Psalm 22

Psalms 22:1-2

The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, reads To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, the hind of the morning, a tune name the commentators discuss without certainty. The opening cry is the one the Lord took on the cross in his own tongue, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, quoted at Matt 27:46 and Mark 15:34, the only word from the cross the Gospels leave in Aramaic. The psalm holds abandonment and address in one breath, my God, my God, still claimed while asked why, and the unanswered daytime and night season of verse 2 stretch the dereliction over time.

Psalms 22:3-5

The sufferer's first argument is not his innocence but God's character and record: thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel, enthroned on what his people sing of him. Our fathers trusted, and thou didst deliver them stands three times over in two verses, trust and deliverance paired without exception in the nation's memory. Henry notes the force of the plea: the cry of verse 1 is agonizing precisely because the God who does not answer is the God who always has.

Psalms 22:6-8

I am a worm: But I am a worm, and no man drops beneath the fathers' story: they trusted and were delivered, he trusts and is despised. The mockery of verse 8, he trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him, let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him, is echoed almost word for word by the chief priests at the cross, he trusted in God, let him deliver him now, if he will have him (Matt 27:43), the psalm's taunt in the mouths of men who knew the psalm. Gill and the older writers note the worm word, the tolaath used elsewhere of the scarlet dye insect, and read more in it; the plain sense, a creature men tread on, carries the verse by itself.

Psalms 22:9-11

Against the taunt the sufferer sets his history with God, older than his own faith: thou art he that took me out of the womb, hope learned at the mother's breasts, cast upon thee from the womb. The relationship the mockers dare God to honor did not begin in strength and cannot end in abandonment without unmaking a whole life. Be not far from me, for trouble is near, for there is none to help is the psalm's hinge prayer, distance the one complaint and nearness the one request.

Psalms 22:12-15

strong bulls of Bashan: The enemies arrive as beasts, bulls of Bashan from the fattest pasture east of Jordan, a gaping lion, and later dogs, while the sufferer's own body fails from inside: poured out like water, bones out of joint, a heart melted like wax, strength dried like a potsherd, the tongue cleaving to the jaws. The older writers set this physiology beside death by crucifixion, the dislocation, the thirst, the failing heart, and the reading is theirs to make while the words themselves were written centuries before that death was practiced. Thou hast brought me into the dust of death lays the outcome at God's own hand, which is the psalm's honesty throughout.

Psalms 22:16-18

This floor reads they pierced my hands and my feet, following the Septuagint; the Masoretic text reads like a lion my hands and my feet, and a Psalms scroll from the Judean desert supports the pierced reading, so both witnesses are named and the evidence is what it is. Delitzsch and Barnes carry the philology at length, and the New Testament, which quotes this psalm repeatedly, never cites this verse, a restraint worth noticing. Verse 18 it does cite by name: they part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture, fulfilled at the cross in all four Gospels and quoted as Scripture at John 19:24, while I may tell all my bones stands between them, the sufferer made a spectacle, they look and stare upon me.

Psalms 22:19-21

The prayer gathers the beast imagery back up in reverse, the sword, the power of the dog, the lion's mouth, the horns of the unicorns, the King James word for the re'em, the great wild ox. My darling in verse 20 is the Hebrew my only one, the life set beside my soul as the single unrepeatable thing being taken. Thou hast heard me breaks in at the end of verse 21 in the perfect tense, and the commentators mark it as the turning point of the whole psalm: between the horns and the congregation the answer has arrived, though the psalm never narrates it.

Psalms 22:22

The psalm turns on this verse from dereliction to congregation: I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. Hebrews 2:12 puts the sentence in the mouth of Christ himself, quoting it to prove he is not ashamed to call them brethren, which is the New Testament's own warrant for hearing this psalm as his. The sufferer's first act on the far side of the answer is to teach, and the rest of the psalm widens from brethren to congregation to the ends of the world.

Psalms 22:23-26

The praise section answers the complaint point for point: the God who seemed to hide his face hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither hath he hid his face from him, but when he cried unto him, he heard. The vows paid before them that fear him belong to the thank-offering, whose meal the poor shared, which is why the meek shall eat and be satisfied follows, the sufferer's deliverance become a table for others. Your heart shall live for ever is spoken over the eaters, and Spurgeon lingers on a feast whose guests are the meek and whose provision does not run out.

Psalms 22:27-31

The horizon opens past Israel: all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, all the kindreds of the nations shall worship, for the kingdom is the Lord's. The scope takes in the fat upon earth and they that go down to the dust, the living and the dying together, and a seed shall serve him carries the psalm to a people that shall be born, a generation not yet existing when it was written. The last words are that he hath done this, one word in the Hebrew, and the older writers from Augustine onward set it beside It is finished at John 19:30; that reading is theirs by name, and the psalm's own claim, that the ends of the earth will turn because of what this sufferer passed through, is its text.