This marvellous Psalm is a wonderful prophecy, which might seem as if it had been composed after the suffering of our Lord; yet it was written many hundreds of years before his incarnation and death. It is «a Psalm of David», and is dedicated «To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar,» or, as the margin renders it, «the hind of the morning.» We know who that hunted hind of the morning is; we seem to see him panting, his flanks white with foam, pressed by the dogs, almost torn to pieces by the cruel enemy. The Psalm begins with words that, in all their fullness, belong to nobody else but our Well-beloved.
Psalms 22:1. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Every word is emphatic; you may put the stress where you please, upon every single word. «My God, my God.» With two hands he takes hold on God, crying, «My God, my God,» «Eloi, Eloi, my Strong One, why hast Thou forsaken me? «Or read it, «Why hast thou forsaken me?» «Why hast thou forsaken me?» «Why hast thou forsaken me?» You get a different shade of meaning each time, but each meaning is true.
Psalms 22:1. Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
The Saviour's prayers had ceased to be articulate. They had become in his own judgment like the pained crying of a wounded beast. He calls them «my roaring.» Oh, what prayers were those of our Lord on the cross! Sometimes we too feel as if we could not pray; we can only sigh, and sob, and groan. Well, if it even came to roaring, we should have a fuller sympathy with Christ, for he could say, «Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?»
Psalms 22:2-3. O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
Jesus will find no fault with God. Even if in his dire extremity God forsakes him, yet he will not utter even a whisper against him: «Thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel»
Psalms 22:4-6. Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man:
The allusion here is to a little red worm which, when it is crushed, seems to be all blood, and nothing else; and the Saviour compares himself to that little red worm, «and no man.»
Psalms 22:6. A reproach of men, and despised of the people.
They would not let him be numbered with them; they accounted him as an offcast and an outcast.
Psalms 22:7-8. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, he trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.
Will you try to picture the Saviour saying all these words as be hangs upon the cross? That is the best commentary upon the Psalm. Hanging there, nailed to the cruel wood, in terrible bodily and mental anguish deserted of God, he soliloquizes after this sad fashion. You will understand it all so well if you have him in your mind's eye as we are reading.
Psalms 22:9-10. But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly.
We could not help ourselves then; at the moment of our birth, everything depended upon God; so it does in the moment of our death. It is well to remember those years of helpless infancy, when we could not feed ourselves. We were taken care of then, when we hung in absolute impotence upon our mother's breast, then surely, if a second childhood should come, if all our powers should fail us, and we should be once more as weak as we were at our birth, he that helped us in the beginning will help us in the end. Thus the Saviour comforted himself as he went on praying:
Psalms 22:11. Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
Oh, the bitterness of that cry, «None to help»!» They have all gone. The disciples have all fled. Judas has betrayed me. Peter has denied me. There is none to help. Be not far from me.» There stand the Roman soldiers, and the high priest, and the Scribes and Pharisees; and Jesus says:
Psalms 22:12-14. Many bulls have compassed me; strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gaped upon we with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint:
They were no doubt dislocated by the dreadful shaking and jarring that our Saviour must have suffered when they dashed the cross into the hole dug for it.
Psalms 22:14. My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.
When the heart goes, everything goes, when the heart fails, and begins to melt, then it seems as if everything is loosening, and the man is in the anguish of death.
Psalms 22:15. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws;
Our Lord was parched with the fever brought on by the terrible anguish and strain upon the hands and feet, which are full of nerves and very tender. A slight wound of the thumb has brought on lockjaw, but what the wounds of the Saviour's delicate and sensitive body must have been we cannot possibly tell: «My tongue cleaveth to my jaws.»
Psalms 22:16. And thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
He felt as if his very frame was all turning to the dust of which the body is made. So complete is the breaking of the whole manhood when a strong fever is upon one.
Psalms 22:16. For dogs have compassed me:
There was the ribald crowd; not this time the bulls of Bashan, the great ones, but the mob, the masses of the common people hooting at him: «Dogs have compassed me.»
Psalms 22:16. The assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they forced my hands and my feet.
Can anybody else be speaking here but Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of David, the King of the Jews? Now is this bind of the morning hunted till the dogs and the hunters have made a circle round him: «The assembly of the wicked have inclosed me.» Here is Christ's crucifixion beyond all doubt: «They pierced my hands and my feet.»
Psalms 22:17. I may tell all my bones:
He is so emaciated that, as he looks down upon his body, he says, «I may tell all my bones.»
Psalms 22:17. They look and stare upon me.
The delicate modesty of the Saviour is shocked. They have stripped him, and hung him up, and there they stand and gloat their cruel eyes upon his matchless body: «They look and stare upon me.»
Psalms 22:18. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
How accurate is this description even to the least detail! How wondrously was this poet-prophet inspired when he thus drew the portrait of the crucified Christ! «They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.»
Psalms 22:19-21. But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me. Deliver my soul from the sword: my darling from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the home of the unicorns.
So far, you see, the Psalm describes the sufferings of our Divine Redeemer and then it changes. The light of the sun has broken out from the midday darkness. God has smiled on him once more, and the Psalm changes its tone altogether as the Saviour congratulates himself upon the result of his passion. The Psalm ends with these memorable words, «It is finished.» Our version puts it, «He hath done this.» It might just as well be rendered, «It is finished,» for the sense is precisely the same; and when Jesus had said this, he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.