Psalm 20:7

The first five verses of Psalm 20 are petitions for the king, spoken by the people or by the Levitical priests. They ask the LORD to answer him in the day of trouble, to “send thee help from the sanctuary” and to “remember all thy offerings” (Psalm 20:1–5). Verse 6 changes the mood of the whole psalm. “Now know I” is a declaration of settled assurance, spoken as though God had already answered the prayers just offered. The speaker may be a priest or someone speaking as a prophet, given the assurance by God’s Spirit. The certainty looks ahead to Psalm 21, where the king gives thanks for the victory, so that prayer before the battle is followed by praise after it.

The verb yâdaʻ, “know”, is knowledge by experience and relationship, the knowing that recognises someone and is sure of him. “Now know I” is the voice of a person convinced of who God is and of his faithfulness to his promises. That conviction strengthened the king and the whole people as they went out.

Chariots and horses were the strongest weapons of the day, the tanks and fighter jets of an ancient army. The word for chariots, rekeb, means a chariot or a force of chariots, and it is also the word for the upper millstone used to grind grain. Nations with large chariot forces, such as Egypt or the Hittites, were feared. Israel was often outmatched by its neighbours, and the pull to copy them must have been strong, yet the law for Israel’s kings forbade the king to multiply horses for himself (Deuteronomy 17:16). That law was a matter of faith as much as of military planning, because it kept the nation leaning on God.

The rest of Scripture says the same. Isaiah pronounces woe on those who go down to Egypt for help and trust in its chariots (Isaiah 31:1), and another psalm says that a king is saved by the LORD and that a great army is a vain hope (Psalm 33:16–17). Proverbs puts it in one line: “The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD” (Proverbs 21:31).

Chariots and horses, two of the most prominent parts of an army, stand for military power as a whole, and so for every kind of strength people lean on in place of God, whether wealth, alliances or their own ability. The “we” in the second half of the verse is emphatic. It is the psalmist, the king and the faithful people together, and they rest their hope on their covenant with the LORD. Proverbs gives the same counsel: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart” (Proverbs 3:5–6).

The verb zâkar means to remember, and in some of its forms to mention or to bring to remembrance. To remember the name of the LORD is to call to mind who he is, what he has promised and how he has delivered his people before, and to rely on him because of it.

The word for name, shêm, means an appellation, a mark of who someone is, and so also their honour, authority and character. In Hebrew a name carries the person himself. “The name of the LORD our God” joins Yᵉhôvâh, God’s personal covenant name, which the KJV prints as LORD in capitals, with ʼĕlôhîym, “God”. ʼĕlôhîym is plural in form, and when it names the true God it is read as a plural of majesty, with its verbs usually singular. God made his name known to Moses as his name for ever (Exodus 3:15), and Israel’s identity and hope rested on it. When the people remember that name before a battle, they are trusting his holiness, power, faithfulness and love, his covenant with them, and his power to save. The name stands for God himself.

Verse 8 gives the outcome of the two kinds of trust. “They” are the “some” of verse 7, who trusted in chariots and horses. “Brought down” is kâraʻ, to bend the knee or sink down, the posture of someone overwhelmed and humbled, and “fallen” is nâphal, to fall, a word often used of falling in death or ruin. Together they picture enemies who have collapsed and cannot stand.

God’s people are on the other side. “Risen” is qûwm, to rise or stand up, and “stand upright” is ʻûwd, a verb that elsewhere means to repeat or to testify and here means to stand upright, set on one’s feet again. The picture is of people lifted from a low place and standing firm, while their enemies lie on the ground.

The Hebrew verbs speak of all this as already done, although the battle is still ahead. Faith can speak that way because the outcome rests with God, and it is the same certainty as “Now know I” in verse 6. A psalm of David gives the same promise to the one who trusts: “Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand” (Psalm 37:24). Proverbs sets the one who trusts in riches against the righteous (Proverbs 11:28), and Isaiah promises renewed strength to those who wait on the LORD (Isaiah 40:31). All through Scripture God raises up the humble and brings down the proud.

The psalm ends with a short, urgent cry. yâshaʻ, “save”, is a command in form, a plea for God to act at once. Its root sense is to be open, wide or free, and so to be safe, and in the form used for causing something it means to free, help, deliver, preserve and rescue. It is the great word for salvation in the Old Testament, and the name Jesus (Yeshua, “the LORD saves”) is built on it. The cry is addressed to Yᵉhôvâh, the self-existent, eternal God who has bound himself to his people, and it confesses what the psalm has said all along: salvation belongs to the LORD (Psalm 3:8), and the battle is the LORD’s (1 Samuel 17:47).

The psalm closes where it began. It opened by asking the LORD to answer the king in the day of trouble, and it ends by asking that he hear his people when they call. It is a model of praying for those in authority, since the king’s success touched the whole nation, and Paul tells the church to pray for kings and all who are in authority (1 Timothy 2:1–2). God is the one who hears, and he says so himself: “Call unto me, and I will answer thee” (Jeremiah 33:3).

The king of this psalm points forward to Jesus, the true Anointed One. Isaiah foretold one on whom the Spirit of the Lord would rest because the LORD had anointed him (Isaiah 61:1), and Jesus read those words in the synagogue at Nazareth and said they were fulfilled in him (Luke 4:18).

“The LORD saveth his anointed” reaches its height in the resurrection. In his death Christ was brought low by sin and death and the grave, and God raised him up, because it was not possible for death to hold him (Acts 2:24). By his right hand God exalted him (Acts 2:33) and seated him at his own right hand in heaven, far above every rule and authority (Ephesians 1:20–21). There Christ stands, risen and upright, and from there he intercedes for us (Romans 8:34).

His victory was won without chariots or horses. Through his death and resurrection he triumphed over principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15), and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty (1 Corinthians 1:27). The name we remember now is the name God has given him above every name (Philippians 2:9), and there is salvation in no other name (Acts 4:12). Those who belong to him share his standing. God has raised us up together with Christ (Ephesians 2:6), Paul tells believers to stand fast in the Lord (Philippians 4:1), and God gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57).

He is also the King who hears. He is King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16), all power in heaven and in earth has been given to him (Matthew 28:18), and he was named Jesus because he would “save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). The cry “Save, LORD” finds its full answer in him.

These verses give us a God who hears from his holy heaven and acts with his own right hand. They show what his people lean on when others count their chariots: his name, which carries all that he is and all that he has done. They show the end of both kinds of trust, the one lying on the ground and the other standing upright, spoken of as certain before the battle begins. And they end, as prayer so often does, with a simple cry to be saved and heard.

The LORD saved his anointed king, and in Christ he has saved his Anointed for ever, raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand. Everyone who calls on that name stands with him. The God who answered the people of Psalm 20 still hears when we call.