Psalms 22
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Psalm 22 begins where human speech almost gives out: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? It is the cry of someone in the depths - not merely hurting but feeling abandoned by the one Helper who could reach him, crying out into a silence that does not answer (vv. 1-2).
And yet the prayer keeps its grip even here. Twice over it says my God. The Sufferer is forsaken and still clinging; he has been brought into the dust of death (v. 15) and is still speaking to the God he can no longer feel. This is the psalm Jesus reached for on the cross, and to understand why, you have to follow it the whole way through.1
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Psalm 22:1-18 · To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of DavidWhy Hast Thou Forsaken Me
1My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? 2O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. 3But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. 4Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. 5They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. 6But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. 7All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, 8He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. 9But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts. 10I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly. 11Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
No verse in the Psalter goes deeper into darkness than this opening: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The Sufferer is not describing an inconvenience or even an ordinary grief. He has come to the place where God Himself seems absent - where the cry goes up in the daytime and in the night season and meets no answer (v. 2), where the heavens are silent and the one Helper who could reach him feels infinitely far away.
And yet listen to the very first words: My God, my God. Even forsaken, he holds on. He prays to the God he can no longer feel, refusing to let go of the relationship in the moment it seems to have failed. At once it is the lowest point of abandonment and an act of faith spoken straight into that abandonment.
Notice, too, that the singer does not stay only in his own pain; he remembers our fathers trusted in thee… and thou didst deliver them (vv. 4-5). He knows the history of a God who rescues. The agony is precisely that this God, who has always delivered, seems for now to be far off. The psalm will hold that tension all the way down - forsakenness and trust in the same breath - and it will not resolve it cheaply.
After the cry comes the humiliation: But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people (v. 6). It is one of the most self-emptying lines in Scripture. The Sufferer does not even claim the dignity of a man; he calls himself a worm - something trodden underfoot, beneath notice, an object of contempt rather than of pity. And the contempt is public and total: a reproach of men, despised of the people.
Then the scorn is given a voice. Everyone who sees him jeers; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head (v. 7) - the body language of mockery in every age - and the words of the taunt are recorded for us: He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him (v. 8). It is a cruelty aimed precisely at his faith. They mock not his weakness but his trust; they turn his very confidence in God into the punchline.
You leaned on God - so where is He now? There is no sharper pain than to have your love for God thrown back at you as proof that God has abandoned you.
And yet the Sufferer answers the taunt not by abandoning that trust but by deepening it, going all the way back to infancy: thou art he that took me out of the womb… thou art my God from my mother's belly (vv. 9-10). The mockers say God will not help; the Sufferer says God has held me since before I could hold anything. The scorn does not move him off his ground.
12Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. 13They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. 14I 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. 15My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. 16For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. 17I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. 18They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
Now the psalm moves inside the body of the dying man. 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 (v. 14). Each image is exact. Poured out like water - all strength spilled and gone, nothing left to hold the shape of a man. Bones out of joint - the frame itself wrenched and dislocated, the particular agony of a body stretched and hung.
Heart like wax, melted - the inmost courage dissolving. And then verse 15: my strength is dried up like a potsherd, a broken piece of clay baked hard in the sun; my tongue cleaveth to my jaws, the raging thirst of the dying; and the flat, terrible conclusion, thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
Around him press the enemies, drawn as a menagerie of menace - strong bulls of Bashan (v. 12), a ravening and a roaring lion (v. 13), dogs that have compassed me (v. 16) - the powerful, the savage, and the contemptible all ringed around one helpless figure. It is the picture of someone wholly given over: surrounded, drained, dislocated, parched, and sinking into the dust. And what makes the next two verses so astonishing is that they become specific - a particular kind of death, described in detail, long before such a death had a name in this writer's world.
Psalm 22:19-22I Will Declare Thy Name unto My Brethren
19But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me. 20Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog. 21Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. 22I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.
Watch the hinge of the whole psalm, because it turns on a few words and changes everything. Verses 19-21 are still a cry for rescue - be not thou far from me… haste thee to help me… Deliver my soul from the sword… Save me from the lion's mouth - the Sufferer still ringed by the sword, the dog, the lion. But notice how verse 21 ends. It does not end in pleading; it ends in the past tense: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.
Somewhere in the space of a single line, the prayer is answered. The cry save me turns into the testimony thou hast heard me, and from that moment the psalm never looks back. Everything before verse 22 is the dust of death; everything after it is praise.
And the very first thing the rescued Sufferer wants to do with his deliverance is to tell people about it: I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee (v. 22). He does not slip away to enjoy his rescue privately. He gathers a congregation and stands up in the middle of it to make God's name known. The deliverance is not the end of the story; it is the beginning of a proclamation.
The one who was despised and forsaken now stands among brethren, leading the praise - and from this single verse the song will widen until it reaches the ends of the earth.
