Psalms 70
Psalms 70 — Commentary and Meaning
The short answer
Psalm 70 is one of the shortest prayers in the Psalter — just five verses, and every one of them is in a hurry. It opens with a plea to "deliver me" and to "come quickly," and it closes the same way: "don't delay." Readers who grew up with the Psalm 70 KJV wording will remember the famous line "Make haste, O God." Whatever the translation, the effect is the same. This is not a leisurely meditation. It is the prayer of someone in trouble right now.
In between those urgent bookends, the psalmist asks God to turn back the people who seek his harm — that they would be ashamed and confounded — and asks that all who seek God would "rejoice and be glad." Then comes the confession at the heart of the psalm: "I am poor and needy." The one praying has nothing to bargain with, no leverage, only need. God is the helper and deliverer; there is no backup plan.
One of the psalm's puzzles is that its words also appear, in slightly different form, in Psalm 40:13–17. The Psalter keeps both versions, and the repetition is part of the message: some prayers have to be prayed more than once. Psalm 70 also sits between two much longer laments, and unlike its neighbors it never quite arrives at resolution. It simply cries out and waits.
That unfinished quality is what makes Psalm 70 so honest. Scripture makes room for the moment when the answer has not yet come — when all a person can say is "hurry," and then say it again. The psalm gives words to desperation without pretending the story is already over, and it insists that waiting on God is itself a form of faith.
What scholars say
Beth Tanner takes up the puzzles of Psalm 70 — its unusual brevity and its overlap with Psalm 40 — and shows how its placement between two long laments turns it into a lesson in waiting on God. Kathleen Long Bostrom then asks how we can pray this psalm rightly, locating its truest voice not in demands for quick deliverance but in union with Christ's own suffering and victory.
“Indeed, even the ancient copyists may have been surprised by the psalm's length and form because several Hebrew manuscripts combine Psalm 70 and 71 into one longer psalm. But the puzzle of this text does not end here. The words of Psalm 70 appear in a slightly altered form as part of Psalm 40 (40:13–17). It is impossible to determine which of the two pieces is the original, but since the final form of the psalter preserves both, the more important issue is to look at this psalm as a complete piece. In its place here, it adds a sense of urgency, standing between two lengthy laments that each have concluding vows of praise. It indicates that on occasion, the resolution of a problem is not clearly apparent: one must indeed wait upon the Lord.”
“Yet God has not given us Psalm 70 so that we can adopt it hastily and force deliverance from our own trials. We have it to remember the trials and the vindication of the One broken for us. We pray Psalm 70 rightly as participants in Christ’s sacrificial body and blood. When our own humiliations and sufferings find their place in his atoning death, when we are willing to acknowledge that we might be among the very enemies we are praying against, when we seek him in his beatific poverty and are glad in his great victory, and when our most urgent request is that he come quickly to judge the living and the dead, then we are its true psalmists.”
What it means for you
If you have ever prayed the same desperate prayer twice — or two hundred times — Psalm 70 is already your psalm. It gives you permission to be brief, blunt, and needy before God, and it refuses to shame you for the fact that relief has not arrived. But it also resists being used as a quick lever to force the outcome we want. Praying "come quickly" honestly means admitting we are "poor and needy," that we may even share some blame in the conflicts we pray about, and that the deepest answer to this prayer is God himself drawing near — not merely our circumstances improving on schedule.
Psalms 70 in context
Psalm 70 sits in Book Two of the Psalter, wedged between two long laments: Psalm 69, an extended cry of drowning sorrow, and Psalm 71, a prayer for God's presence in old age. The chapter is so short that some ancient Hebrew manuscripts joined Psalms 70 and 71 into a single psalm. Its words also double Psalm 40:13–17, where the same plea appears in slightly altered form. Placed here, this brief, breathless prayer punctuates its longer neighbors — a reminder that not every lament reaches resolution before the praying is done.