Psalm 22 To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.
This Psalm is the best and most complete description of the crucifixion and death of the LORD Jesus Christ with Isaiah chapter 53 being the second most complete narrative in all of Scripture. King David was writing this prophetic Psalm under the influence of the Spirit of God as there was no way he could have seen and felt the impact of the suffering of the Son of God or have been able to report the details of the suffering of Messiah without it being revealed to him.
Verse 1 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46 King David penned these words over 1000 years before Jesus spoke them while hanging on the cross, as recorded in the book of Matthew. There are many scoffers today trying to vilify the Word of God as untrue and a fable or containing errors, yet the precision of passages like verse one above testifies to the authorship of Scripture, to the authority of Scripture, to the authentic nature of Scripture, and to the accuracy of Scripture. King David under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit was seeing and feeling the very crucifixion event of our LORD Jesus Christ and reciting the very words He would speak. Remember that Jesus was a son of King David or a descendant and that Jesus was King David’s saviour. King David felt and recorded in song the feelings of abandonment that Jesus felt as his body was dying on the cross. He who was without sin was in His body of flesh feeling the full burden of mankind’s sin that was placed on Him during the crucifixion for the purpose of providing atonement and remittance of mankind’s sin.
Verse 2 O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
Jesus only spoke seven times while hanging on the cross and what King David has written in this Psalm reveals what He was thinking during this terrible time or torture and impending physical death.
When was Jesus crucified? In the day time. He was also on the cross in the dark as it became like night from 12 PM to 3 PM. “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.” Matthew 27:45 This event of the day becoming night was prophesied in Amos 8:9-10. “And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day: And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.”
Verse 3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
Application: Where does God live? In the praises of His people. This is why churches sing in their services. Praising God is giving Him a complement. When the music in a church service is sound in both its words and melody, it is easy to forget the physical life and all of its problems and temptations and to focus on the LORD. The song service is important, and King David knew this and so wrote many of the Psalms contained in this book of Scripture.
Verses 4-5 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. 5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
Here Jesus is remembering bringing out the Hebrew people from captivity in Egypt. Remember that God Almighty manifests as Father, Son and Holy Ghost all at the same time because He is powerful and beyond mankind’s understanding. Much of what is known about God is taken by faith in His written Word, the Bible. So the only begotten Son of God, Jesus, has been in existence since before the Creation and before the foundation of the world. “In the beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God.” John 1:1-2 Nothing can be clearer than this. Jesus lives in eternity and so He only took on a body of flesh when coming into time and being born of a virgin, Mary. And when He rose from the dead, He went back into eternity and sent His Spirit to comfort mankind in His physical absence. Jesus is the Creator. “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” John 1:3-4 So it was Jesus who communicated face to face with the Prophet Moses, who rescued the Hebrew people from Egyptian tyranny, and who sustained them in the wilderness for over forty years. And while on the cross, He was remembering delivering the Hebrews.
Verses 6-8 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. 7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, 8 He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.
King David was, through the Spirit of God, sensing and feeling the emotions and the pain of the LORD Jesus Christ when crucified even though he did not fully understand the ramifications of what he was expressing in this Psalm. While Jesus was nailed to the cross He would have looked out upon the crowd of people gathered to watch Him, much like in the Western days when people flocked to town to see a hanging. He would have seen their faces and heard their words as they scorned and mocked Him. He was treated like a lowly worm and He was despised by the very people He came to save and who He had served during His ministry on Earth. They mocked the very God who had rescued their fathers from Egypt and who had established them on the very land they were standing on outside of Jerusalem while they were hatefully yelling and belittling Him.
Verses 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. 10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly.
Here King David is recording Jesus thinking about His earthly mother and His physical life with her and His Father with whom He had been in eternity past before entering time.
Verse 11 Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
Application: Jesus was forsaken by His disciples and by all the people who had benefited from His ministry. He was alone and His body of flesh was in agony. He was forsaken by His Heavenly Father also because of the sins of mankind that He was bearing in His body of flesh. The man, Christ Jesus, was helpless. The God, Christ Jesus, was not helpless and could have intervened and brought His body of flesh down from the cross, but He did not. Why? Because He saw all the righteous people in Paradise from the days of Adam and Eve up to the present time of His suffering, and He saw all the righteous people alive in His day and into the future, all who needed a Saviour. He saw down through time and chose to take the punishment for mankind’s sin so that mankind could live and not spend eternity in Hell. It was a choice between saving His only begotten Son or saving you and me, and He chose you and me. All followers of Christ are His chosen people, the Israel of God, and they were chosen at Calvary.
