To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.

¹O LORD, in your strength the king rejoices,
and in your salvation–how greatly he exults!
²The desire of his heart you have given to him,
and the request of his lips you have not withheld. Selah.

³For you meet him with good blessings;
you establish on his head a crown of pure gold.
⁴Life he asked of you; you gave it to him,
long days forever and ever.
⁵Great is his glory in your salvation;
splendor and majesty you set on him.
⁶For you make him blessings forever,
glad in the joy of your face.
⁷For the king trusts in the LORD,
and in the covenant love of the Most High he will not be shaken.

⁸Your hand will find all your enemies;
your right hand will find your haters.
⁹You will establish them as an oven of fire at the time you appear.
The LORD in his wrath will swallow them and eat them with fire.
¹⁰Their seed from the earth you will destroy,
and their offspring from the sons of Adam.
¹¹When they turn evil upon you, devising a plot,
they will not prevail.
¹²For you will put their backs to you;
with your bowstrings you will aim at their faces.

¹³Be lifted up, O LORD, in your strength!
We will sing and praise your power!

If Psalm 20 is a prayer before a battle, Psalm 21 is the prayer after the battle. It is possible that these psalms are composed with reference to the same event, but whether that is the case or not does not matter for interpretation. Verses 1 and 2 of Psalm 21 correspond to verses 4 and 5 in Psalm 20. A prayer has been made for the “heart’s desire” and for “your salvation.” Both of these have been granted. There are also some broad structural parallels. The final verses of each psalm, for example, seem to parallel one another.

There are two major sections. Verses 1-7 are a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance. It seems that verses 1-2 are intended to be a kind of introduction, but thematically, they align with verses 3-7. Therefore, they can be treated as one. In verses 8-12, the psalm turns to the future judgment of the king’s enemies.

Though David is immediately in view here, this is very clearly a prophecy of the kingdom of Christ.

The Nature of Prayer

Verse 1 is a praise to God for his strength and salvation, and verse 2 tells us why the king is rejoicing. Verse 2 is a general statement which will be explained in verses 3-7, but it is helpful to meditate on the parallelism in there. Hebrew poetry is characterized by its parallelism in which two ideas are placed in relationship with one another. Verse 2 is an example of synthetic parallelism, where two ideas develop one another.

We see that God has given the king both the desires of his heart and the request of his lips. This speaks to the nature of prayer. Prayer has both an inward and outward element. Verse 2 implies that both are necessary, and there is an order. Luther notes:

“The arrangement is certainly fine here, namely, that the prayer of the heart must go before, without which the prayer of the lips is an unprofitable howling.”¹

There is a kind of prayer that is rote and unfeeling, but the Bible teaches that this kind of prayer is not true prayer. True prayer begins when the heart is stirred up to it.

This is why many people have taken up the rule to “pray until you pray.” Prayer is a command and an obligation. A cold heart is no reason to neglect the duty. But even when you “pray until you pray,” you are expressing a desire in your heart. Though you cannot pray as you ought, by attempting the exercise, you are revealing that your heart, though cold, desires communion with God. If your heart did not desire God, then you would feel no compulsion to the practice!

That brings us to the second element of prayer, the outward part. Of course, this does not merely refer to speaking words audibly, although if you struggle to pray, speaking audibly may be a helpful practice. Instead, it refers to the formation of prayer. That may happen in any number of ways–verbally, mentally, by pen and paper–but the idea is to take our hearts’ desires and turn them into words directed toward God. This is essential because prayer left unexpressed is not prayer at all. In prayer, our hearts and our lips must work in conjunction.

Gifts for a King

Verses 3-7 describe all the ways that God answers the prayers of the king. Once again, this is a prophecy of Christ’s kingdom. Therefore, though David has received these promises in a small way, there is still a future fulfillment in view. The verbs in this section, excepting verse 4, are all imperfect. Imperfect verbs my be translated in the present tense, which would be in reference to David, or in the future tense, in reference to Christ. David also speaks in the third person here. This may be a way of referring to himself, but more likely, he understands that his words ultimately point to the Messiah.

The gifts given to the king are:

1. A royal crown of blessing (v. 3)

2. Eternal life (v. 4)

3. The glory of salvation (v. 5)

4. The blessing of divine presence (v. 6)

5. Covenant love (v. 7)

Let us consider each in turn.

First, he receives a royal crown (v. 3). Some take this to refer to David’s coronation, but a better view is to understand it as the king taking up the crown again after battle. The king does not take his pure gold crown into battle. He leads his men in battle with his armor and helmet. But when he returns victorious, he is able to take up his crown again. This prefigures Christ. The Son of God set aside his royal crown, taking on the armor of humanity to do battle against the forces of evil. But when he ascended into heaven, he took his royal crown back up with even more splendor than he already had.

Second, the king receives eternal life (v. 4). For David, this is both a hyperbolic way of speaking about his long life on earth, but also a reference to the hope of eternal life. Christ also receives eternal life. As the divine Son of God, he receives divine life in eternity (John 5:26). According to his humanity, however, he became the firstfruits of the resurrection.

The efficient cause of Christ’s resurrection is the salvation of the Father (v. 5). He was “raised from the dead by the glory of the Father” (Rom 6:4). And because he is raised from the dead, he is seated at the right hand of the Father where he ever lives to make intercession for us. Thus, he is eternally in the presence of God (v. 6). The son’s relationship to the Father is defined by covenant. Verse 7 describes the Son’s faithful trust in the Father, and the Father’s faithful love toward the Son. They are bound together in the covenant of grace.

So returning to verse 2, what is the desire of the king’s heart? It is the redemption of the people through the mighty work of God. Each of these gifts given to the king is also a blessing on the king’s people. Because Christ is king, we receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken (Heb 12:28). Because he received eternal life through the resurrection of the dead by the glory of the Father, so we receive eternal life and resurrection (Rom 6:4ff). We also receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the presence of God, through Christ’s intercession (John 14:16-17), and we are united to Christ in his covenant with the Father (Luke 22:29).²

The Coming Judgment

In verses 8-12, we now turn to the next phase of redemption–the judgment of the king’s enemies. All of the verbs here are imperfect, but they are clearly intended to be understood in the future tense. Having won the battle, the king then sets out to destroy the enemies that remain. Here, the king is clearly on offense. The reference to the king’s right hand suggests that he is delivering the first strike. He will consume them with fire, and he will even cut off their children.

With reference to David, this is poetic language about his success as king. But with reference to Christ, it describes the day of final judgment. The enemy is not consumed by earthly fire, but by God who is a consuming fire (Heb 12:29). When Christ appears, he is the fire that consumes. He consumes both the wicked in their sin, but also the offspring. He destroys, not earthly offspring, but the offspring of wickedness. James describes sin as being conceived and born (Jas 1:15). Our hearts give birth to sin, but when the man of sin in us is finally destroyed, we will be barren of wickedness. All evil will be cast away from the presence of God until it is completely found out and eradicated. The world will finally be made right.

Final Praise

Verse 13 ends with a final promise to exalt God’s name and strength. All of the promises of this psalm are ultimately directed toward the glory of God. The coronation of the Messiah and the victory he has won, the redemption of God’s people and the blessings they receive, and the eradication of wickedness all come together to exalt God. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, and Psalm 21 gives us the foundation for that principle. Why is God to be glorified? Certainly, the very divinity of God demands worship, but his already infinite worth is magnified by the redemption he accomplished through the Son.