A Cry Of Despair From The Heart, From One Who Yet Hopes In God (Psalms 22:1-10).
‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring (groaning)?'
God is here spoken of as El, (Eli, Eli - my God, my God - in the Aramaic Eloi or Eli).
In context it should be recognised that this is not a total cry of despair, for hope is shortly expressed in God. But it is certainly an indication of the deep distress of the speaker. The dual ‘my God, my God' is both an expression of faith (‘my') and an indication of urgency (compare Isaiah 49:14). The writer cannot understand why he should be undergoing such torment of spirit, and why the miseries of life should have been so thrust on him. It would fit well with David's worst periods in his flight from Saul as he felt himself being constantly hunted down by one whom he was aware was slightly mad, and who sought his life with the intensity of a madman.
What is worse the writer feels that his sufferings have gone on for far too long. God is still far from helping him, and he feels that his roaring like an animal in pain has apparently been in vain (compare Psalms 32:3; Psalms 38:8). None would know better than David the roaring in anguish of the lion as it was slain by the shepherd with no one to deliver it.
That Jesus applied it to Himself in the depths of His sufferings on the cross is not surprising. It would bring some comfort in the midst of His dreadful anguish and misery, as He faced alone the consequences of sin as they were laid upon Him, and the darkness of His struggles with the Enemy, to know that what He faced had already been foreshadowed in these words.
O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer,
And in the night season, and am not silent.'
The psalmist was experiencing his suffering and rejection day and night. He cried constantly to God, but he was seemingly not being heard. Daily his prayer would reach up to God, nightly he was in such despair that he could not sleep and utilised the time for more prayer. He could not be silent for his spirit was heavy in him.
This would certainly have been the experience of David, and it was so of many since. When a Christian is in despair as to why his prayers are seemingly not being answered he can take comfort from the thought that others have gone that way before, only to come out triumphant.
We may see here the daylight hours on the cross followed by the darkness that covered the whole earth when Jesus was being crucified. We cannot doubt that His cry to His God and Father was constant. It also reflects the darkness of Gethsemane when He could not be silent.
‘But you are holy,
O you who are enthroned on the praises of Israel.
‘Our fathers trusted in you,
They trusted, and you delivered them.
‘They cried to you, and were delivered,
They trusted in you, and were not put to shame.'
The psalmist now calls on God in terms of what He is and in the light of his memories of Israel's past. He knows that God is holy, set apart and distinct, right in all He does. He does not doubt, therefore, that what God allows must be good and that He will do what is right in this circumstance too. And this reminds him of how Israel had suffered in the past, but had in the end in their darkness always enjoyed God's deliverance.
‘But you are holy.' He gives pause for thought. He recognises that God is set apart and unknowable. There is no searching of His understanding. His ways are not our ways and therefore we must hesitate before we speak. ‘God is in Heaven and you are on the earth, therefore let your words be few' (Ecclesiastes 5:1). He must not prejudge God, and he can be sure that what this holy God does is right and that He will in the end save His people. Compare Habakkuk 1:12.
‘O you who are enthroned on the praises of Israel..' For he knows too that He ‘is enthroned on the praises of Israel'. He is Israel's God, and their covenant Lord and King, and they worship Him constantly and truly. He is sure therefore that He Who thus receives their worship and homage will not fail them.
‘‘Our fathers trusted in you. They trusted, and you delivered them. They cried to you, and were delivered, they trusted in you, and were not put to shame.' His confidence is boosted by his knowledge of God's mercies in the past. Here we have an indication that his troubles are not just personal. There are the whole people to consider. But their fathers had trusted in God, indeed had trusted threefold, (‘they trusted -- they trusted -- they trusted') and God had never failed them. When they cried to Him at times when they were almost in despair that there could be any hope, they did not end up shamefaced, for in the end He always responded by delivering them. He could not fail to respond to threefold faith.
Therefore is he now confident that God will respond in this situation too, however bad it may seem. Certainly even as he fled from Saul David could see the despair of Israel. The Philistines were pressing in on them, demanding, in many parts, heavy tribute, and Saul was fighting against them a losing battle. Things looked bleak indeed.
