I. (20:1–5) Prayer for the King’s Success. In these verses the congregation addresses the Davidic king with a prayer for God to answer his prayers, protect him from enemies, send him help, and support him. To call all of this “salvation” (v. 5) is to recognize that it comes from God as a gift and must further the ends for which God called his people from the start. (That is, it is not a blank check for greed or land-grabbing.)

The particular words used here, such as “day of trouble” (v. 1), “help from the sanctuary” (v. 2), and “set up our banners” (v. 5, cf. Song 6:4, 10), together with mention of chariots and horses (Ps. 20:7), show that the psalm envisions the king as setting out on a military enterprise. The recurring concern with “salvation” (vv. 5, 6, 9) for the king, along with reference to “enemies” (21:8–12), implies that the kingdom is under threat, but the words can be applied whether that threat is from without (Gentile kingdoms) or within (rebels against David’s house).

The “sanctuary” at “Zion” (v. 2) is the place at which God especially makes himself present among his people (cf. comments on Psalm 24). It is common in the Psalms to represent help as coming from the sanctuary (e.g., 3:4; 18:6), since that is where God makes his presence known, but it would be a mistaken literalism to take this as implying that God is actually conceived as localized there. After all, the “answer” (20:6) comes ultimately “from his holy heaven.”186

The psalm presupposes a pious and faithful king: he has made “offerings” and brought “burnt sacrifices” (v. 3), the means by which the worshiper receives assurance of God’s love and devoted himself to God. He has also offered prayers (“answer”; v. 6). Of course, not every Davidic king that we read of in 1–2 Kings is worthy of such endorsement—in which case this psalm would be not a support but an indictment.

II. (20:6–8) Sound Confidence in the Lord Alone. “Now” the worshipers shift from speaking to the king to speaking about him, calling him “he.” They place their confidence in God alone as the one who “saves his anointed,” and thus the “chariots” and “horses” they must use are not the final cause of success but only the means God may be pleased to prosper (as “we” hope for ourselves) or thwart (as we hope for the enemy).

The king is the Lord’s “anointed”—although this applies first to Saul (1 Sam. 24:6), it is afterward properly applied to the house of David (Pss. 2:2; 18:50; 28:8; 84:9; 89:38, 51; 132:10, 17). The Hebrew word mashiakh, a passive adjective meaning “anointed” (Aramaic equivalent meshikhaʼ) can be transliterated into Greek as messias, from which we get the English “messiah”; when translated into Greek it comes as the adjective christos, from which we get the English “christ.”187 In the OT the word is not a technical term for the final heir of David (except perhaps in Dan. 9:25–26), but by the first century of our era it had become so (Matt. 2:4; 16:16). Indeed, the only person to whom Isaiah applies the word is Cyrus (Isa. 45:1), who is definitely not “the” Messiah!188

III. (20:9) God Save the King! The psalm closes by returning to the mode of prayer for God’s “salvation” (cf. comment on 3:1–2) for the king.

In “may he answer us when we call,” we must ascertain who is “he”: God or the king? Since God is consistently the one who “answers” when his faithful “call” (cf. Ps. 4:1; 17:6; 27:7; etc.), this makes it certain that this is also a request for God’s action.