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.