Psalm 69 · a question people ask
"I have to restore what I didn’t take away" (69:4). What does that mean?
The psalm doesn't say what it was, or who required it. It says it in the same verse as "Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head. Those who want to cut me off, being my enemies wrongfully, are mighty" (69:4). In Hebrew take away is gazal, which Brown-Driver-Briggs gives as "tear away, seize, rob", and restore is a form of shuv, which it gives as "turn back, return". The law has the same two verbs for someone who has robbed: "he shall restore that which he took by robbery" (Leviticus 6:4). The psalmist says he has to restore what he didn't take. That is as far as the verse goes, and these notes don't supply an occasion for it. In John, Jesus gives "They hated me without a cause" (John 15:25) as written "in their law" (John 15:25), words close to this verse's "Those who hate me without a cause" (69:4) and to Psalm 35:19; the chapter on Psalm 35 sets the two psalms side by side.
The verses
“Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head. Those who want to cut me off, being my enemies wrongfully, are mighty. I have to restore what I didn’t take away.”
“then it shall be, if he has sinned, and is guilty, he shall restore that which he took by robbery, or the thing which he has gotten by oppression, or the deposit which was committed to him, or the lost thing which he found,”
“But this happened so that the word may be fulfilled which was written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’”
“Don’t let those who are my enemies wrongfully rejoice over me; neither let those who hate me without a cause wink their eyes.”