When the ambush was unmasked, the surrounded men of Judah 'cried unto
the Lord, and the priests sounded with the trumpets,' before they
flung themselves on the enemy. We may be sure that their cry was short
and sharp, and poignant with appeal to God. There would be no waste
words, nor perfunctory petitions without wings of desire, in that cry.
Should we not look for the essential elements of prayer rather to such
cries, pressed from burdened hearts by a keen sense of absolute
helplessness, and very careless of proprieties so long as they were
shrill enough to pierce God's ear and touch His heart, than to the
formal petitions of well-ordered worship? A single ejaculation flung
heavenward in a moment of despair or agony is more precious in God's
sight than a whole litany of half-hearted devotions.
The text puts in a striking form another lesson well worth learning,
that, in the greatest crises, no time is better spent than time used
for prayer. A rush on the enemy would not have served Abijah's purpose
nearly so well as that moment's pause for crying to the Lord, before
his charge. Hands lifted to heaven are nerved to clutch the sword and
strike manfully. It is not only that Christ's soldiers are to fight
and pray, but that they fight by praying. That is true in the small
conflicts and antagonisms of the lives of each of us, and it is true
in regard to the agelong battle against ignorance and sin. Christian's
sword was named 'All-prayer.'
The priests, too, blew a prayer through their trumpets, for the
ordinance had appointed that 'when ye go to war ... then shall ye
sound an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before
the Lord your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies.' The
clear, strident blare was not intended to hearten warriors, or to sing
defiance, but to remind God of His promises, and to bring Him on to
the battlefield, as He had said that He would be. The truest prayer is
that which but picks up the arrows of promise shot from heaven to
earth, and casts them back from earth to heaven. He prays best who
fills his mouth with God's words, turning every 'I will' of His into
'Do Thou!'