Some prayers are long and carefully shaped. Others are what a child shouts across the house — 'Amma, come quickly!' — with no time for explanation, only urgency and trust that someone will come. Psalm 70 is the second kind. It is only five verses long, it opens and closes with a plea for God to hurry, and almost every line is a request. It is also a reused prayer: nearly word for word, it repeats the closing verses of Psalm 40, lifted out and set on its own as a short cry anyone could pray in a hurry.
Where it sits in the story: In Act 3 the Psalter is becoming Israel's shared prayer book, and Psalm 70 shows how its prayers were used and reused. A passage from one psalm is set apart as a stand-alone prayer, its heading marking it 'for remembrance' or 'for the memorial offering'. Placed with the other psalms of David near the end of his life, it bridges the long lament of Psalm 69 and the old man's prayer of Psalm 71.
What this chapter is doing: To give a short, portable prayer for moments of acute danger — asking God to act quickly against those who threaten, and to bring joy to all who look to him.
- 70:1 — The opening is almost breathless: God, rescue me; LORD, hurry to help me. The psalm begins in the middle of the crisis.
- 70:2–3 — He asks that those who seek his life be ashamed and turned back, and that those who gloat 'Aha, aha!' over his trouble be stopped by their own disgrace.
- 70:4 — The focus widens to everyone who seeks God: may they rejoice and keep saying, 'God is great!' The prayer is not only for himself.
- 70:5 — The close returns to his need: I am poor and needy; God, hurry to me. You are my help and my deliverer — do not delay.
Key verse: Psalm 70:5 · So what: Not every prayer needs to be eloquent. Psalm 70 legitimises the short, desperate cry that many people pray in hospital corridors, after a bad phone call or late at night. It also shows that borrowing someone else's words is not second-best: an older prayer, reused, can say exactly what a frightened person cannot find words for.