David complaineth in great discouragement: he prayeth in great distress: he praiseth God.
To the chief musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.
Title. השׁחר אילת Aiieleth hashachar— Dr. Delaney supposes this and the 25th Psalm to have been written by David when he was at Mahanaim, the place where God appeared to Israel in his distress, Genesis 32. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th verses receive no small illustration and beauty, if supposed to be occasioned by the recollection of the former manifestation of divine Providence on this very spot; the ideas which arose successively in the Psalmist's mind being the following: God had made good his promises to Israel;—promises given in this very place:—at a time when Israel was in grievous distress; and the worship of Israel still continued to be holy:—Why, then, should not David hope that he would make good his promises likewise to him; even though to all appearance he was on the brink of destruction? The Jews themselves, in Midrash, apply this Psalm, as descriptive of the sufferings of the Messiah; and our Lord, in making use of the first words of it upon the cross, (when, as some think, he repeated the whole,) not only laid claim to the character of the Messiah, but likewise tacitly insinuated, that his sufferings, instead of shocking their faith, should convince them, that he only could be the Messiah predicted by the prophet, because the indignities that he had foretold, notwithstanding they were so extraordinary, and told with so much minuteness, were all accomplished in him. Certainly some passages in this psalm were more literally fulfilled in our Saviour than they were in David. We shall therefore consider it more particularly as referring to Christ. It is intitled השׁחר אילת Aiieleth hashachar; which is commonly rendered, The hind of the morning. "Many nice observations have been made on the titles of the psalms, but attended with the greatest uncertainty. Later eastern customs, respecting the titles of books and poems, may perhaps render these matters a little more determinate; but great precision and positiveness must not be expected. D'Herbelot, in his Bibliotheque Orientale, informs us, that a Persian metaphysical and mystical poem, was called the rose bush: a collection of moral essays, the garden of anemonies: another eastern book, the lion of the forest: That Scherfeddin ab Baussiri called a poem of his, written in praise of his Arabian prophet, (who, he affirmed, had cured him in his sleep of a paralytic disorder,) the habit of a dervise: and because he is there celebrated for having given sight to a blind person, the poem is also intitled by the author, the bright star. Other titles mentioned by him are as odd. The ancient Jewish taste may reasonably be supposed to have been of the same kind. Agreeable to which is the explanation which some learned men have given of David's commanding the Bow to be taught the children of Israel, 2 Samuel 1:18 which they apprehend did not relate to the use of that weapon in war, but to the hymn which he composed on occasion of the death of Saul and Jonathan; in which he mentioned the bow of Jonathan, and from whence he intitled that elegy, as they think, the bow. The present psalm might in like manner be called the hind of the morning; the 56th, the dove dumb in distant places; the 66th, the lily of the testimony; the 80th, the lilies of the testimony, in the plural; and the 45th simply the lilies. It is sufficiently evident, I should think, that these terms do not denote certain musical instruments: for if they did, why do the more common names of the timbrel, the harp, the psaltery, and the trumpet, with which psalms were sung, (Psalms 81:2-3.) never appear in those titles?—Do they signify certain tunes? It ought not, however, to be imagined that these tunes are so called from their bearing some resemblance to the noises made by the things mentioned in the titles; for lilies are silent, if this supposition should otherwise have been allowed with respect to the hind of the morning, Nor doth the 56th psalm speak of the mourning of the dove, but of its dumbness. If they signify tunes at all, they must signify, I should imagine, the tunes to which such songs or hymns were sung, as were distinguished by these names; and so the inquiry will terminate in this point: whether the psalms to which these titles were affixed were called by these names; or whether they were some other psalms or songs, to the tune of which these were to be sung. And as we do not find the bow referred to, nor the same name twice made use of, so far as our lights reach, it should seem most probable that these are the names of those very psalms to which they are prefixed. The 42nd psalm, it may be thought, might very well have been entitled the hind of the morning; because, as the hart panted after the water-brooks, so panted the soul of the Psalmist after God. But the present psalm, it is certain, might equally well be distinguished by this title; dogs have compassed me, the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me; words which allude to the eastern manner of hunting, namely, by assembling great numbers of people and inclosing the creatures that they hunt; and as the Psalmist did, in the 42nd psalm, rather choose to compare himself to a hart than a hind, the present much better answers this title, in which he speaks of his hunted soul in the feminine gender: Psalms 22:20. Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling (which in the original is feminine) from the power of the dog. No one who reflects on the circumstances of David at the time to which the 56th psalm refers, and considers the oriental taste, will wonder to see that psalm intitled the dove dumb in distant places; nor are lilies more improper to be made the title of other psalms, with suitable distinctions, than a garden of anemonies to be the name of a collection of moral discourses." See Observations, p. 318. Fenwick thinks that the title of this psalm should be rendered, the strength of the morning; and that it relates to Christ, as being the bright morning-star, or, day-spring from on high, as he is called, Luke 1:78. Him, the dew of whose birth is of the womb of the morning: The title therefore, says he, leads us to observe and contemplate in this psalm, the depth of that love and condescension which made the Son of God humble himself in the way here described, and even to the death of the cross, though he be the bright morning-star, and the day-spring from on high.
Psalms 22:1. My God, my God, &c.— It is observable, that Sabachthani, produced by the Evangelists, is not a Hebrew word; and hence it is most likely that our Saviour used that dialect which was most commonly understood by the Jews in his time; and which, it is probable, was a mixed dialect, composed of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac. Agreeably to this supposition, it is further observed, that eloi, eloi, as St. Mark expresses our Saviour's words, were more nearly Chaldee. The Hebrew, as it now stands, according to our manner of reading, is עזבתני למה אלי אלי aeli, aeli, lamah aezabtani. Our Saviour was not ignorant of the reason why he was afflicted; Why hast thou forsaken me? He knew that all the rigours and pains which he endured upon the cross were only because the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and God laid on him the iniquity of us all; Isaiah 53:5-6. The words imply then that he himself had done nothing to merit the evils which he suffered. This is the meaning of the question here, as also of that in Psalms 2:1. The latter part of the verse refers to Christ's prayer in the garden. See Luke 22:44.