Psalms 22: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This psalm begins with a cry of abandonment: God seems far off while the speaker calls out day and night without an answer. He describes being mocked by onlookers, surrounded by enemies pictured as bulls, lions, and dogs, worn down in body, with his clothes divided by lot. The second half turns to praise, with the speaker promising to declare God's name in the assembly and fulfill his vows, and ending with all the nations and generations not yet born hearing what God has done.

Claim by Claim

1. 22:1
   • The speaker addresses God as his God, twice.
   • The speaker asks God why He has forsaken him.
   • The speaker asks why God is far from saving him.
   • The speaker asks why God is far from the words of his roaring.
2. 22:2
   • The speaker cries out to his God by day.
   • God does not answer him.
   • The speaker cries out by night as well.
   • The speaker has no silence, or no rest, the phrase carries both senses.
3. 22:3
   • God is holy.
   • God is enthroned upon the praises of Israel.
4. 22:4
   • The speaker's fathers trusted in God.
   • They trusted.
   • God delivered them.
5. 22:5
   • They cried out to God.
   • They were delivered.
   • They trusted in God.
   • They were not put to shame.
6. 22:6
   • The speaker is a worm.
   • The speaker is not a man.
   • The speaker is a reproach among men.
   • The speaker is despised by the people.
7. 22:7
   • All who see the speaker mock him.
   • They open wide the lip at him.
   • They shake the head at him.
   • They say the words that follow.
8. 22:8
   • The mockers say he committed his cause to the LORD: the wording can be read either as a report that he trusted, or as a taunting command to him to roll his cause onto the LORD.
   • The mockers say: let the LORD deliver him.
   • The mockers say: let the LORD rescue him.
   • The mockers say the LORD delights in him.
9. 22:9
   • God is the one who drew the speaker out of the womb.
   • God made the speaker trust while he was at his mother's breasts.
10. 22:10
    • The speaker was cast upon God from the womb.
    • God has been the speaker's God from his mother's belly.
11. 22:11
    • The speaker asks God not to be far from him.
    • Trouble is near.
    • There is no one to help.
12. 22:12
    • Many bulls have surrounded the speaker.
    • Mighty bulls of Bashan have encircled him.
13. 22:13
    • They open their mouths wide against the speaker.
    • They are like a lion that tears its prey and roars.
14. 22:14
    • The speaker is poured out like water.
    • All the speaker's bones are out of joint.
    • The speaker's heart is like wax.
    • The speaker's heart is melted within his inward parts.
15. 22:15
    • The speaker's strength is dried up like a potsherd.
    • The speaker's tongue sticks to his jaws.
    • God has brought the speaker to the dust of death.
16. 22:16
    • Dogs have surrounded the speaker.
    • A company of evildoers has encircled him.
    • They pierced the speaker's hands and his feet: the Hebrew here is ambiguous, reading either that they pierced them or 'like a lion, my hands and my feet'.
17. 22:17
    • The speaker can count all his bones.
    • They look at him.
    • They stare at him.
18. 22:18
    • They divide the speaker's garments among themselves.
    • They cast lots for his clothing.
19. 22:19
    • The speaker asks the LORD not to be far from him.
    • The speaker calls God his strength.
    • The speaker asks God to hurry to help him.
20. 22:20
    • The speaker asks God to deliver his soul from the sword.
    • The speaker asks God to deliver his only life from the power of the dog.
21. 22:21
    • The speaker asks to be saved from the lion's mouth.
    • God has answered the speaker from the horns of the wild oxen.
22. 22:22
    • The speaker will declare God's name to his brothers.
    • The speaker will praise God in the midst of the assembly.
23. 22:23
    • Those who fear the LORD are told to praise Him.
    • All the seed of Jacob are told to glorify Him.
    • All the seed of Israel are told to stand in awe of Him.
24. 22:24
    • God has not despised the affliction of the afflicted.
    • God has not abhorred the affliction of the afflicted.
    • God has not hidden His face from him.
    • When the afflicted one cried to Him, God heard.
25. 22:25
    • The speaker's praise in the great assembly comes from God.
    • The speaker will pay his vows before those who fear God.
26. 22:26
    • The afflicted will eat and be satisfied.
    • Those who seek the LORD will praise Him.
    • The speaker says their heart shall live forever.
27. 22:27
    • All the ends of the earth will remember.
    • All the ends of the earth will turn to the LORD.
    • All the families of the nations will worship before God.
28. 22:28
    • The kingdom belongs to the LORD.
    • The LORD rules over the nations.
29. 22:29
    • All the fat ones of the earth will eat and worship.
    • All who go down to the dust will bow before Him.
    • No one can keep his own soul alive.
30. 22:30
    • A seed will serve God.
    • It will be recounted concerning the Lord to the coming generation.
31. 22:31
    • They will come.
    • They will declare God's righteousness to a people yet to be born.
    • They will declare that God has done this.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

22:1

The word behind "groaning" (KJV "roaring") is normally used of the roar of a lion or the bellow of an animal in distress. It means a loud, wordless cry of pain, not a quiet sound.

