Ps. 70 (the last made first)

Hasten / O God / to rescue me

O Yhwh / for my help / hurry! 

Urgency forms the bookends of this psalm; its beginning and end. The last line concludes, “O Yhwh, do not delay.” It is not even a call for God to “hear” or “answer”. Rather, it is that God-Yhwh hasten to help. Time is short. Whatever window is closing, it is about to be shut completely. It is due to this that we can surmise that the psalmist is already in the midst of an extreme persecution. War is not on the verge of outbreak. It is, rather, on the verge of being over with the psalmist being trampled underfoot. Further, the psalmist is not apparently alone in his plight. We read in verse 4 of “those who seek you” and of “those who love your saving help”. It would appear, then, that this psalmist is likely a representative of this group; perhaps he is the king, or, perhaps he is some other leader. This war that is on the verge of being lost is not personal, but a communal battle. These are camps battling each other. 

May those / who seek my life 

be brought / to shame and disgrace

may those who are pleased / by my misfortune

be turned back / and humiliated

may they / turn back in retreat / because of their shame

those who say / “Aha! Aha!” 

Here is the enemy. And the signature of their deeds bears three marks: 1) seek the psalmist’s life; 2) pleased by his misfortune; and 3) say “Aha! Aha!” (they gloat). Importantly, none of these actions reveal what the enemies’ goal is other than the psalmist’s destruction. It seems that all they are seeking is his death and removal. There is no other good mentioned (for example, his wealth, his kingdom, etc…). All they want is (his) death. The psalmist, himself (and his group), is their war. What then does the psalmist represent that has become to them such an object of hate that all they seek is his removal? We may come to find an answer to this later. Now, we turn to the psalmist’s answer to the wicked, and it is entirely focused on public recognition of their failure: shame, disgrace, and humiliation. The psalmist wants their “plans to fail”, for them to ‘retreat’ but, more importantly, he wants their defeat to result in their bearing of the public recognition of their failure. God’s covenantal power and truth years for public recognition—for publicity. And, in that revelation, which is an act of war, defeat is, necessarily, shame, humiliation and disgrace. This is truth-battle as not privatized but public. If it was privatized he would pray for ‘guilt’ (something the psalmists almost never speak of); if it is public-communal he prays for ‘shame’. The more catholic the truth-battle is understood as seeking the more this element of publicity must move to center.

May all those / who seek you / be glad / and rejoice in you

and may those / who love your saving help / say continually, “God is great!” 

These lines are expertly crafted in how this group’s redemption counter-points the wicked. First, the wicked “seek my life”. This group, “seek you”. Second, the wicked were “pleased by my misfortune”. This group, “loves your saving help”. Finally, the wicked said in gloat, “Aha! Aha!”. This group says continuously, “God is great!”. There are at least two layers of importance to this. On one level, this begins to frame an answer as to the manner in which the wicked were presented as solely focused on the psalmist’s destruction. What we see here is that the psalmist is showing how, unlike the group at odds with him, he and his followers are focused entirely on God, his ‘saving works’ and of giving praise. This is not only a sharp rebuke. It functions to give warrant to God’s ‘hurrying’. The psalmist and his group are the righteous. On another level, in contrast to the public humiliation of the wicked, we see here ‘rejoicing’ and saying continually ‘God is great’. In other words, the public acclimation of the righteous is in liturgy and praise to God. As we have stressed before, if this promise of continuous praise is the ‘enticement’ to God’s hurrying, then the humiliation and shame of the wicked are secondary, a necessary consequence to this ultimate goal of public praise. God will be acknowledged and praised in the open. (We can even say this: Hell is the realm of shame and humiliation necessitated by the public character of God’s liturgy and praise. It is the residue of human freedom and rebellion against this publicity of God’s glory.) 

I am poor / and needy
O God / hasten to me!
You are my help / and my deliverer,
O Yhwh / do not delay. 

The psalmist’s poverty and neediness are those situations he is asking God to deliver him from. Currently, he suffers from the embarrassment of misfortune (vs. 2) and the gloating of those opposed to him (vs. 3). The goal of this deliverance, though, is not simply being put into well-being, but being filled so as to “say continually, “God is great!”” (vs. 4). This is the act by which the ‘last will be first, and the first last’.