[PSALM XXII.]
1 My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?
[Why art Thou] afar from my help, from the words of my roar?
2 My God, I cry to Thee by day, and Thou answerest not;
And by night, but there is no rest for me.
3 Yet Thou art Holy,
Throned upon the praises of Israel.
4 In Thee our fathers trusted;
They trusted and Thou deliveredst them.
5 To Thee they cried and were delivered;
In Thee they trusted and were not put to shame.
6 But I am a worm, and not a man;
A reproach of men and despised of people.
7 All who see me mock at me;
They draw open the lips, they nod the head.
8 "Roll [thy cares] on Jehovah—let Him deliver him;
Let Him rescue him, for He delights in him."
9 Yea, Thou art He who didst draw me from the womb
Didst make me trust when on my mother's breasts.
10 Upon Thee was I thrown from birth;
From my mother's womb art Thou my God.
11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near;
For there is no helper.
12 Many bulls have surrounded me,
Strong ones of Bashan have encircled me.
13 They gape upon me with their mouth,
[Like] a lion tearing and roaring.
14 Like water I am poured out,
And all my bones are out of joint
My heart has become like wax,
Melted in the midst of my bowels.
15 My strength (palate?) is dried up like a potsherd,
And my tongue cleaves to my gums,
And Thou layest me in the dust of death.
16 For dogs have surrounded me,
A pack of evil-doers closed round me,
They pierced my hands and my feet.
17 I can count all my bones,
These—they gaze, upon me they look.
18 They divide my garments among them,
And on my vesture they cast lots.
19 But Thou, Jehovah, be not far off;
My Strength, haste to my help.
20 Deliver my soul from the sword,
My only [life] from the paw of the dog.
21 Save me from the mouth of the lion,
And from the horns of the wild oxen—Thou hast answered me.
22 I will declare Thy name to my brethren,
In the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee.
23 Ye that fear Jehovah, praise Him,
All ye the seed of Jacob, glorify Him,
And stand in awe of Him, all ye the seed of Israel.
24 For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted one.
And has not hid His face from him,
And when he cried has hearkened to him.
25 From Thee [comes] my praise in the great congregation;
My vows will I pay before them that fear Him.
26 The humble shall eat and be satisfied,
They shall praise Jehovah that seek Him;
Let your heart live for ever.
27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to Jehovah.
And all the families of the nations shall bow before Thee.
28 For the kingdom is Jehovah's;
And He is ruler among the nations.
29 All the fat ones of the earth eat and bow down;
Before His face kneel all they who were going down to the dust,
And he [who] could not keep his soul alive.
30 A seed shall serve Him;
And it shall be told of Jehovah unto the [next] generation.
31 They shall come and declare His righteousness
Unto a people that shall be born, that He has done [this].
Who is the sufferer whose wail is the very voice of desolation and despair, and who yet dares to believe that the tale of his sorrow will be a gospel for the world? The usual answers are given. The title ascribes the authorship to David, and is accepted by Delitzsch and others. Hengstenberg and his followers see in the picture the ideal righteous man. Others think of Hezekiah, or Jeremiah, with whose prophecies and history there are many points of connection. The most recent critics find here "the personalised Genius of Israel, or more precisely the followers of Nehemiah, including the large-hearted psalmist" (Cheyne, "Orig. of Psalt.," 264). On any theory of authorship, the startling correspondence of the details of the psalmist's sufferings with those of the Crucifixion has to be accounted for. How startling that correspondence is, both in the number and minuteness of its points, need not be insisted on. Not only does our Lord quote the first verse on the cross, and so show that the psalm was in his heart then, but the gestures and words of mockery were verbally reproduced, as Luke significantly indicates by using the LXX's word for "laugh to scorn" (ver. 7). Christ's thirst is regarded by John as the fulfilment of "scripture," which can scarcely be other than ver. 15. The physical effects of crucifixion are described in the ghastly picture of vv. 14, 15. Whatever difficulty exists in determining the true reading and meaning of the allusion to "my hands and my feet," some violence or indignity to them is intended. The peculiar detail of dividing the raiment was more than fulfilled, since the apparently parallel and synonymous clauses were resolved into two distinct acts. The recognition of these points in the psalm as prophecies is one thing; the determination of their relation to the psalmist's own experience is quite another. It is taken for granted in many quarters that every such detail in prophecy must describe the writer's own circumstances, and the supposition that they may transcend these is said to be "psychologically impossible." But it is somewhat hazardous for those who have not been subjects of prophetic inspiration to lay down canons of what is possible and impossible in it, and there are examples enough to prove that the relation of the prophets' speech to their consciousness and circumstances was singularly complex, and not to be unravelled by any such obiter dicta as to psychological possibilities. They were recipients of messages, and did not always understand what the "Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify." Theories which neglect that aspect of the case do not front all the facts. Certainty as to the authorship of this psalm is probably unattainable. How far its words fitted the condition of the singer must therefore remain unsettled. But that these minute and numerous correspondences are more than coincidences, it seems perverse to deny. The present writer, for one, sees shining through the shadowy personality of the psalmist the figure of the Prince of Sufferers, and believes that whether the former's plaints applied in all their particulars to him, or whether there is in them a certain "element of hyperbole" which becomes simple fact in Jesus' sufferings, the psalm is a prophecy of Him and them. In the former case the psalmist's experience, in the latter case his utterances, were divinely shaped so as to prefigure the sacred sorrows of the Man of Sorrows.
