certainty that is still a slight
yearning in 70:2a. The Lord should be pleased that He is David’s deliverer in
40:14b but in 70:2a David prays for something still in need and want. 40:18b
and 40:18+ are written in the mood of confidence so that one may say on the
basis of the content that maybe Psalm 70 was earlier before the Lord provided
what he wished for and Psalm 40:14-18 is a replay of these words after he
experienced the help of the Lord.