Biblion Bible Commentary
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Some Trust in Chariots
Psalms 20:1-9
1 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. May Yahweh answer you in the day of trouble. May the name of the God of Jacob set you up on high, · WEB
A congregation prays for its king before a battle, and names the difference between the two armies as a matter of what each is trusting.
May Yahweh answer you in the day of trouble. May the name of the God of Jacob set you up on high Psalms 20:1.
The psalm is a congregation praying for someone else. The first five verses are addressed to the king, not to God, and they are what a nation says to a man about to go out and fight on its behalf.
Remember all your offerings, and accept your burned sacrifice Psalms 20:3. The request assumes the king has already been at the altar. Preparation for battle in this psalm begins somewhere other than the armory.
May he grant you your heart's desire, and fulfill all your counsel Psalms 20:4.
A prayer that a man's plans succeed, offered without qualification. It can be prayed this way because of who the man is and what has just been said about his offerings; the psalm is not recommending that anyone's ambitions be blessed indiscriminately.
In the name of our God, we will set up our banners Psalms 20:5.
The banner is the rallying point in a battle, the thing a scattered unit re-forms around. Naming whose it is decides what the fight is for.
Now I know that Yahweh saves his anointed Psalms 20:6.
A single voice, in the middle of a congregational prayer. Something has happened between verse five and verse six — the psalm was likely sung around an oracle or a sacrifice — and the change from may he to now I know is the turn the whole piece is built on.
Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we trust in the name of Yahweh our God Psalms 20:7.
The best-known line, and its edge is sharper than it first appears. Israel's kings were forbidden to multiply horses Deuteronomy 17:16, so this is not merely a pious preference for faith over hardware. Chariots were the decisive weapon of the age, the thing every neighboring power had and Israel largely did not, and the verse is spoken by the side without them.
It does not say that equipment is useless — the army in question is armed and is going to fight. It says where the trust is placed, which is a different question from what is in the hand, and the psalm's own arrangement makes the point: the trusting is named in the same breath as the chariots, not instead of them.
They are bowed down and fallen, but we rise up, and stand upright Psalms 20:8.
The outcome is stated before the battle. And the closing line hands the whole matter back: Save, Yahweh! Let the King answer us when we call Psalms 20:9 — the human king having been prayed for through eight verses, the last word goes to the one the prayers were addressed to.
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