The date of this psalm is pre-exilic. The theme of Psalm 22 is anguish of mind and religious doubt. Matthew has used it as a messianic prophecy. The mood is one of alternate fear and a desire to seek God in the first part and in the second part a contemplation of the providential rule of God. The poetic images move our hearts, though we cannot know details. The psalm expresses the spiritual anguish brought on by religious conflict. The writer is in shock to the point of expressing itself in physical symptoms due to the lack of response from God and the scorn of non-believers. Throughout the psalm, the writer portrays himself as a faithful worshiper of Yahweh. This faithfulness is the ground of his appeal to God for help. For this reason, one cannot see the psalmist as one who has fully despaired. He genuinely believes that an appeal to the power and justice of God will be efficacious.
To the leader: according to The Deer of the Dawn. A Psalm of David. The superscription of the Psalm is unique and unclear; it may refer to a musical setting for the psalm or to a now lost collection of psalms. According to the Masoretic Hebrew text (which is v. 1 in the Hebrew), the title is “The Deer of the Dawn.” According to the Greek translation of Symmachus, and the Aramaic Targum, however, the title reads “My help of the Dawn,” translating the Hebrew word ‘eyaluti as “my help,” which appears in verse 19, rather than ‘ayelet, or “deer,” which appears in the Hebrew verse 1. It is fascinating that this psalm, known for its despairing opening, should have such a hopeful name in these two traditions. One should keep in mind that since Mark quotes Jesus as citing the psalm in the Aramaic, he knew its title in Aramaic as well — a title that points to the belief that the help of God will come to the faithful like the dawn. The verses in the psalm alternate between the complaint of the psalmist and the affirmation of the reasons he believes God will answer his complaint.
Psalm 22: 1-21 are a prayer of supplication.
Doubt is an important experience in going deeper with God. These famous persons of faith wrote of their doubt: Mother Teresa, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Anne Lamott, C.S. Lewis and others. The religion arising out of Judaism and Christianity encourages examination of one’s faith and life. Adherents need to be unafraid of doubt. Doubt may lead us to see what is truly reliable. Lamott, for example, once wrote that she had a lot of faith, but also had a lot of fear and little certainty. In fact, the opposite of faith is certainty. Faith includes noticing the mess, emptiness, and discomfort but also the faith that light will return. The fact that Mark records Jesus as quoting from the opening line of this Psalm gives us an opportunity to reflect upon an important event in the spiritual life of most saints. How do you deal with your life with God when God is silent? You have come to a point in your life when you want clarity, you want God to speak and act, but God is silent. Jesus, in the closing hours of his life, had that experience. Through his parables, sayings, and stories of healing and casting out demons, he affirmed the presence and reality of God. Yet, in the last hours of his life, his heavenly Father encountered him with silence.
Psalm 22: 1-2 are a cry of despair, total aloneness, seeing only separation between himself and God. 1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?[1] As one of Jesus’ words from the cross, recounted in Aramaic by Matthew and Mark (Matthew 27: 46; Mark 15: 34), the first line of Psalm 22 has become the quintessential cry of despair for the Christian tradition. More of Psalm 22 than simply the first verse figures in the passion narratives, however. While only Matthew and Mark relate Jesus’ quotation, all four evangelists draw parallels from the psalm to Jesus’ execution in some way, which we will see as the Psalm progresses. However, this line has had the heaviest influence on Christian teaching. The fact that Christ, in his suffering, would utter this cry, has signified to Christian theologians throughout history that Christ was indeed fully human. The fact that he could feel the thoroughly human emotion of despair, in spite of his divine nature, is both a scandal and a miracle by which Christians affirm the dual nature of Christ. Even as the Son of the Father, he experienced the silence of God. In fact, in the closing hours of his life, the silencing of his Father is deafening. Jesus no doubt knew the entire psalm whose first line he is citing, and therefore we can understand his quote of the Psalm to the understood to possess not only the human emotion of despair, but also the paradoxically human emotion of hope despite despair that is evident in the rest of the psalm. Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest. The writer of this psalm is experiencing the silence of God at a critical moment in his life. He wants God to help and hear. He wants God to speak and act. God is silent.
When one is in trouble, one often wants to blame someone. Neither Jesus nor the psalmist seems to be assigning blame to God as the cause of his plight. Humans, being naturals at assigning credit and blame, are wont to construct a framework on which to hang their victimhood, and God often becomes the chief cause of pain in the minds of many people, whether through overt action or inexcusable absence. Most pastors have heard a suffering person in his or her office at some point asking, “Why did God do this to me?” or “Why did God let this happen to me?” The question that the psalmist asks, and that Jesus cries out is, instead, “Where is God in the midst of my suffering?” More specifically, we might ask, “What do we do when there seems to be no evidence that God is with us?” In the last hours of the life of Jesus, we have an answer to that question. We continue to give our lives for others and trust that God will speak and act.
