Study

a Bible passage

Click a verse to see commentary

Select a resource above

22. Psalm 22

¹ My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
   Why are you so far from saving me,
   so far from my cries of anguish?
² My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
   by night, but I find no rest. Or night, and am not silent

    ³ Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
   you are the one Israel praises. Or Yet you are holy, / enthroned on the praises of Israel
⁴ In you our ancestors put their trust;
   they trusted and you delivered them.
⁵ To you they cried out and were saved;
   in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

    ⁶ But I am a worm and not a man,
   scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
⁷ All who see me mock me;
   they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
⁸ “He trusts in the LORD,” they say,
   “let the LORD rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
   since he delights in him.”

    ⁹ Yet you brought me out of the womb;
   you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
¹⁰ From birth I was cast on you;
   from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

    ¹¹ Do not be far from me,
   for trouble is near
   and there is no one to help.

    ¹² Many bulls surround me;
   strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.
¹³ Roaring lions that tear their prey
   open their mouths wide against me.
¹⁴ I am poured out like water,
   and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
   it has melted within me.
¹⁵ My mouth Probable reading of the original Hebrew text; Masoretic Text strength is dried up like a potsherd,
   and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
   you lay me in the dust of death.

    ¹⁶ Dogs surround me,
   a pack of villains encircles me;
   they pierce Dead Sea Scrolls and some manuscripts of the Masoretic Text, Septuagint and Syriac; most manuscripts of the Masoretic Text me, / like a lion my hands and my feet.
¹⁷ All my bones are on display;
   people stare and gloat over me.
¹⁸ They divide my clothes among them
   and cast lots for my garment.

    ¹⁹ But you, LORD, do not be far from me.
   You are my strength; come quickly to help me.
²⁰ Deliver me from the sword,
   my precious life from the power of the dogs.
²¹ Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;
   save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

    ²² I will declare your name to my people;
   in the assembly I will praise you.
²³ You who fear the LORD, praise him!
   All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!
   Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!
²⁴ For he has not despised or scorned
   the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
   but has listened to his cry for help.

    ²⁵ From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;
   before those who fear you Hebrew him I will fulfill my vows.
²⁶ The poor will eat and be satisfied;
   those who seek the LORD will praise him—
   may your hearts live forever!

    ²⁷ All the ends of the earth
   will remember and turn to the LORD,
and all the families of the nations
   will bow down before him,
²⁸ for dominion belongs to the LORD
   and he rules over the nations.

    ²⁹ All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
   all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—
   those who cannot keep themselves alive.
³⁰ Posterity will serve him;
   future generations will be told about the Lord.
³¹ They will proclaim his righteousness,
   declaring to a people yet unborn:
   He has done it!

9. Surely thou. David again here raises a new fortress, in order to withstand and repel the machinations of Satan. He briefly enumerates the benefits which God had bestowed upon him, by which he had long since learned that he was his father. Yea, he declares that even before he was born God had shown towards him such evidence of his fatherly love, that although now overwhelmed with the darkness of death, he might upon good ground venture to hope for life from him. And it is the Holy Spirit who teaches the faithful the wisdom to collect together, when they are brought into circumstances of fear and trouble, the evidences of the goodness of God, in order thereby to sustain and strengthen their faith. We ought to regard it as an established principle, that as God never wearies in the exercise of his liberality, and as the most exuberant bestowment cannot exhaust his riches, it follows that, as we have experienced him to be a father from our earliest infancy, he will show himself the same towards us even to extreme old age. In acknowledging that he was taken from the womb by the hand of God, and that God had caused him to confide upon the breasts of his mother, the meaning is, that although it is by the operation of natural causes that infants come into the world, and are nourished with their mother’s milk, yet therein the wonderful providence of God brightly shines forth. This miracle, it is true, because of its ordinary occurrence, is made less account of by us. But if ingratitude did not put upon our eyes the veil of stupidity, we would be ravished with admiration at every childbirth in the world. What prevents the child from perishing, as it might, a hundred times in its own corruption, before the time for bringing it forth arrives, but that God, by his secret and incomprehensible power, keeps it alive in its grave? And after it is brought into the world, seeing it is subject to so many miseries, and cannot stir a finger to help itself, how could it live even for a single day, did not God take it up into his fatherly bosom to nourish and protect it? It is, therefore, with good reason said, that the infant is cast upon him; for, unless he fed the tender little babes, and watched over all the offices of the nurse, even at the very time of their being brought forth, they are exposed to a hundred deaths, by which they would be suffocated in an instant. Finally, David concludes that God was his God. God, it is true, to all appearance, shows the like goodness which is here celebrated even to the brute creation; but it is only to mankind that he shows himself to be a father in a special manner. And although he does not immediately endue babes with the knowledge of himself, yet he is said to give them confidence, because, by showing in fact that he takes care of their life, he in a manner allures them to himself; as it is said in another place,

“He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry,” (Psalm 147:9.)

Since God anticipates in this manner, by his grace, little infants before they have as yet the use of reason, it is certain that he will never disappoint the hope of his servants when they petition and call upon him. This is the argument by which David struggled with, and endeavored to overcome temptation.