Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents

70:4-5 May Those Who Seek You Rejoice at My Deliverance. This stanza echoes the first stanza in several ways. First, who seek you (v. 4) contrasts with "who seek my life" (v. 2): clearly these are two contrasting groups of people. Then hasten (v. 5) echoes "make haste" (v. 1), while help and deliverer (v. 5) look back to "deliver" and "help" (v. 1), in reverse order (the Hb. uses two synonyms for deliver). In this stanza each person in the singing congregation identifies himself with the faithful in Israel (i.e., those who seek God and love his salvation) and prays that the whole company of the faithful might rejoice . . . in God when they see the rescue of the person in trouble. The person in trouble is poor and needy, and thus socially powerless; therefore his deliverance will be striking evidence that God keeps his promises.