The Sufferer's Prayer For Deliverance And Provides A Description of His Predicament (Psalms 22:11-21).
That we are to see some of these descriptions as figurative comes out in Psalms 22:21 where the psalmist sums all up by describing it as being saved from the lion's mouth and from the horns of the wild ox. He has a vivid imagination and knows much about the hunt and about the behaviour of wild beasts, and how they are treated in the hunt.
‘Do not be far from me, for trouble is near,
For there is none to help.'
Aware of trouble approaching the sufferer cries to God for help. In Psalms 22:1 he had said that God was far from him. Now he pleads that it might not be so, for, if He is, he is lost. He confirms that he has nowhere else to turn and asks God ‘not to be far from Him', for he is facing almost impossible dangers.
‘Many bulls have encompassed me,
Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
They gape on me with their mouth,
As a ravening and a roaring lion.'
His enemies are gathered against him on all sides. They are like bulls which have a tendency to gather around any strange object and can easily be moved to attack it. Yes, they are like the strongest of bulls, the strong bulls of Bashan, an area famous for its lush pastures (Deuteronomy 32:14; Amos 4:1). They are impenetrable. And their mouths are wide open to swallow him like the mouth of a ravening and roaring lion (see Psalms 7:2). (This mixing of metaphors confirms that he as enemies in mind, not bulls). Perhaps some of his main enemies came from Bashan, east of Jordan in the north.
‘I am poured out like water,
And all my bones are out of joint,
My heart is like wax,
It is melted within me.'
This description is probably not to be taken literally, although he may well have been going through a bout of severe illness which made him feel totally out of sorts. ‘Poured out like water' parallels the ‘melted wax'. He feels drained and empty, with his joints stiff and painful as if the bones were out of joint, and his innermost heart failing under the pressure. Compare Psalms 6:2-3; Psalms 6:6-7; Joshua 7:5). But if he has just fled from a defeat it is always possible that he had suffered a fall in his eagerness to escape.
In his constant flight from Saul David may well have experienced such misery more than once. But this may have been a particularly bad experience.
For Jesus this did become literally true. Not only would He be physically drained and probably suffering from hypothermia in the hot sun, but crucifixion could literally take His bones out of joint and His sufferings would certainly affect His mental state and His emotions (His heart) so that they seemed like wax melted within Him.
‘My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
And my tongue cleaves to my jaws.'
The idea of the potsherd is probably of a pot that has been overheated and become so dried out that it has cracked and broken. The tongue cleaving to his jaws represented excessive thirst. So did the psalmist feel totally dried up, with his strength gone (see Psalms 32:4). This may have been as a result of his illness, or the result of flight through hot, desert places, or both.
David may well have experienced such conditions as he fled through the desert to escape from Saul's searchers, and had to hide in inhospitable places, especially if he was also ill at the time.
It was certainly Jesus' experience on the cross to suffer excessive thirst, which He refused to quench until His work was done (Matthew 27:34).
And you have brought me into the dust of death,
For dogs have encompassed me,
A company of evildoers have enclosed me,
They pierced my hands and my feet.'
It may be that the psalmist had been hunted down with dogs, dragged down into the dust to die, surrounded by those who hunted him, and had his hands and feet pierced by the spears of the hunters to render him helpless, or by the teeth of the dogs, only to be delivered at the last moment. But it may be that he is simply vividly describing the fate that he shortly envisages will be his unless some miracle happens, as he hears the baying of the dogs in the distance, and knows what they will do with any fugitive they catch, and is aware also of how men like his pursuers mutilate a man so that he can no longer harm them, cutting the tendons of hands and feet. A third alternative is that he is depicting his fate in picturesque terms take from his knowledge of the hunt.
This may have been true of any Davidic king fleeing for his life after a resounding defeat, but if this was David fleeing from Saul he would know that he was sufficiently feared as a warrior to warrant such particular attentions (compare Judges 1:6-7).
Alternately the description of ‘the dogs' may simply be metaphorical as a description of rabid humans. All were familiar with the packs of savage dogs that scavenged outside cities, and sometimes even within. They provided a fitting illustration of those whose hatred was so intense that they would literally snarl at him when they caught him.