Psalm 22:23-31All the Ends of the World Shall Turn unto the LORD
23Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. 24For 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. 25My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him. 26The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever. 27All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. 28For the kingdom is the LORD’s: and he is the governor among the nations. 29All 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. 30A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. 31They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.
The praise that began in verse 22 now widens into something vast, and it starts with the reason for it: 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 (v. 24). This is the psalm's own answer to its opening cry. It felt, in verse 1, as though God had forsaken and hidden His face.
Now, on the far side, the Sufferer testifies to what was true the whole time underneath the feeling: God did not despise the affliction, did not finally hide His face - when he cried unto him, he heard. The psalm does not pretend the anguish was unreal; it insists the abandonment was not the last word.
From there the circle of praise keeps opening. First it reaches the worshipping assembly - my praise shall be of thee in the great congregation (v. 25). Then the poor and hungry are drawn in: The meek shall eat and be satisfied… your heart shall live for ever (v. 26) - the very ones the world overlooks, fed and made to live. The deliverance of one Sufferer becomes a feast for the lowly, moving outward from a single rescued voice toward a congregation, toward the meek of the earth, and - in the next verse - toward the whole world.
Now the song reaches its widest horizon: All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee (v. 27). What began as one man's cry in the dark ends as the worship of the whole earth. The reach is total - not Israel only but all the kindreds of the nations, every family of every people, turning to the LORD. And the verbs are striking: they shall remember and turn. The nations are pictured as having forgotten God and wandered, and the fruit of this Sufferer's deliverance is that they remember and come back.
Verse 28 gives the ground of it: For the kingdom is the LORD'S: and he is the governor among the nations. The worldwide worship is not wishful thinking; it rests on a fact - the LORD already reigns over all the nations, and one day all the nations will know it. Then the circle widens even past the living. All they that go down to the dust shall bow before him (v. 29) - even the dying, even those returning to the dust the Sufferer himself was brought to (v. 15), bow before Him.
And it reaches forward in time as well as outward in space: A seed shall serve him… a people that shall be born (vv. 30-31) - generations not yet alive will be told the story and will serve Him. From one pierced and forsaken figure flows a worship that fills the earth, outlasts death, and runs on into every generation still to come.1
Research trail
Sources & further study
These references support the historical, linguistic, manuscript, and contextual notes in this chapter. Scripture remains the primary text; external sources are provided so readers can inspect the research directly.
- Psalm 22 - Translators' NotesThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Psalm 22 - the force of the opening cry, the imagery of the encircling bulls, dogs, and lions, the textual question behind “they pierced my hands and my feet” (v. 16), and the sweep of the closing turn to worldwide worship.
- Psalm 22 · Hebrew + classical Jewish commentaryThe Hebrew text of Psalm 22 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for azab (v. 1, “forsaken”), for tola'ath (v. 6, the “worm”), for the difficult line of verse 16, and for the great turn at verse 22 from lament into praise.
- Psalm 22 ↔ Matthew 27 · John 19 · Hebrews 2Traces the dense verbal threads tying Psalm 22 to the passion narratives - the cry of verse 1 (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34), the mockers' taunt of verse 8 (Matt. 27:43), the parted garments of verse 18 (John 19:24), and the brethren of verse 22 taken up of the risen Christ (Heb. 2:12).
Where this echoes in Scripture
Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me
- Matthew 27:46And 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?Jesus takes the first line of the psalm onto His own lips from the cross - entering the forsakenness and crying out of it.
- Matthew 27:43He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.The rulers' mockery at Golgotha echoes verse 8 almost word for word - the Sufferer's trust thrown back as a taunt.
- John 20:25-27Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails... reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands.The pierced hands and feet of verse 16 - the wounds the risen Christ held out to Thomas to touch.
- John 19:23-24They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots.John quotes verse 18 word for word and shows it fulfilled as the soldiers gamble for Jesus' coat.
I Will Declare Thy Name unto My Brethren
- Hebrews 2:11-12He is not ashamed to call them brethren, Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.Verse 22 placed on the lips of the risen Christ - the forsaken One now leading His brethren in praise.
- John 20:17go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father.The risen Jesus calls the disciples His “brethren” - the brotherhood verse 22 sings of, gathered after the resurrection.
- Romans 8:29that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.The forsaken Sufferer becomes the firstborn of a whole family - the brethren of verse 22.
- Psalm 22:24For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted... but when he cried unto him, he heard.The psalm's own answer to verse 1: the cry that seemed unheard was heard after all.
All the Ends of the World Shall Turn unto the LORD
- John 19:30When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.The last word from the cross sounds the closing note of the psalm - he hath done this (v. 31).
- Revelation 7:9a great multitude... of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne.The worldwide worship of verse 27 - all the kindreds of the nations - seen gathered at the last.
- Philippians 2:9-11that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow... and that every tongue should confess.Every knee bowing (v. 29) - the exaltation that follows the suffering the psalm describes.
- Psalm 102:18This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the LORD.The same hope as verse 31 - a people not yet born told what God has done, and praising Him for it.