Suffering reaches to the depth of all living things. After living things come to life, they mature and die. In human beings, an important part of maturing is the struggle toward adult life, as we move through the various stages of life, facing the challenges problems present, learning lessons, and moving on to the next stage is an important part of our maturity.
Yet, sometimes, more often than we care to admit, the problems surround us in a way that makes us feel overwhelmed. We want help. We extend a hand to someone, a friend, an organization for which we have worked, a church, and to God, and it seems as if no one is listening. No one, it seems, will be there.
“Why” is a common question for people to ask. We keep pushing the boundaries and limits of reasoning. We want to know. It seems as if some of our questions reach a limit. A rational explanation, especially in suffering, does seem to address the question. Somehow, we think life ought to be easier than this.
True, some of the obstacles and challenges in life we have put there. We need to have the strength to make the personal changes we need to make. Yet, sometimes, life throws so much at us, more than we think we can bear. We can have the faith that God is here. We can have faith that God will give us strength. We can have faith that these obstacles and challenges will be part of forming us into the people God intended. Of course, sometimes, such faith is difficult to have.
A message concerning suffering can be tough, both for the listener and for the one who gives it. Both of us know we will find no answers. Fear of experiencing suffering can lead us to hold back and fail to take the risks that are part of a human life. It can lead you to retreat from people. Yet, the people you need to accompany you through life are there. The only genuinely meaningless suffering is when you let suffering make you retreat into loneliness and despair. Suffering becomes meaningful when you let it open you to people in such a way that you become a source of inspiration to others. Human life is full of risk. Do not let the risk hold you back from engaging life fully and confidently. Yes, suffering is part of it, but life has far more positive to offer if we engage it.
Psalm 22: 3-5 senses the vast difference between God and persons, as well as God's continued silence. 3 Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.[2] 4 In you, our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. 5 To you they cried, and God saved them; in you, they trusted, and God did not put them to shame. The psalm as a whole is one in which the psalmist relates the all-too-common human situation of the endurance of suffering in the seeming absence of God. One reason it seems so unfair to the psalmist that God should be silent in his hour of need, however, is because he has known God to rescue the faithful from suffering in the past. The psalmist raises this issue by referring to the ancestors who trusted in the Lord. If God rescued them, he argues, why am I not experiencing the same type of salvation at God’s hand?
Psalm 22: 6-8 shows the real strain is on his faith, his mind overcome with sorrow and grief. He describes his desperate situation. 6 Nevertheless, I am a worm[3], and not human, scorned by others, and despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads; 8 “Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver— let him rescue the one in whom he delights!” The author experiences the desertion of other people. They mock his attempt to commit his cause to the Lord. The crowd at the execution of Jesus mocks him with these words (Psalm 22: 7-8 compared with Matthew 27: 43; Mark 15: 29-31; Luke 23: 35).
Psalm 22: 9-11 shows that, though his faith is under attack, he finds renewed strength. 9 Yet, you took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast. 10 On you, my mother cast me from my birth, and since my mother bore me, you have been my God. 11 Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help. He can look upon his life and see the faith of his mother nurturing him. If no one else helps him in his time of trouble, he wants God to help him.
We need to have confidence of the presence of God in our pain. Some of us need to offer a simple prayer: “Be as near to me as my troubles are.” Our prayer may not be so much to ask God to lighten our load as to give us a stronger back.[4]
Psalm 22: 12-13 shows the strong emotion that fear of enemies brings him. 12 Many bulls encircle me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me; 13 they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring[5] lion. Such images may be military images drawn from the history of the struggles of Israel with its neighbors. Bashan refers to the territory ruled by the Syrian city-states, such as Damascus, who were frequently enemies who threatened the northern border of Israel. The lion calls to mind the iconography of the Assyrian empire, whose rise to power spelled the end of the northern kingdom and contributed to the fall of Judah as well.
Many of us need to look at our obstacles in a unique way. Many of us think life is about to begin. Yet, we think some obstacle is in the way. We must go through that first. We have some unfinished business, time still to serve, or a debt we need to pay. With that behind us, life would begin. Yet, the obstacles we face are our lives. They shape our character and personality. They shape our destiny.[6]
I almost want to apologize for asking the following question, for it can seem so insensitive. Yet, something within me says that I must ask it. Can the struggles, obstacles, and suffering that are part of a human life have any positive effect? I am not ignoring the genuine pain we experience. Yet, if we assume the significance of this space and time we inhabit, if we look honestly at our experience, do we not have to agree that some of our times of greatest personal growth have been through some of the struggles we have had? Suffering and pain increase our awareness of life. Suffering becomes meaningful to the extent that it calls for protection and healing in those attacked by pain. It can show to us our limits and potential. Suffering can become meaningful because of how others respond to this suffering and how the one who suffers responds to it.[7]
The bulls of Bashan that surround us and threaten us are not all things beyond our control. Some of the demands and responsibilities they represent are the result of choices we have made. We need to say “No.” Our greatest enemy is that we attempt and start many projects in such a way that we feel overwhelmed, achieve nothing, and leave everything unfinished. We entertain the wish to undertake an excellent task that we will never accomplish. Such wishes may distract us from accomplishing something less grand, yet within our reach. Our enemy, in other words, is devising plans and beginnings and finishing nothing.[8]
Psalm 22: 14-15 may not refer to an illness but may be the result of distress. 14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; 15 my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death. This event in his life has caused profound distress, to the point that it affects him physically. This event feels like death to him.
