Psalms 70

Psalms 70:1-5

Contrasted Consequences. To the chief musician: [a psalm] of David to bring to remembrance. The seventieth psalm; as has been said, is but (with slight modifications) the last five verses of the fortieth psalm, the burnt-offering psalm; here put by themselves as an appendix to the trespass-offering. Is not this repetition explanatory of what is in the title: “to bring to remembrance”? Assuredly David’s heart was not so poor in praise as to be in any need of repeating himself after this manner, except “remembrance” could be in this manner better secured. And assuredly it is not a “fragment accidentally detached,” as Cheyne views it, and, of course, accidentally inserted! It is a wonder that such blunders, as this would indicate them to be, should after all give the critics so much labor. The numerical structure shows that it is as perfectly in place, as the title shows the one who placed it here to have known what he was doing. It is so completely in place that it can be transferred here from the place it fills in the fortieth, with its numbers and their indications all unchanged; and so I have transferred it. Its following the trespass-offering here, as there the burnt-offering, argues something else than chance in such an arrangement. Leave it out of this place, and the two psalms following it are displaced also, and it would be difficult to adjust them satisfactorily to their altered relations. The psalm is for a remembrance; and therefore the repetition is of much more importance than the differences, which are but slight. The Cross is so central in human history, its consequences are so all-embracing and enduring, that such a reminder as this, appended to each form in which it comes before us, is in no wise strange or to be wondered at. And the strangeness of the manner only calls attention to it the more. Even the apparent clumsiness, as men would account it, -the first word omitted, as if the leaf had been hastily torn out, -to one who believes in inspiration, fixes the eye upon it. The unbeliever scoffs, as he did at the Cross itself; faith inquires, and not only finds answer, but learns to recognize God in what seems most human, -God that was in Christ, most gracious, where in humblest form. The psalm is so simple as scarcely to need an exposition; and in this also it is suited to its work. It only needs to be put in connection with the psalm it follows. The Lord is then realized to be the Speaker, as is quite clear in the fortieth psalm. The contrary lot of those who are His enemies, and those who love His salvation, is then apparent.