Psalms 70:2-3: “Let those be ashamed and humiliated who seek my life. Let those be turned back and dishonored who delight in my hurt.  Let those be turned back  because of their shame who say, aha, aha.”

Have you ever said aha, aha to someone?  It was a common expression when I was teaching middle school. When I would find some thirteen year old dead to rights in some offense and I would say “aha aha.”  According to Psalms 70:2-3 those are not nice words to say.  Perhaps aha aha means something a little different than we would say today.

Not the words “Let those be ashamed and humiliated who seek my life.” There are two words in Hebrew that are often rendered as ashamed which are easily confused. bavash and yavash. Yavash means to dry up and be disgraced.  Bavash means to be confused or perplexed. The vowel pointings would indicate that the root word is bavash. Hence David is asking that his enemies be confused rather than disgraced.  He is also asking that they be humiliated.  That word is chaphar which means to disgrace and confound but also could mean to dig and search, or investigate.  If we follow the idea of confusion it is likely that David is asking that those who are investigating ways to seek (bikesh) or demand his life (nephesh) would be confused in their investigation or in their search for ways to demand his life.  The word that is rendered life in English is really the word nephesh which means soul.  It means breath, which could mean those who seek his life, but nephesh also means ones soul or mind.   It is also possible David is referring to those who are seeking to torment him emotionally.

I think most of us, especially if you are a pastor can really relate to that. You have had people who for whatever reason are anger, jealousy, misunderstanding and are bent on making your life miserable.  You can’t sneeze without them commenting on it, discussing its merits and criticizing its style. As a king it would not surprise me that these are the people David’s referring to although also as a king there were those who were seeking to take his life. It may be both and to those David is praying that their arguments or threats will become confused.

To those who delight (chapes – take pleasure in, willfully) in his hurt (ra’a’ brokenness, sorrow) he prays that they be turned back and dishonored.  There are those who will torment you to tears and when they finally break you they will stand back and laugh and take pleasure in your misery.  David’s plea for such people is that they be turned back. That is a curious expression because he uses the words sug ‘achar which means to slide backward in the sense of returning to your original position.  It is almost as if those who are tormenting him are former trusted friends and associates and his desire is not that they be punished but they return to the time when they looked favorably upon him.   Perhaps as a pastor or business man you had a deacon or a business associate that you used to get along so well and share the things of God together. Then for whatever reason that person just seemed to turn against you.  Is your desire to get back at them or it is like David’s just to see a return to those days when you were friends.   David wants them to turn back and be dishonored or shamed.  The word for shamed is kalem which means to regret, be disappointed, in simple words – to be ashamed of themselves.

Finally to those who say aha, aha.  This is a difficult one to understand  as the root word is ’achach.  It literally means a warming place, a hot room.  It is an idiomatic expression equivalent to what we would say: “Go boil in oil.”  or “Go bake in the sun.”  More to the point : “Go to H—.”  Ever have anyone say that to you?  David apparently did and to those he prays that they would be “turned back because of their shame.”   Here the word for turn back is a contraction of two words, upon circumvention. It basically means to hold back, literally grab the heel. So David’s plea to those who take pleasure in his sorrow is that they will go back to the time when they were at peace with him and hold back their scorn because of their shame. This word rendered as  shame here is shana which really has little to do with shame.  It means to repeat or go back or change, or return to a former understanding.  In other words David is praying that those who say such a thing against him will return to their original feelings and understanding about him.

As an orthodox rabbi once told me: “You Christians do not understand the heart of David, so you interpret his Psalms all wrong.”  Perhaps he is right.  When a friend betrays us and stabs us in the back we expect David to say what we would say, “God, go get ’em.”  However, if we understand David’s heart, what we may hear from this passage is “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”   David would add, “Please restore our old friendship to the place it once was.”  David’s heart was filled with love and forgiveness. It is with that understanding that we must interpret the Psalms that he wrote.