시편 20:8의 인용 해설

of David, to make mention This is an expression of prayer, as (above 20:8): “but we pray (נזכיר) in the name of the Lord our God.” Similarly, in (I) Chronicles (16:4): “to invoke (להזכיר) and to give thanks to the Lord.” In Midrash Psalms (70:1) I saw: This is comparable to a king who became wroth with his flock, and demolished the sheepcote and took out the flock and the shepherd. Sometime later, he restored the flock and rebuilt the sheepcote, but he did not mention the shepherd. Said the shepherd, “Behold, the flock is restored and the sheepcote is rebuilt, but I am not mentioned.” Similarly, in the preceding chapter it says: “When God saves Zion, etc., and those who love His name dwell therein.” Behold the sheepcote is built and the flock is brought into it, but I am not mentioned. Therefore it says: “Of David, to make mention. O God, to save me.”

וישאו בני ישראל את עיניהם...ויצעקו בני ישראל אל ה', “the Children of Israel raised their eyes....and they cried out to Hashem.” The Torah tells us that they fell back on a tried remedy, i.e. prayer, which had helped their forefathers in times of distress. We know that Avraham prayed from Genesis 19,27 where the Torah describes him as rising early in the morning “to the place, etc.” The words “to the place” are a euphemism for someone directing his prayer to G’d. We find similarly that Yitzchak was praying in Genesis 24,43 where the Torah describes him as coming from a שיחה, i.e. a prayer-session. We find that the Torah describes Yaakov as having prayed at the place where he had the dream of the ladder (Genesis 8,11). The reason the Jewish people have been compared to a worm (Isaiah 41,14 “do not fear worm Yaakov, etc.”) is that just as a worm has no strength of its own other than that of its mouth with which it is able to defeat the mighty cedars, so the strength of the Jewish people is their mouth, i.e. the power of their prayers. Prayer is something soft which has the power to break something hard. The Gentiles have been compared to cedars as we know from Ezekiel 31,3: “here Assyria used to be a cedar in Lebanon,” etc., etc. In verse 12 the prophet describes how this magnificent tree was cut down.” Psalms 29,8 also describes the forests being stripped bare (by the worms). Israel’s victories are due to prayer and Torah. We base this on Deut. 4,29: “when you will seek out the Lord your G’d from there (your state of distress) you will find Him.” We have a similar message in Psalms 20,8: “they (call) on chariots, they (call) on horses, but we call on the name of the Lord our G’d.”

הקול קול יעקב, “the voice is the voice of Yaakov.” We are taught in Bereshit Rabbah 65,21 that “Yaakov (the Jewish people) controls (employs as his weapon) only his voice (his weapon is prayer).” The Midrash bases this on our verse here. The Midrash continues that by the same token Esau’s control extends only over his hands (he relies only on the sword), as Yitzchak had added: “and the hands are the hands of Esau.” Similarly, we have a verse in Psalms 20,8 אלה ברכב ואלה בסוסים ואנחנו בשם אלוקינו נזכיר, “They (call) on chariots, they (call) on horses, but we call on the name of the Lord our G’d.” Moses referred to this in Numbers 20,16 when he reminded the king of Edom of the experiences of the Jewish people in Egypt. He said: “We cried out to the Lord and He heard our voice.”
Rabbi Abba bar Kahane said that the most prominent Gentile philosophers such as Bileam son of Beor and Avnimus the Ardi were asked how one could overcome the power of the Jewish people. They were told to go to the synagogues and check on whether the young children were busily engaged studying Torah and praising the Lord. If so, they were told, there was no chance in the world to overcome these people, as their principal weapon was their voice appealing to G’d to come to their support.