A human life has many twists and turns. It has corners around which we cannot see. We can focus upon only the difficulties. In that way, the mind is its own place. It can make a heaven of hell, or it can make a hell of heaven.[9] We can focus upon the thorns of the rose bush and complain. We can also focus on the roses and rejoice because thorns have roses.[10] We wrestle with the ambiguities of a human life. It may well be true that one who is a pessimist early in life knows too much, while one who is an optimist later in life knows too little.[11] It may even be true that we treat someone as wise who despairs when others hope, whereas we dismiss those who hope when others despair.[12] Yet, it seems like this psalm is pointing us to embracing the ambiguity of a human life. The point is not to think negative or positive, optimistic, or pessimistic, but to embrace it all as the multi-layered reality in which human life consists. Thus, this Psalm, beginning with so much anguish, ends with an ever-widening circle of praise to the Lord. We need to embrace both the threat of nothingness and the fullness of being, both the abyss and the promise of life.
Psalm 22 makes me think of exploring the theme of singing in time of trouble, or the song that comes in the night. The experience that the Lord was present in times of trouble has inspired many songs. They express the experience that God reached out to deliver from certain catastrophe.
Some hymns come to mind. “It is well with my soul” (1876) refers to sorrows like sea billows roll, and that the devil will try to ruin, and trials may come, it is well with my soul. “Jesus, lover of my soul” (Charles Wesley 1740) refers to the nearer waters rolling and the tempest still high, that one sinks, faints, and falls, and that the Lord is the one who raises the fallen, cheers the faint, heals the sick, and leads the blind.
[1] Although the “privatization” of the deity is not unknown in prose passages in the Hebrew Bible (usually in the set expression “the Lord my God,” e.g., Deuteronomy 26:14; Joshua 14:8, 9; II Samuel 24:24; etc.), referring to the deity with the first-person singular possessive pronoun is much more common in poetry, especially in the psalms (e.g., 3:7; 5:2; 7:6; 18:2; etc., and including numerous instances of “O Lord my God”). The psalmist’s point should not be lost: Yahweh, and not another deity, is the psalmist’s god, and it is from Yahweh, and not any other god, that the psalmist expects action.
[2] Some of the textual difficulty presented by this psalm is found in the various translations of verse 3. The Masoretic text literally reads, “But you holy dwelling praises of Israel,” which the NRSV has reasonably rendered, “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.” The Revised English Bible reads, “You, the praise of Israel, are enthroned in the sanctuary,” the New American Bible reads, “Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the glory of Israel,” and the New Jerusalem Bible reads, “Yet you, the Holy One, who make your home in the praises of Israel ....” The general idea of the verse is clear, but the exact sense is not, and referring to Yahweh as “enthroned on the praises of Israel” is unique to this psalm and is late theological metaphoric imagery almost certainly derived from the period after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem (where Yahweh was classically understood to be enthroned on or above the temple’s cherubim, e.g., 1 Samuel 4:4; 2 Samuel 6:2; 2 Kings 19:15; 1 Chronicles 13:6; Psalm 80:1; 99:1; etc.).
[3] The psalmist’s comparison of himself to a “worm” and not a man (the Hebrew word is the gender-specific `ish) in verse 6 is uncommon but not unknown in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Job 17:14; 25:6; and esp. Isaiah 41:14). Ordinarily, the Hebrew word tole’ah/ tola’at denotes simply a physical worm (possibly the vine-weevil of Jonah 4:7, the maggots of Exodus 16:20, 24, or the tree larva coccus ilicis, that feeds on the Mediterranean oak, producing a scarlet-crimson fluid used for dying, reflected in Isaiah 1:18, “like crimson” [ka-tola’]).
[4] Phillips Brooks
[5] It is interesting to note, however, that the word for the roaring of the lion here (sho’eg), has the same verbal root as the word in verse 1 describing the groaning of the writer (sha’agati).
[6] Alfred D’Souza
[7] Paul Tillich (Systematic Theology, Part III, I, D3c)
[8] St. Francis de Sales, Finding God’s Will for You
[9] John Milton, Paradise Lost.
[10] Alphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden.
[11] The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little. --Mark Twain.
[12] I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope is admired by a large clan of persons as a sage. --John Stuart Mill, "Speech on perfectibility," 1828. utilitarian.org. Retrieved October 16, 2017.
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