The Voice Is Older, but the Witness Is Unfinished

Psalm 71 has no heading at all, rare in this part of the Psalter, and some Hebrew manuscripts run it on from Psalm 70 as one prayer. Its first three verses repeat 31:1–3 almost word for word, the first of many borrowed lines in a psalm that seems assembled from a lifetime of remembered prayers.

“Deliver” and “cause me to escape” are two different verbs: natsal, to snatch away, and palat, to let slip free, as a bird slips out of a snare. “Incline thine ear” pictures God bending down, as a listener stoops toward a voice too faint to carry.

Where 31:2 has “strong rock”, tsur ma’oz, this reads tsur ma’on, “rock of dwelling”, a difference of one Hebrew letter that turns a fortress into a place to live. “Thou hast given commandment to save me” pictures God issuing orders for a rescue, as a king sends out his troops.

“Cruel man” is chomets, a rare word whose root means to be sour or leavened, the root of the vinegar of 69:21: the oppressor is a man gone sour. “Unrighteous” is me’avvel, one who twists what is straight. Both are under “the hand”, the grip of power the speaker wants to be pulled from.

“Hope” is tiqvah, which also means a cord, the word for the scarlet line Rahab tied in her window (Joshua 2:18), something to hold on to. “Trust from my youth” reaches back to the start of the speaker’s life, and the next verse goes back further still.

“Holden up” is samakh, to lean one’s weight on, the verb for a worshipper laying his hand on a sacrifice (Leviticus 1:4); from the womb the speaker has leaned on God. “Took me out” renders gozi, found only here, perhaps “the one who cut me free”, as a midwife does; 22:9 says the same with a different verb.

“Wonder” is mopheth, a portent, the word for the signs Moses worked in Egypt (Exodus 7:3), something that carries a message. Isaiah says he and his children are “for signs and for wonders in Israel” (Isaiah 8:18); the aged speaker has become a public sign, and people read it in opposite ways.

“Honour” is tiph’arah, beauty or splendour, the word for the garments made for Aaron “for glory and for beauty” (Exodus 28:2). “All the day” comes three times in the psalm, here, in verse 15 and in the closing verse, marking praise as a day-long occupation.

“Cast me not off” is shalakh, to throw away, the verb of 51:11, “Cast me not away from thy presence”. Leviticus 27:3–7 put a number on what age did to a man’s standing: a vow of a man between twenty and sixty was valued at fifty shekels, of a man over sixty at fifteen.

“They that lay wait for my soul” is literally “the watchers of my soul”, shomrim, the word used for guards, turned here to men watching for their chance. “Take counsel together” is ya’ats, to plot as a council, the verb of 62:4, “They only consult to cast him down from his excellency”.

“Forsaken” is azav, the verb of 22:1, “why hast thou forsaken me?” Here the enemies say it, drawing the conclusion the sufferer of Psalm 22 feared. “Persecute” is radaph, to chase, the verb of a pursuit on foot in which the quarry is expected to tire first.

Both halves are borrowed: “be not far from me” is the plea of 22:11 and 22:19, and “make haste for my help” is 38:22 and the opening of Psalm 70. The prayers of earlier psalms are being spoken again by an older mouth.

“Consumed” is kalah, to come to an end, as a thing is used up. The second half is close to 109:29, “let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle”: shame worn as a garment that covers the whole body.

“More and more” is literally “I will add to all thy praise”: the old man proposes to increase the total, not to repeat it. “Hope” here is yachal, to wait with expectation, a different word from the tiqvah of verse 5, and “But I” marks the turn from what the enemies say to what he will do.

“The numbers thereof” is sephorot, a form found only here, from the root that means both counting and telling: he means to recount all day what he cannot count. Righteousness and salvation stand as a pair throughout the psalm, God’s rightness showing itself as rescue.

“I will go in the strength” can be read “I will come with the mighty deeds of the Lord GOD”, a worshipper entering the sanctuary carrying his list of what God has done. “Make mention” is hizkir, the verb of Psalm 70’s heading, to bring to remembrance. “Thine only” is Tudor English for thine alone.

“Hitherto” is ad hennah, up to here, the phrase Samuel set on the stone Ebenezer, “Hitherto hath the LORD helped us” (1 Samuel 7:12). “Taught” is lamad, the verb of Deuteronomy’s instruction, and the speaker counts himself God’s pupil since boyhood.

“Thy strength” here is zero’akha, literally “thy arm”, the arm that brought Israel out of Egypt “by a stretched out arm” (Deuteronomy 5:15). An old man whose own arms are failing asks to live long enough to tell of God’s. “Grayheaded” is sevah, grey hair, which Proverbs 16:31 calls “a crown of glory”.

“Very high” is literally “up to the heights”, ad marom, reaching the sky. “Who is like unto thee!” is mi khamokha, the cry of the Song of the Sea, “Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods?” (Exodus 15:11), and the same question makes up the name Michael, “Who is like God?”

The written Hebrew text has “us” throughout the verse, “shewed us... quicken us”, while the marginal reading of the Masoretes, followed by the King James, has “me”: one man’s rescue shades into the people’s. “Depths” is tehomot, the plural of tehom, the deep of Genesis 1:2. “Quicken” is the old English for give life.

“Greatness” is gedullah, honour and standing, the “dignity” that Ahasuerus asks about for Mordecai in Esther 6:3; the old man expects his standing restored in public. “On every side” renders a verb of turning or surrounding: comfort closes round him where the enemies had.

The psaltery is the nevel and the harp the kinnor, the two stringed instruments of the temple musicians, the kinnor being the lyre David played for Saul. “Holy One of Israel” is Isaiah’s favourite title for God, used about twenty-five times there but only three times in the Psalms, here, in 78:41 and in 89:18.

“Greatly rejoice” is ranan, to give a ringing shout, in an intensive form. “Redeemed” is padah, ransomed, the verb for buying back a firstborn in Exodus 13:13; the soul that the enemies hunted in verses 10 and 13 is the soul God has paid for.

“Talk” is hagah, the murmured recitation of 1:2, here spoken aloud all day long. The verbs of the last line are Hebrew perfects, “they have been confounded”, the speaker describing the enemies’ shame as done, though he asked for it only in verse 13.