The King Rejoices in Your Strength
1 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. The king rejoices in your strength, Yahweh! How greatly he rejoices in your salvation! 2 You have given him his heart’s desire, and have not withheld the request of his lips. Selah. 3 For you meet him with the blessings of goodness. You set a crown of fine gold on his head. 4 He asked life of you and you gave it to him, even length of days forever and ever. 5 His glory is great in your salvation. You lay honor and majesty on him. 6 For you make him most blessed forever. You make him glad with joy in your presence. 7 For the king trusts in Yahweh. Through the loving kindness of the Most High, he shall not be moved. 8 Your hand will find out all of your enemies. Your right hand will find out those who hate you. 9 You will make them as a fiery furnace in the time of your anger. Yahweh will swallow them up in his wrath. The fire shall devour them. 10 You will destroy their descendants from the earth, their posterity from among the children of men. 11 For they intended evil against you. They plotted evil against you which cannot succeed. 12 For you will make them turn their back, when you aim drawn bows at their face. 13 Be exalted, Yahweh, in your strength, so we will sing and praise your power.
The battle prayed for in the previous psalm has been answered, and the king's joy is located in the giver rather than the gift.
For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. The king rejoices in your strength, Yahweh! How greatly he rejoices in your salvation!
The companion to the psalm before it. That one asked; this one thanks, and the two were probably sung on either side of the same campaign.
What the king rejoices in is stated twice and both times it is God's — his strength, his salvation. Not the victory, not the spoil, not the crown that appears two verses later. The distinction is small in wording and total in effect: a man may be delighted with what he has been given or with the one who gave it, and only the second survives the gift being taken away.
You have given him his heart’s desire, and have not withheld the request of his lips. Selah.
The answer to the fourth verse of the previous psalm, almost word for word. The collection is showing its own prayers being answered.
He asked life of you and you gave it to him, even length of days forever and ever.
What was asked was survival — the ordinary request of a man going into battle. What was granted is described in terms no reign ever fulfilled. This is the second time in the first book that the language of the Davidic covenant 2 Samuel 7:16 overflows the man it was spoken to, and it is why the psalm has always been read past its immediate occasion.
For the king trusts in Yahweh. Through the loving kindness of the Most High, he shall not be moved.
The hinge of the psalm, and it gives the reason for everything in the first half. Not his competence, his lineage or his army. He trusts, and the security named is not his own steadiness but God's loving kindness.
The second half turns to enemies and is difficult. You will make them as a fiery furnace in the time of your anger... You will destroy their descendants from the earth Psalms 21:9–10. Three things are worth holding on to. The subject throughout is God rather than the king — no human being is authorized here to do anything. The reason is given as intent rather than nationality: they intended evil against you. They plotted evil against you which cannot succeed Psalms 21:11. And the assessment of the plot is that it cannot succeed, which drains the passage of anything triumphalist. What is being described is the collapse of something that was never going to stand.
Be exalted, Yahweh, in your strength, so we will sing and praise your power.
The psalm ends where it began, with strength that belongs to somebody else, and the king who has just been crowned with fine gold is not mentioned in the final verse at all.
held with reason What this mark means