Today’s Passage: Psalm 21
The king rejoices in Your strength, for You have granted him his heart’s desire. He asked You for life, and You granted it, length of days that run on forever and ever. No single king ever kept a grant like that by the count of his own years, and so the household of faith learns to read these words as pointing past David to a greater Son. David himself wrote the psalm and handed it to the choirmaster, and that heading is part of the text, given to us along with the rest.
As you read, hold this: He asked You for life. You granted length of days forever.
Context After the ask
Before the battle, Psalm 20 had asked that God would give the king the desire of his heart. Now this psalm answers back that You have granted his heart’s desire. The two belong together as companions, though this one is not merely a sequel written to finish off yesterday’s prayer. It stands on its own, whole and complete, and today it is this psalm that stands before us.
Psalm 21:1-6 (BSB)
For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
¹ O LORD, the king rejoices in Your strength. How greatly he exults in Your salvation! ² You have granted his heart’s desire and have not withheld the request of his lips. Selah ³ For You welcomed him with rich blessings; You placed on his head a crown of pure gold. ⁴ He asked You for life, and You granted it—length of days, forever and ever. ⁵ Great is his glory in Your salvation; You bestow on him splendor and majesty. ⁶ For You grant him blessings forever; You cheer him with joy in Your presence.
Notice how everything in these verses belongs to God. It is Your strength the king rejoices in, and Your salvation in which he exults. The crown of pure gold is set on his head by another hand than his own. He asked for life, and You granted it, length of days that stretch on olam, pronounced oh-LAHM. Strong's H5769, long duration, antiquity, eternity, forever. Every king in David’s line died in his time, so a grant of life forever plainly outruns any single life, and here the household of faith learns to read a greater Son. We can hold up that far horizon without turning it into a millennial chart. What the psalm claims is the forever itself; the timetable it does not give us. . The blessings are given forever, and the joy is the joy of Your presence.
Psalm 21:7 (BSB)
⁷ For the king trusts in the LORD; through the loving devotion of the Most High, he will not be shaken.
The king trusts in the LORD, and through the loving devotion of the Most High he will not be shaken. The forever rests on that chesed, on God’s steadfast love, and not on the strength of the king’s own grip.
Psalm 21:8-12 (BSB)
⁸ Your hand will apprehend all Your enemies; Your right hand will seize those who hate You. ⁹ You will place them in a fiery furnace at the time of Your appearing. In His wrath the LORD will engulf them, and the fire will consume them. ¹⁰ You will wipe their descendants from the earth, and their offspring from the sons of men. ¹¹ Though they intend You harm, the schemes they devise will not prevail. ¹² For You will put them to flight when Your bow is trained upon them.
A fiery furnace, wrath, fire, descendants wiped away: these are hard lines, and we let them stand as they are written. We neither dress up revenge as though it were holy nor sand the judgment smooth until it has quietly disappeared. The appearing belongs to Him, and so does the bow. This judgment is God’s to bring, and God’s alone.
Study notes A reign that does not end
John hears the forever this psalm already named.
"The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever." Revelation 11:15 (BSB)
The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever. It is the same horizon this psalm has been pointing to all along, with no house chart drawn in beside it, only the King whose days do not run out.
Psalm 21:13 (BSB)
¹³ Be exalted, O LORD, in Your strength; we will sing and praise Your power.
The last line turns away from the king and back to the LORD Himself. It is Your strength and Your power, the psalm says, and we will sing and praise it.
He asked You for life. You granted length of days forever.