Psalm 20 is a prayer for God's deliverance of Israel's king on the occasion of an impending battle. It is a prayer for victory. The twenty-first Psalm, the one that we will look at here, is a prayer of national thanksgiving for that deliverance.

In Romania, where President Nicolae Ceausescu just weeks before had declared that apple trees would bear pears before socialism should be endangered in Romania, the end began in the house of a Protestant pastor whose parishioners surrounded him, declaring that they were willing to die rather than let him be arrested by the state police.7 Josef Tson, the founder and president of the Romanian Missionary Society, was in Romania just after the death of Ceausescu and reported the details of the story.

Have other nations ever experienced something of this nature concerning God’s interventions? Indeed, they have, though not every claim to a divine intervention on a people's part is genuine. The history of England has such incidents. There is the victory over the Spanish Armada in the days of Queen Elizabeth. The fate of the English Reformation was at stake in that battle, as well as the English throne. The Spanish ships were mightier and outnumbered the English. People all over England were praying. As a result, the English navy achieved a stunning victory, and the work begun in the southern portion of the channel was completed by a sudden and unexpected storm which drove the escaping Spanish ships northward and wrecked most on rocks off the coast of Scotland.

The second stanza of Psalm 20 is the section spoken in the first person singular, perhaps by the king himself, as some scholars think,4 or, more likely, by one of the nation's priests.5 It is an assurance that God hears and will answer the king's (and people's) prayers.

I have said that the first five verses are a prayer for Israel's king. Yet strictly speaking, they are not a prayer to God so much as words directed to the king himself, assuring him that the people believe in him and want God to answer his petitions.