The closing aspiration is that Jehovah would accept the song and prayer. There is an allusion to the acceptance of a sacrifice, for the phrase "be acceptable" is frequent in connection with the sacrificial ritual. When the words of the mouth coincide with the meditation of the heart, we may hope that prayers for cleansing from, and defence against, sin, offered to Him whom our faith recognises as our "strength" and our "Redeemer," will be as a sacrifice of a sweet smell, well-pleasing to God. He best loves the law of Jehovah who lets it teach him his sin, and send him to his knees; he best appreciates the glories of the silent heavens who knows that their witness to God is but the prelude of the deeper music of the Scriptures' declaration of the heart and will of Jehovah, and who grasps Him as his "strength and his Redeemer" from all evil, whether evil of sin or evil of sorrow. PSALM XX. 1 Jehovah answer thee in the day of trouble, The name of the God of Jacob set thee on high; 2 Send thy help from the holy place, And from Zion hold thee up; 3 Remember all thy meal offerings, And thy burnt offerings may He find fat; Selah. 4 Give thee according to thy heart, And all thy counsel may He fulfil. 5 May we exult in thy salvation, and in the name of our God wave our standards; Jehovah fulfil all thy petitions! 6 Now I know that Jehovah saves His anointed; He will answer him from his Holy heaven, with mighty deeds of the salvation of His right hand. 7 These boast in chariots, and these in horses; And we--in the name of Jehovah our God we boast. 8 They--they are bowed down, and fall; And we--we are risen, and stand firm. 9 Jehovah, save! May the King hear us in the day when we call. This is a battle song, followed by a chant of victory. They are connected in subject and probably in occasion, but fight and triumph have fallen dim to us, though we can still feel how hotly the fire once glowed. The passion of loyalty and love for the king, expressed in these psalms, fits no reign in Judah so well as the bright noonday of David's, when "whatever the king did pleased all the people." Cheyne, indeed, would bring them down to the Maccabean period, and suggests Simon Maccabæus as the ruler referred to. He has to put a little gentle pressure on "king" to contract it to fit the man of his choice, and appeals to the "good old Semitic sense" of "consul." But would not an appeal to Hebrew usage have been more satisfactory? If "king" means "king," great or small, the psalm is not post-exilic, and the Davidic date will not seem impossible. It does not seem impossible that a poet-king should have composed a national hymn praying for his own victory, which was the nation's also.