And Jesus too on the cross, meditating on these words, knew better than any how good God had been to His people. Indeed was that not why He was there?
‘But I am a worm, and no man,
A reproach of men, and despised of the people.
Yet the psalmist wants God to know the depths of the humiliation that he feels, and that he does not see himself sufficient to deliver Israel. He feels like a worm, writhing in the dust, treated with contempt, kicked and despised. He feels that he is not a man at all, but the lowest of the low, constantly under the reproach of men. And anyway they do not want him. They despise him.
Even a man like David would have known such moments of darkness and despair when all seemed lost and he felt like lying down in the dust and dying (compare Elijah's cry in 1 Kings 19:10; 1 Kings 19:14). And this was the man after God's own heart. But it is when man is at his lowest that God steps in to deliver.
And such was the treatment meted out to Jesus on the cross as He was treated as less than a human being, and as those who should have worshipped Him mocked instead and constantly reproached Him. He was treated as a worm.
The parallels with Isaiah are significant. There too YHWH's servant was called a worm (Isaiah 41:14). There too the favoured of God was as one despised by men (Isaiah 49:7; Isaiah 50:6; Isaiah 53:3). There too they shrank from him because he was scarcely human (Isaiah 52:14; Isaiah 53:2-3).
‘All those who see me laugh me to scorn,
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
‘Commit it to YHWH (literally ‘roll it on YHWH'), let him deliver him,
Let him rescue him, seeing he delights in him.'
The psalmist is aware of what people are saying about him. He feels deeply their scorn and their insults, and their despising of the faith that he had constantly asserted before them. In the good days he had declared his confidence in YHWH. Now they threw it back in his face. Their thought was, ‘Did not his present position show that they had been in the right and not him?' So they laughed at him, mocking him. They made faces at him; they shook their heads in amused reproach (see Psalms 35:21; Job 16:4; Job 16:10; Lamentations 2:15). Where was his favoured position now? They committed him mockingly to YHWH. Let him roll his problem on YHWH. If YHWH really did really favour him, let Him now demonstrate it. But they were confident that He would not.
‘Seeing He delights in him.' Previously his faith had made them feel uncomfortable. Now they retaliate with sarcasm. Did God really delight in him? Well they could see for themselves how true that was.
So might David well have felt with almost the whole of Israel against him, his popularity dissipated, and his rivals glad to see him gone. There is nothing like success for winning enemies, especially among rivals. And even more deeply would Jesus have felt it on the cross. He had come purposing only good, and they had rejected Him and treated Him as though He were evil, even mocking His Father's purposes. These very things were done to Him and these very words were spoken against Him by His enemies round the cross (Matthew 27:39; Matthew 27:43). They did not realise that they were fulfilling prophecy and condemning themselves. ‘Laugh me to scorn.' The verb in LXX is also used in Luke 23:35 of the rulers jeering at Jesus.
‘But you are he who took me out of the womb,
You made me trust when I was on my mother's breasts.
I was cast on you from the womb,
You are my God since my mother bore me.'
But the psalmist is very much aware of God's hand on his life and that, in spite of present circumstance, he did trust in God in the way that his reproachers doubted, and that he did believe that God would deliver him. It was God Who had brought him to birth, it was God Who from earliest days had nurtured his faith (compare Psalms 71:5-6), it was God on Whom he had constantly relied (compare Psalms 55:22), for often he had had no one else to turn to, and it was to God that he had constantly looked from when he was very young. Their reproaches were therefore false.
So would David have felt as he looked back over his life, for his heart had been right from earliest days, which is why he was God's chosen (1 Samuel 16:7; 1 Samuel 16:12). He would remember too how he had been cast on God when the lion and the bear had come against his flock (1 Samuel 17:34), and how God had delivered Goliath into his hands even while he was but a youth (1 Samuel 17:42-50).
And of no one was this more true than of Jesus, Who was miraculously born at the express will of His Father (Luke 1:35), and Who had looked to Him and learned from Him from His earliest days (Luke 2:40).