To a reader who shares in this understanding of the psalm, it must be holy ground, to be trodden reverently and with thoughts adoringly fixed on Jesus. Cold analysis is out of place. And yet there is a distinct order even in the groans, and a manifest contrast in the two halves of the psalm (vv. 1-21 and 22-31). "Thou answerest not" is the key-note of the former; "Thou hast answered me," of the latter. The one paints the sufferings, the other the glory that should follow. Both point to Jesus: the former by the desolation which it breathes; the latter by the world-wide consequences of these solitary sufferings which it foresees.
Surely opposites were never more startlingly blended in one gush of feeling than in that plaint of mingled faith and despair, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" which by its thus addressing God clings fast to Him, and by its wondering question discloses the dreary consciousness of separation from Him. The evidence to the psalmist that he was forsaken was the apparent rejection of his prayers for deliverance; and if David be the speaker, we may suppose that the pathetic fate of his predecessor hovered before his thoughts: "I am sore distressed ... God is departed from me and answereth me no more." But, while lower degrees of this conflict of trust and despair belong to all deep religious life, and are experienced by saintly sufferers in all ages, the voice that rang through the darkness on Calvary was the cry of Him who experienced its force in supreme measure and in altogether unique manner. None but He can ask that question "Why?" with conscience void of offence. None but He have known the mortal agony of utter separation from God. None but He have clung to God with absolute trust even in the horror of great darkness. In Christ's consciousness of being forsaken by God lie elements peculiar to it alone, for the separating agent was the gathered sins of the whole world, laid on Him and accepted by Him in the perfection of His loving identification of Himself with men. Unless in that dread hour He was bearing a world's sin, there is no worthy explanation of His cry, and many a silent martyr has faced death for Him with more courage derived from Him than He manifested on His cross.
After the introductory strophe of two verses, there come seven strophes, of which three contain 3 verses each (vv. 3-11) followed by two of 2 verses each (vv. 12-15) and these again by two with 3 verses each. Can a soul agitated as this singer's was regulate its sobs thus? Yes, if it is a singer's, and still more if it is a saint's. The fetters make the limbs move less violently, and there is soothing in the ordered expression of disordered emotion. The form is artistic not artificial; and objections to the reality of the feelings on the ground of the regularity of the form ignore the witness of the masterpieces of literature in all tongues.
The desolation rising from unanswered prayer drives to the contemplation of God's holiness and past responses to trusting men, which are in one aspect an aggravation and in another an alleviation. The psalmist partly answers his own question "Why?" and preaches to Himself that the reason cannot be in Jehovah, whose character and former deeds bind Him to answer trust by help. God's holiness is primarily His separation from, by elevation above, the creature, both in regard of His freedom from limitations and of His perfect purity. If He is thus "holy," He will not break His promise, nor change His ways with those who trust. It takes some energy of faith to believe that a silent and apparently deaf God is "holy," and the effect of the belief may either be to crush or to lift the spirit. Its first result with this psalmist seems to have been to crush, as the next strophe shows, but the more blessed consequence is won before the end. Here it is partly a plea urged with God, as is that beautiful bold image of God enthroned "on the praises of Israel." These praises are evoked by former acts of grace answering prayers, and of them is built a yet nobler throne than the outstretched wings of the Cherubim. The daring metaphor penetrates deeply into God's delight in men's praise, and the power of Israel's voice to exalt Him in the world. How could a God thus throned cease to give mercies like those which were perpetually commemorated thereby? The same half-wistful, half-confident retrospect is continued in the remaining verses of this strophe (vv. 4, 5), which look back to the "grey fathers'" experience. Mark the plaintive reiteration of "trust" and "deliver," the two inseparables, as the days of old attested, which had now become so sadly parted. Not more certainly the flow of water in a pipe answers the application of thirsty lips to its opening than did God's rescuing act respond to the father's trust. And now!—
The use of "Our" in reference to the fathers has been laid hold of as favouring the hypothesis that the speaker is the personified nation; but no individual member of a nation would speak of the common ancestors as "My fathers." That would mean his own family progenitors, whereas the psalmist means the Patriarchs and the earlier generations. No argument for the national theory, then, can be drawn from the phrase. Can the reference to Jesus be carried into this strophe? Assuredly it may, and it shows us how truly He associated Himself with His nation, and fed His faith by the records of the past. "He also is a son of Abraham."