The Song of the King's Salvation

Psalm 20 opens in the middle of a scene: a king stands before his people, and the crowd is calling out blessings at their leader. “May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble!” “May the name of the God of Jacob protect you!” Evidently, the kingdom is under threat and preparing for battle, because they use the military language of trouble, banners, and later chariots and horses. Before he departs for the conflict, the people send their king off with a blessing. Actually, there are seven blessings, the number of perfection in Hebrew poetry, and whenever we see a seven, we should always pay attention to the first, the last, and the fourth (the middle). Both the first and the last blessing are prayers that God would answer the king’s cry for help, and the middle is a prayer for God’s favor: “May he remember all your offerings and regard with favor your burnt sacrifices!”  The king has just gone into the temple to give offerings and sacrifices to the LORD, seeking to be assured of God’s forgiveness and devoting himself wholly to the Lord. This isn’t like leaders in the day of Eli who would use the ark and sacrifices as a way of manipulating God or using him as a magic token. No, this psalm paints a picture of a truly pious and humble king who prepares for war on behalf of his people by laying himself on the mercy and grace of God, knowing that victory and help comes from him alone. But why all this attention on the king? Verse 5 offers the answer: “May we shout for joy over your salvation, and in the name of our God set up our banners!” The people see themselves embodied and represented in their king, which you can tell even by the pronouns: “May WE shout for joy over YOUR salvation.” If the king wins the upcoming battle, the people share the joy and raise their banners of victory. Their welfare is tied to his, and so they lift up their voices to shout a seven-fold blessing on their righteous king.

The perspective shifts in verse 6 to a dialogue as we hear the king’s response: “Now I know that the LORD saves his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with the saving might of his right hand.” Salvation here — and elsewhere in the Psalms — means deliverance, victory, divine intervention into the mess in which we find ourselves. In ancient Israel, the king was anointed with oil to signify the special role that he would play in serving God’s people, and in the context of the book of Psalms, it’s an important key word. In Psalm 2, God’s anointed son is allied with God against the nations that rage and rebel against him, and the psalm ends with a choice: “Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” Will you serve yourself, or will you serve the good king whom God has appointed? That idea gets developed here in Psalm 20, as the king himself says that he relies on the LORD to save him. He declares this powerful statement in verse 7: “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand upright.” The psalmist is intentionally evoking some famous battles from Israel’s past: chariots were used and problematic in the crossing of the Red Sea, and David uses the name of the LORD in his words to Goliath. This verse isn’t meant to imply that chariots and horses are useless but rather that our foundation of trust must be in the LORD alone, not our methods and strategies. There’s an important law in Deuteronomy 17 that kings should not acquire many horses for military purposes, which might seem oddly specific. The rationale behind the law is that the human instinct is to trust in ourselves and our resources rather than rely on faith in what God can do. In fact, one of the warning signs that David’s son Solomon and kings after him were drifting from God was the way they expanded their military spending and amassed horses and chariots. So here the godly, anointed king affirms on behalf of the people that they will place their trust in God’s salvation alone. They are aligned with and committed to him, and they are submitting themselves to his strong protection.

Psalm 20 continues the call and response with a final prayer and blessing from the people: “O LORD, save the king! May he answer us when we call.” The “he” who is answering can only be God, which brings the psalm full circle to verse 1: “May the LORD answer you in the day of trouble!” In a brief and urgent tone, the people ask for God to do what only he can do. One scholar observes the “tense awareness of life-and-death issues soon to be resolved,” like the king is marching with his army out of the city gates while the people stay behind, trusting in God’s answer to their prayers. Psalm 20 is a “right before the battle” song, but there are also strong connections to Psalm 18, which was a “right after the battle” song. They share a lot of vocabulary, some of which is obscured in translation: the “help” of Psalm 18 is related to the root of the word “answer” in Psalm 20; the “distress” of 18 connects to the “trouble” of 20, the name of God appears in both, and there’s even more. Psalm 20 is also a companion to the next one, Psalm 21. They’re a pair of royal psalms, and as we’ll see, Psalm 21 is a song of thanksgiving for God answering the people’s request in Psalm 20. So as we’re praying through the book of Psalms, we come to Psalm 18 and read about a miraculous intervention for David in a time of distress. Then Psalm 19 directs our eyes to creation and especially the Torah, the supreme way that God has revealed himself. Finally, Psalm 20 points to the king’s obedience to the Torah as he prepares for battle again, trusting not in his military might but in the strong hand of God to save. Psalm 21 will tell us the result of the battle, but for now, it’s good to notice these subtle connections in the book of Psalms. We’ll see it over and over again throughout the 150. What might at first look like a random assortment is in fact a carefully crafted collection of songs aimed at guiding our prayers to the God who is faithful and true.