Verses 12-13 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. 13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.
Bashan was a physical land region that was ruled by King Og who was a giant and which God gave to Joshua and the Hebrew people when they were conquering the land of Palestine. It was fertile land and so a great place to raise cattle, and it also had giants inhabiting it. The strong bulls of Bashan is metaphor for strong opposition and danger. Here King David is seeing the mass of people gathered to see the Crucifixion of Jesus and describing them as bulls. These people were, on that day, inhabited by devils who are described as roaring lions. Notice that they had their mouths open but it does not say that any speech was coming out of their mouths. Could it be that their mouths were open but the voices of devils were coming forth to taunt Jesus?
Verses 14-15 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
Here King David is describing using word pictures what a body of flesh would be experiencing when nailed to a piece of wood and left to hang with the whole weight of that body being supported by spikes driven into skin, muscle, bone, ligaments and tendons. Life would be slowly ebbing away and the ability to think clearly or to even speak would be difficult if not impossible because of the intense pain being felt with every breath and every movement of any joint in the arms and legs. In order not to suffocate, victims of this brutal form of capital punishment would have to constantly try to push their body upwards so that the chest could expand and contract and exchange gases. The stress on the heart would be intense and heart failure could ocurr readily in those victims in poor physical condition. The sheer weight of the victim’s body would cause joints to pull apart and separate. Sweating from pain and fear and fatigue and lack of fluids would cause the mouth to dry and affect swallowing. Death would ocurr eventually and the victim’s body would be disposed of and it would decompose back to the dust from which it was made. If time was short and victims did not die before sundown, their legs would be broken so that they could no longer shift their body upwards to breathe, and they would suffocate to death.
Application: As King David was writing this part of his Psalm, he would not have had any knowledge of the suffering Messiah that came to earth over a thousand years later and the fact that the man, Christ Jesus, died on the cross and did not have His legs broken by the Roman soldiers, thus fulfilling prophecy, and that His body did not see corruption because it rose from the dead. However, King David was a prophet of the most high God and he saw the future through the anointing of the Spirit of God and was therefore able to write what he saw. “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” Psalm 16:10 “Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.” Acts 2:29-32
Verses 16-17 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.
This is the third time that King David records Jesus Christ feeling the stares of the people. Jesus was beaten to a pulp before being nailed to the cross and so His body was disfigured, and because the victims’ clothes were removed from them before crucifixion, the bones of Jesus’ body would be readily seen as He struggled to breathe and to move up and down on the cross. “…his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men.” Isaiah 52:14 All the people there that day were wicked and possessed by Satan and his devils. There were few who had compassion for the plight of Jesus and of the two thieves being tortured and killed with Him. Here King David writes about the piercing of hands and feet, but this form of capital punishment only came into existence with the Babylonians, and at the time of writing this, Israel was at its height of power and prestige under the anointed leadership of King David and then under his son, King Solomon, and so the Hebrews had not experienced Babylonian captivity as yet to know about crucifixion. But King David was prophesying and revealing an event that would happen 1000 years or so later on the time line of history.
Verse 18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
“And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.” Matthew 27:35 To understand the significance of this sentence it is necessary to go back to Exodus 28 and 29 where the requirements for the high priest’s garment was given to Moses by the LORD. That garment was to be a thing of beauty which was passed down from high priest to his son who would be the next high priest. It was never to be torn or rent, and to make sure this would not happen, a special border was sewn around the neck and the hem of the garment so that it could not be torn accidentally. “And there shall be an hole in the top of it, in the midst thereof: it shall have a binding of woven work round about the hole of it as it were the hole of an habergeon, that it be not rent:” Exodus 28:32 It symbolized the priesthood of Israel. During the trial of Jesus, the reigning high priest, Caiaphas, tore or rent this garment, something that was never to be done, symbolizing the end of the Jewish priesthood and the Temple worship. See Matthew 27. The Jews were forsaken and the priesthood was no longer theirs as they had rejected the one true Priest, Jesus Christ. But Jesus’ garments were not torn or rent, symbolizing the one true Temple and His Priesthood which is forever and forever. And His garments were given over to the Roman soldiers or the Gentiles, symbolizing that the Gentiles now had access to the Kingdom of God and to the High Priest, Jesus Christ. What the Jews threw away the Gentiles inherited and the Christian Church was born on the day of Pentecost. Praise the LORD.
