Immediate friends are a lot of fun. But long-time friendships are deep and deserve regular celebrations.
When my wife threw a party for my 50th birthday, she pulled together an incredible group of people who have known and loved me for 20-35 years. While I don’t see a lot of them on a regular basis, especially since we live in Oregon and they live in Washington, the connecting bonds are thick, seasoned, and full of meaning.
There is a deep loyalty to them that new friendships simply haven’t had the time to develop.
Psalm 21 centers on the joy experienced through years of covenant loyalty between God and his chosen king.
The first half of Psalm 21 looks back on what God has done for the king. But before we get to that, let me quickly explore authorship.
Numerous psalms are headed by “A psalm of David” which is actually just “Of David.” At least, that’s one translation of leDavid in Hebrew. That little prefix before David’s name can mean “of,” but it’s also translated as “to” or “for,” depending on the context. So, does that simple phrase mean the psalm was written by David, was written to him as a gift, or what written in his honor, remembering him and his story at a later date? All three are legitimate possibilities. None of them disrespect David or the Scriptures by suggesting that someone other than David wrote them. This is one of those odd ambiguities in the Scriptures that our translations are less than helpful with, since they render something vague in Hebrew into something more definite in English.
Context and tradition cause me to accept most of these “of David” psalms as written by the shepherd king himself. But there are some, like Psalm 21, which have a different feel. Psalm 21 feels to me as if it had been written to/for David, not by him. Yes, it’s possible for David to have written about himself in the third person, but it’s far more awkward to read in that way. More likely, Psalm 21 was written for and woven into a ceremony celebrating David’s kingship at a later point during his reign. Many of his victories are referred to in the past and it suggests that he has already reached a significant length of days.
During the party for my 50th birthday, my wife had friends share stories from my life and tell me what our friendship has meant to them. It was a sweet and deeply meaningful experience for me. I almost felt as if I were looking in at my funeral and hearing all of the good things people have to say at those moments.
David gets a bit of that in Psalm 21. The first seven verses speak to God in the presence of the king. Just as it’s a joy to hear friends speak lovingly of our relationship with one another, it is a beautiful thing to be prayed for.
The king rejoices in your strength, LORD.
How great is his joy in the victories you give! (Ps. 21:1)
The mention of victories possibly gives the context of the celebration: A worship event after a recent victory or after a season of battles that have finally been settled.
You have granted him his heart’s desire
and have not withheld the request of his lips (Ps. 21:2).
The chronology of prayer is a tricky thing for us time-bound humans looking for quick solutions. Like a true friendship, the perspective of years is required to see the subtle nuances of our God-human interactions.
When viewed over the span of a lifetime, with the from-above perspective of a Goodyear blimp, we can see that David’s prayers have been answered. But we rarely step back and take that perspective as we slog through our daily lives. For years, David lived as the forgotten son of Jesse. He became the pursued renegade general of Saul. And later on, there were 7.5 years between when he was crowned king of Judah and when became the acknowledged king of all Israel (2 Sam. 5:5). As he stumbled through all of that, he had years of anxious praying and not knowing what God’s answers would look like.
This is why it’s so important to stop and remember and celebrate.
Like my 50th birthday party, Psalm 21 is a celebration psalm. It pauses and looks backward over years in order to see the shape of the ground covered by them. And instead of the ruts and rocks tripped over, it sees the meadows and mountains it’s traversed. The trip hazards were still there, but the perspective of years smoothed them out with its big picture view.
God is with us in the mess, answering our prayers. But so often we don’t see what those answers look like until well afterward. Celebration gives the gift of perspective.
The granting of our heart’s desire might look just as messy as the mess we were in when we asked — things were no less messy for David after he became the king of all Israel than they had been beforehand — but a mess can look like art at a distance.
You came to greet him with rich blessings
and placed a crown of pure gold on his head (Ps. 21:3).
Yahweh himself is the one who crowned David. As ambitious as David is pictured in 1 Samuel, his throne relies solely on God. He doesn’t win it; God gives is.
He asked you for life, and you gave it to him —
length of days, for ever and ever (Ps 21:4).
Obviously, David will die. So, here we have his dynasty in view. It is from passages like this that a theology of Messiah emerges, and it’s almost impossible for the Christian to read these words without thinking of Jesus.
Through the victories you gave, his glory is great;
you have bestowed on him splendor and majesty.
Surely you have granted him unending blessings
and made him glad with the joy of your presence (Ps. 21:5-6).
As with his crown and his long life, his victory in battle is also seen as a gift of God.
All is grace. Every good thing is sheer gift. We don’t live a grab-what-you-can life, wrestling what we want from the world’s stingy grasp. We live a received life, open-handedly taking what God offers, knowing he loves to give good gifts. And the greatest of these gifts is the joy of his presence, his covenantal friendship.
And so the first half of the psalm ends. Having begun with the king rejoicing in Yahweh, it ends with him trusting in Yahweh.
For the king trusts in the LORD;
through the unfailing love of the Most High
he will not be shaken (Ps. 21:7).
That “unfailing love” is chesed, Yahweh’s tenacious loyalty to his covenant with his people. This is the kind of love celebrated when we turn half a hundred and beyond.
David is unshakable because God’s love for his is unshakable. And this is the same love extended to us all.
Here Psalm 21 shifts. Where the first half talks to God in the presence of the king, the second half talks to the king in the presence of God. It’s rather hellish in its vision of victory in battle.
Your hand will lay hold on all your enemies;
your right hand will seize your foes.
When you appear for battle,
you will burn them up as in a blazing furnace.
The LORD will swallow them up in his wrath,
and his fire will consume them.
You will destroy their descendants from the earth,
their posterity from mankind.
Though they plot evil against you
and devise wicked schemes, they cannot succeed.
You will make them turn their backs
when you aim at them with drawn bow (Ps. 21:8-12).
When I ask people who their enemies are, most say they have none. We like to think of ourselves as nice, loving people who make only friends like the ones at my party and never any enemies. But if we’re honest, we’ve all got foes of some sort.
My Dad is one of the kindest people I know. But he had another man back-stab him by sending anonymous slandering letters to members of the congregation my Dad had been pastoring. The foe was friendly to my Dad’s face but poison penned when apart. He was an enemy.
If anything, an immersion in the Psalms will teach us to acknowledge our enemies and to pray about them. It may not teach us to forgive them as such, but we have to acknowledge that we have them before we can forgive them. The forgiving prayer Jesus asks of us is secondary prayer. It follows this rough and angry primary prayer that prays its passion in bold and even brutal language.
While celebrating all that God has done for David in the past, Psalm 21 doesn’t avoid the challenges of the present. Instead, it prays them too, asking God to deal with them as definitively as he dealt with the problems of the past.
And then it ends, acknowledging God is the real King. He is to be exalted. He is to ascend to his throne.
Be exalted in your strength, LORD;
we will sing and praise your might (Ps. 21:13).
Having begun with King David rejoicing in Yahweh’s strength, Psalm 21 ends with all of us joining in his song. The solo performance has become a choir. The party is jumping!
This is the way of true, life-long friendships. They always pull others into them. And David’s long friendship with Yahweh has sucked us right in. We are part of this psalm. We are part of this song. All because of a party.