Lord, give victory to the king!
    Answer us when we call!
Psalm 20:9 (NRSVCE)

I grew up a fan of the Minnesota Vikings and watched them every Sunday on television. It wasn’t until I was an adult with children of my own that I went to a game myself. I’ll never forget being in the nosebleed section at the top of the Metrodome when the Vikings scored. The entire crowd stood and sang the Vikings’ fight song.

What?! I had no idea they had a fight song. The television always cuts to a commercial after someone scores or else the commentators are providing their thoughts on the touchdown and showing replays in slow motion. I never realized that in the back ground a stadium full of Viking fans were singing.

Fight songs are a part of sports, though we don’t give them much thought. When Wendy and I watch Liverpool in the Premier League play, the fans are singing almost non-stop through the entire match. They have different songs about different players. When Wendy and I were choosing which Premier League team we were going to cheer for (yes, we thoroughly weighed our options), we found out that before each game the Anfield stadium crowd sings You’ll Never Walk Alone by Gerry and the Pacemakers. Watching it on YouTube sealed the deal for us.

Music and the struggle for victory go hand-in-hand. Music brings unity and camaraderie to the masses. Music sung by a crowd stirs emotion and channels energy. It can lift spirits. It can encourage a team to dig deeper and motivate them to strive harder knowing there are tens of thousands behind them and cheering them on. They know it because they hear the singing.

Today’s psalm is basically an ancient fight song that David penned for his people to sing for him. It’s basically two verses with a one line chorus in between them. In the first verse, the people bless the king and ask that God would bless, support, and fight for David. The chorus asks God to give the king a spiritual blank check and grant all his requests. The second verse is an anthem of faith that God will assure the defeat of David’s enemies and ends praising God (not David) for the victory.

Back in Psalm 18, David wrote an epic song giving praise to God for all of his victories. It’s written in the first person, from David’s point-of-view. In contrast, today’s song is clearly intended to be sung by the people, the masses, the entire nation. In that way, it is an ancient version of a national anthem.

In the quiet, as I meditate on it this morning, I’m struck that David wanted to ensure that when his people sang about his victories, they ascribed the victory to God. King David had to have remembered when twenty-some years earlier he defeated Goliath, and the women all danced sang:

“Saul has slain his thousands,
    and David his tens of thousands.”
1 Samuel 18:7

It was that song that began to turn King Saul against David and wreak havoc on his life for years. Now that he’s king, Psalm 20 stands as a testament to the fact that David wanted to use his authority to ensure any fight song sung by his people for him would be a prayer for God’s blessing and would ascribe praise for the victory to God and not him.

An interesting side note. While we don’t know what the song would have sounded like, it must have been catchy. Archaeologists uncovered a papyrus fragment (Papyrus Amherst 63) that contains Psalm 20 virtually word-for-word but ascribes the prayer and praise to the Egyptian god Horus. Same song. Different team. It’s still common for high schools to steal a famous fight song tune and use it for their own.

As the wise sage of Ecclesiastes wrote: “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

Start of a new work week. I’m cheering you on. Hope it’s a good one.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.