This Psalm follows Psa. 69 in this, that He makes the difference (consequence of that Psalm) between the wicked of Psa. 69 and those who sought Jehovah—these are to rejoice though He, as regards the earth, rested in sorrow on to the end. The answer is in heaven, or at the end. Then in Psa. 71 as regards Israel, if He remained poor and needy, Israel, come into its old age and sorrow, is to be spared and exalted, and in verses 19, 20, there is exaltation and blessing. Yet even the language of the Psalm shows that Christ fully entered into it in Spirit. But though there is quite reason not to exclude the writer of the Psalm, yet I feel more strongly than ever, in reading this Psalm, how Christ entered into the sorrows of Israel as manifested by His speaking in the Psalms.
Though the object of this Psalm is the same, yet its character is different; there is more confidence, I say not more faith—more appealing to God on the certitude of His favor; its word also is (for it is brought more to a crisis) “Make no long tarrying." Also the humiliation of Christ, the way of His joy, is affectingly brought forward, "Let others," saith He, "rejoice"; as for me, I am content, to be humbled, to do Thy will for Thy sake; I am poor and needy, but content to be in humiliation, but my joy is in this, making others to enjoy.
It seems to present Christ and the poor as the object of deliverance, not of suffering—a result, in fact, of His faithfulness in the other; He poor, the occasion to secure by intercession the gladness of those that trust in deliverance, but, in His poverty, He pleads that they, at least, may be glad. It is in this spirit Paul says, as to the Church, “So death worketh in us, but life in you"; only there in combat, here in intercession.