And there is no more vivid way of describing the packs of evil men who had gathered to hunt Jesus down and see that He met the awful fate that they had planned for Him, than as a pack of mangy dogs. That such men gathered round Him and pierced His hands and His feet is without question.
‘You have brought me into the dust of death.' This describes the final ignominy for a hunted man as he is finally caught and dragged down into the dust to die, whether literally or metaphorically. But here he sees himself as brought to this pass by God Himself. It was the will of YHWH to bruise him (Isaiah 53:10).
‘They pierced my hands and my feet.' Unless an unknown verb or poetic form is in use the Massoretic Text has ‘like a lion (ca'ari) my hands and my feet'. ‘They pierced' is ca'aru as suggested by LXX and other versions. But i and u (yod and waw) can be very similar in Hebrew copying and this may be a rare copying mistake in MT, so that LXX has preserved the true rendering. The original thought may then be that the dogs have bitten his hands and feet and pierced him with their teeth, or that the hunters have done it with spears and arrows. That it literally happened to Jesus we know through the nails on the cross.
The Targum has the conflated ‘biting like a lion'. It is, however, always possible that he is seen as being meted out the normal treatment for a lion when caught and kept alive. with its claws being broken by a hammer or extracted, thus signifying ‘they smashed/rendered useless/mangled my hands and my feet'. It may be significant that there is no reference to this phrase in the New Testament.
‘I may count all my bones,
They look and stare on me.'
He has been so hard-pressed, and so without solid food over so long a period, that he has been reduced to skin and bones. As they tear from him his rich clothing to share the spoils among them he is able to count all his ribs, while his adversaries stand around and stare at him in grim delight at how he has suffered.
Again there may be an element of exaggeration in this, and it is therefore quite likely that such words might have been found on the lips of David, especially if he was suffering from the nightmare of what might well shortly happen to him.
Of Jesus again the words were literally true. After His ill-treatment at the hands of Jewish leaders and Romans, being hung and distorted on a cross would make his bones clearly visible beneath His skin, as His adversaries stood around and stared.
‘They part my clothing among them,
And on my vesture do they cast lots.'
If the psalmist's clothing was of rich quality they may well have stripped him and given him an old piece of cloth, even if his nakedness bothered them at all (see Isaiah 20:4). This would be their reward for capturing such an important prisoner.
We can well see that the thought of such ignominy would have been a nightmare to David, the practise possibly being well known to him as occurring among soldiers, and the mention of the vesture (the undergarment, a seamless tunic) stressing total nakedness. This method of sharing out the clothing of captives, which was both simple and practical, may well have been a practise continued through the centuries, although David might have been thinking of it as something that would occur after he had been killed. Stripping the dead after battle was common practise.
It specifically happened to Jesus on His death, and is claimed as the ‘filling full' of prophecy (John 19:23-24).
‘But do not be far off, O YHWH,
O you, my succour, hasten to help me.'
So the sufferer turns to YHWH for help. God is his succour and he looks to Him for assistance. This would suggest that what he has described is simply near expectation, rather than what has actually happened, a vivid nightmare of what lay ahead if things did not change quickly. He still hoped to be delivered from the worst.
‘Deliver my soul from the sword,
My darling from the power of the dog.'
This is confirmed here by his hope to be delivered from the power of the dog (Psalms 22:16). He wants to escape death by a sword and mauling by a dog. ‘My darling'. Literally ‘my only one'. He is thinking of his own unique life which is most precious to him, and dearer to him than almost anything else on earth.
Jesus' deliverance would be by resurrection.
‘Save me from the lion's mouth,
Yes, from the horns of the wild-oxen you have answered me.
So he puts in his final plea. Let him be saved from the lion's mouth. The lion here may well be Saul. And then in the second part of the verse the whole spirit of the psalm changes, as he suddenly recognises that he will be saved indeed. He is about to be delivered from the horns of ‘the wild oxen' because God has answered him.
Or we may render, ‘save me from the lion's mouth, yes, from the horns of the wild oxen' and then with sudden enlightenment - ‘You have answered me.' Either way it is a switch that declares that God has heard his prayers.