Psalm 21 (1928 BCP)
Psalm 21 (1928 BCP) is the psalm Domine, in virtute tua, appointed in the Book of Common Prayer (1928) for Evening Prayer on the Fourth Day of the month. It is a royal thanksgiving: Israel praises the LORD for strength, answered desire, life, and victory given to the king. In Christian prayer it is read first as Israel's Scripture and then, in light of the resurrection and ascension, as a witness to Christ the King whose reign is received from the Father and whose victory calls forth the Church's praise.
Prayer Book Text
THE King shall rejoice in thy strength, O LORD; * exceeding glad shall he be of thy salvation. 2 Thou hast given him his heart’s desire, * and hast not denied him the request of his lips.
The first word is not the king's self-congratulation but his rejoicing in thy strength. “Thy salvation” means the LORD's deliverance; the king receives it rather than produces it. The answered “heart’s desire” and “request” make royal success a matter of prayer and gift, not autonomous power.
3 For thou shalt meet him with the blessings of goodness, * and shalt set a crown of pure gold upon his head. 4 He asked life of thee; and thou gavest him a long life, * even for ever and ever. 5 His honour is great in thy salvation; * glory and great worship shalt thou lay upon him. 6 For thou shalt give him everlasting felicity, * and make him glad with the joy of thy countenance. 7 And why? because the King putteth his trust in the LORD; * and in the mercy of the Most Highest he shall not miscarry.
The middle strophe holds crown, life, honour, joy, and stability together. It gives the reason in verse 7: the king trusts the LORD and stands by the mercy of “the Most Highest.” In the 1928 text, “meet” retains an older sense of going before; the source's note records that the earlier Prayer Book wording was “prevent.” The theological point remains clear: the divine blessing precedes and sustains royal life.
8 All thine enemies shall feel thine hand; * thy right hand shall find out them that hate thee. 9 Thou shalt make them like a fiery oven in time of thy wrath: * the LORD shall destroy them in his displeasure, and the fire shall consume them. 10 Their fruit shalt thou root out of the earth, * and their seed from among the children of men. 11 For they intended mischief against thee, * and imagined such a device as they are not able to perform. 12 Therefore shalt thou put them to flight, * and the strings of thy bow shalt thou make ready against the face of them. 13 Be thou exalted, LORD, in thine own strength; * so will we sing, and praise thy power.
The final section speaks in the severe idiom of ancient royal warfare. It neither licenses private vengeance nor turns the Church's worship into a claim for national supremacy. The king's enemies are enemies of the rule which belongs to the LORD; the psalm ends, not with human boasting, but with the congregation's petition that the LORD be exalted and its promise to praise his power.
Royal Thanksgiving and the Messiah
The immediate literary setting joins Psalm 21 to Psalm 20: the former Psalm asks that the LORD save the anointed; this one thanks him for answered prayer. Alexander Maclaren calls it a “pendant” to the preceding psalm and carefully distinguishes the royal office from the LORD who grants victory.
This psalm is a pendant to the preceding. There the people prayed for the king; here they give thanks for him: there they asked that his desires might be fulfilled; here they bless Jehovah, who has fulfilled them.
This observation guards a Christian reading from collapsing God into the monarch. The human king is honoured, but the psalm repeatedly names the LORD as giver. Maclaren further argues that the psalm's elevated portrait is not exhausted by any one Israelite ruler; that is a theological interpretation of the royal psalm, not a replacement for its original setting.
The office rather than the individual who partially fulfils its demands and possesses its endowments seems to fill the singer’s canvas. But the ideal of the office is destined to be realised in the Messiah, and the psalm is in a true sense Messianic.
The New Testament gives the Church the grammar for this reception. The Father tells the risen Christ, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth”; the crowned, living king of Psalm 21 can therefore be confessed in relation to the crucified and risen Lord, while the historical sense of Israel's royal prayer is not denied.
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Augustine reads the psalm explicitly through Christ's humility, resurrection, and reign. His exposition uses the Septuagint numbering, so the verses are called Psalm 20 there, though the page is headed “Exposition on Psalm 21.” It is a patristic Christian reception, not evidence that David's original hearers possessed every later doctrinal conclusion.
He asked a resurrection, saying, Father, glorify Your Son; and You gave it Him, Length of days for ever and ever. The prolonged ages of this world which the Church was to have, and after them an eternity, world without end.
Prayer Book Use
The 1928 BCP places Psalm 21 after Psalm 20 under the heading “Fourth Day” and before the next Evening Prayer heading. It is therefore a set Evening Prayer psalm in the Prayer Book's monthly course, where Psalm 20's intercession for the anointed is answered by Psalm 21's thanksgiving. That placement makes its final “we will sing” properly corporate: the people bless God for a gift received, rather than using the psalm to exalt themselves.
Fourth Day. Morning Prayer. Psalm 19. Caeli enarrant. Psalm 20. Exaudiat te Dominus. Evening Prayer. Psalm 21. Domine, in virtute tua. Psalm 22. Deus, Deus meus.
J. M. Neale’s nineteenth-century commentary also records a wider liturgical reception, listing Psalm 21 for Ascension Day in the Gregorian use. His Christological explanation traces the king's joy to resurrection, but it should be read as a received ecclesial interpretation alongside the Prayer Book's monthly discipline.
Who is King but CHRIST, according to His Manhood? The Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief shall not always travel through the vale of Baca: shall not always be despised and rejected of men.
The juxtaposition with Psalm 22 is also spiritually bracing. Evening Prayer moves from the king's joy in deliverance to the cry “My God, my God, look upon me.” Christian prayer is thus not triumphalism: it gives thanks for God's victory and also learns to bring dereliction, suffering, and unanswered experience before him in the words that follow.
See Also
- Book of Common Prayer (1928)
- The Psalter (1928 BCP)
- Daily Office (1928 BCP)
- Evening Prayer (1928 BCP)
- Psalm 20 (1928 BCP)
- Psalm 22 (1928 BCP)
External Links
- Psalm 21 in the 1928 BCP Psalter
- Augustine on Psalm 21
- Alexander Maclaren on Psalm 21
- J. M. Neale and R. F. Littledale, Commentary on the Psalms
References
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 21:1–2, p. 355, "Psalm 21, 1928 BCP Psalter" (accessed 22 October 2026).
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 21:3–7, p. 355, "Psalm 21, 1928 BCP Psalter" (accessed 22 October 2026).
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 21:8–13, p. 355, "Psalm 21, 1928 BCP Psalter" (accessed 22 October 2026).
- ↑ Alexander Maclaren, The Expositor’s Bible: The Psalms, vol. 1 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1892), pp. 201–202, exposition of Psalm 21, "Maclaren, exposition of Psalm 21" (accessed 22 October 2026).
- ↑ Alexander Maclaren, The Expositor’s Bible: The Psalms, vol. 1 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1892), p. 203, exposition of Psalm 21, "Maclaren, exposition of Psalm 21" (accessed 22 October 2026).
- ↑ The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version (London: Robert Barker, 1611), Matthew 28:18, "Matthew 28:18, KJV" (accessed 22 October 2026).
- ↑ Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 21, §§4–5 (Psalm 20:4 in the Septuagint numbering), anonymous trans., in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), "Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 21" (accessed 22 October 2026).
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), “The Order how the Psalter is appointed to be read,” p. vii, "1928 Book of Common Prayer" (accessed 22 October 2026).
- ↑ J. M. Neale and R. F. Littledale, A Commentary on the Psalms: From Primitive and Mediæval Writers, vol. 1 (London: Joseph Masters, 1869), p. 270, on Psalm 21, "Internet Archive scan" (accessed 22 October 2026).