22:3

The Hebrew can be read two ways: that God is enthroned *upon* the praises of Israel, the people's praise pictured as the throne he sits on, or simply that he dwells among the people where that praise is offered. "Enthroned" language elsewhere pictures God seated above the ark in the sanctuary.

22:4

"Our fathers" means ancestors, the family who lived long before the writer, not just his own dad.

22:5

Shame in this culture was public rather than private: it meant losing face before the whole community, being visibly proved a fool for having trusted. It is a matter of standing, not of embarrassment.

22:6

The Hebrew word is used of a maggot or grub, something small, soft and easily crushed underfoot. To call yourself a worm was to say you had been reduced to something less than human, beneath notice or beneath contempt.

22:7

Curling or thrusting out the lip and wagging the head were recognized gestures of contempt in the ancient world, roughly what a sneer or a slow shake of the head is today. They are named because everyone watching would have read them instantly.

22:8

"LORD" printed in capitals stands where the Hebrew has God's personal name, the four letters usually written YHWH. Jewish readers did not say it aloud, substituting a word meaning "the Lord," and English translations have followed that custom ever since.

22:10

"I was cast upon thee from the womb" uses the language of handing over a newborn. A baby has no say in who receives it and no way to survive alone, so the image is complete dependence from the first moment of life.

22:12

Bashan was the high, well-watered grazing country east of the Sea of Galilee. It was proverbial for producing unusually large and powerful cattle, so "bulls of Bashan" meant the biggest and most dangerous animals a listener could picture.

22:13

Lions really lived in that land back then. A lion with its mouth open was a danger people had seen, not a zoo animal.

22:14

"Bowels" in the King James means the insides of the body generally. Hebrew writing located strong emotion in the gut and the heart rather than the head, so a heart melting like wax inside him means his courage and composure are draining away.

22:15

The "dust" is the dirt of the grave. To be laid in the dust of death is to be buried, or as good as buried already.

22:16

Two things need explaining here. Dogs in ancient Israel were not pets but half-wild scavengers that ran in packs at the edges of towns and fed on carcasses; the word carried the sense of filth and menace. And the last line is the most disputed sentence in the psalm: the standard Hebrew text reads something close to "like a lion, my hands and my feet," while the ancient Greek translation, and some Hebrew manuscripts including one found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, have a verb meaning "they pierced" or "they dug." Translations divide along those lines.

22:17

"I may tell all my bones" uses "tell" in its old sense of count, the same sense preserved in a bank teller counting money. He is so wasted away that his bones stand out and can be counted one by one.

22:18

Casting lots meant deciding a matter by chance, by throwing marked stones or sticks, the equivalent of drawing straws or rolling dice. Clothing was worth real money and was often the most valuable thing an ordinary person owned, which is why it is being divided up while its owner is still alive to watch.

22:20

The KJV's "my darling" translates a Hebrew word meaning "my only one." It stands parallel to "my life": the single, irreplaceable life the speaker has, with no spare.

22:21

The KJV's "unicorns" renders a Hebrew word for the wild ox, a huge, long-horned wild bovine, now extinct, that was a stock image of untameable strength. The closing words are also read two ways: "you have answered me," a sudden turn to rescue, or, in some translations, "you have rescued me" from those horns.

22:22

"Brothers" here means fellow Israelites and kinsmen, not only blood brothers. The "gathering" (KJV "congregation") is the worshiping community assembled at the sanctuary, the normal setting in which someone who had been rescued stood up and told publicly what had happened.

22:23

Jacob and Israel are the same man; Jacob was given the name Israel, so "descendants of Jacob" and "descendants of Israel" are two names for one people, said twice for emphasis. "Fear" here means awe and reverence before someone immeasurably greater, not fright.

22:24

Hiding the face is a Hebrew idiom for deliberately refusing to look at someone, and therefore refusing to help. Having God's face turned toward you meant having his attention and his favor; having it hidden meant being ignored.

22:25

Someone in trouble would promise God a thank offering if rescued. Fulfilling that promise meant bringing an animal to the sanctuary, telling the assembled worshipers publicly what had happened, and then eating the meat in a shared meal, which is exactly what the next verse describes.

22:26

The eating is the meal from the thank offering just mentioned. The meat of such an offering had to be eaten the same day and could not be kept, so the poor were regularly invited in to help finish it.

22:29

"Go down to the dust" means to die and be buried; the verse sets the well-fed living alongside the dying and says both bow. The final clause is obscure in Hebrew and is rendered variously, "even those who cannot keep themselves alive," or "he who could not keep himself alive," or, with different vowels, "and he kept my life alive."

22:30

"Seed" is the Hebrew idiom for offspring or descendants: those who come after. These last two verses are difficult in Hebrew and translations differ over where one sentence ends and the next begins. Note also that "Lord" here is not printed in capitals: it renders a different Hebrew word, a title meaning "master," rather than the personal name.

22:31

"Declare his righteousness" does not mean announcing that God keeps rules. Righteousness in the Hebrew Bible is God putting things right, stepping in to rescue and set matters straight, so the line means they will tell the next generation what God actually did.