Verses 19-21 But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me. 20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog. 21 Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.
As Jesus was dying on the cross, His body of flesh was to be saved from the power of Satan and his angels and from the power of death as death could not keep Him in the grave.
The unicorn in the verse above is not the mythical creature presented today in children’s toys and cartoons and art work. The unicorn was a wild ox. Horns symbolize power, strength, and authority. According to my pastor, David Meyer, the LORD took him to Ezekiel 1 to understand the meaning of “thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns”. This chapter in Ezekiel describes archangels, Cherubim, as having four faces: one the face of a man, one the face of an eagle, one the face of lion on the right side, and one the face of an ox on the left side. When facing the north which is where Heaven is (sides of the north) the west would be the direction the face of the ox was oriented. A trip to Numbers 2:18 in which the layout for the Hebrews camping in the wilderness is discussed, it states, “On the west side shall be the standard of the camp of Ephraim according to their armies: and the captain of the sons of Ephraim shall be Elishama, the son of Ammihud.” The meaning of the name, Elishama, is “my God has heard”. In the Old Testament tabernacle layout, the entrance to the tabernacle was on the east end of the tent, and so the priests sacrificed the sin offering at the entrance of the tabernacle on the east side and then walked towards the west to enter into the tabernacle and into the presence of the LORD God. Symbolically, the unsaved come from the east and repent at the altar and then spiritually travel west into the spiritual Kingdom of God and into His presence, leaving their sin at the door of the tabernacle and entering into a new life with the LORD who is the tabernacle/temple, being the chief corner stone and all believers becoming living stones built upon the firm foundation of that corner stone. In essence, King David is reporting Jesus Christ as saying that God has heard Him from the cross on behalf of all the people who are to be saved by His death and resurrection.
Application: The four faces of the Cherubim portray the character of the LORD Jesus Christ and are presented in the four Gospels in the New Testament. Matthew presents Jesus as the lion or King. Matthew gives a genealogy of Jesus from Abraham to Joseph, the husband of Mary and the custodian of Jesus. Earthly rulers always had a genealogy proving their right to a throne. Mark presents Jesus as the ox, a servant. Jesus stayed on the cross at Calvary because He was serving mankind so that they could be redeemed and saved from sin, death and Hell. Servants were not considered important enough to have a genealogy and so there is no genealogical record in the Book of Mark. Luke presents Jesus as the man and records His genealogy going backwards to the first man, Adam. John presents Jesus as the eagle which is representative of God Almighty high above the Earth. John gives a brief genealogy of Jesus proving that He is God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” John 1:1-4
Verses 22-23 I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. 23 Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.
Here King David seems to write from his own, personal perspective rather than from one of prophesy. Perhaps after writing under the anointing of the Holy Spirit about the Savior and His sacrifice, David wants to simply praise and glorify the LORD and encourage others to do the same.
Verses 24-26 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. 25 My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him. 26 The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.
God heard the voice of His only begotten Son as He was suffering and dying on the cross, and He could have intervened and taken Jesus down from the cross, but He chose to allow the situation to play out because He loved/loves mankind who could not keep the law and who sinned against Him constantly, so that people could receive the gift of salvation and have the promise of eternity in Heaven with Him. Therefore King David was always praising the LORD.
Verses 27-28 All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. 28 For the kingdom is the LORD’S: and he is the governor among the nations.
This prophecy has been and is being fulfilled as the Gospel message has spread throughout the Earth to every nation and every tribe so that no one has an excuse should they decide to reject that message and to reject Jesus Christ. And although the Earth is in a mess today with Satan and his fallen angels using mankind to commit every form of evil possible, the LORD is still in charge, plain and simple.
Verse 29 All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul.
Application: “I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” Isaiah 45:23
“For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” Romans 14:11
“And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the father.” Philippians 2:11
Verses 30-31 A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. 31 They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this. (Psalm 22)
Application: All who serve Jesus Christ are His seed or offspring. Believers are called sons and are promised to rule and reign with Him in His spiritual Kingdom. It is the job of all followers of Jesus Christ to tell others about Him and about His saving grace and His abundant mercy. Every generation since the crucifixion of Jesus and the establishment of the Church has proclaimed the Gospel and every generation has had converts who are in His Kingdom, some in eternity and some alive on the Earth today. The story of Jesus Christ, God coming to mankind and taking on a physical body of flesh, is a true story that shall never not be told.
“Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? for he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.” Isaiah 53