JESUS AND PSALM 22 (2)
A psalmist (maybe David) said, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” (1-21 should be read in one unrushed reading.)
What does he mean by “forsaken”?
It would be easy to read too much into his words.
It’s also easy to think we know what he means until we try to explain it.
He isn’t saying, “God my suffering is nearly unbearable”? The great suffering is the trigger for the talk about forsakenness. He holds the suffering is the result of or at least connected to forsakenness.
What makes him think God has forsaken him?
The suffering is an essential part of the answer. If he were enjoying the rich blessings of God in perfect health and happiness he wouldn’t speak as he does. For him the agony is the indisputable proof that God has forsaken him. He doesn’t doubt that God has forsaken him. He wants to know why. Why has God forsaken him?
Yes, but what does he mean by “forsaken”?
He’s suffering in all kinds of ways and God won’t answer his prayers.
Yes, but again, these are the “proof” that God has done something—forsaken him. The forsakenness is something behind the suffering and silence and the psalmist wants to know what that something is. It isn’t just the suffering that guts the man; it’s what the suffering means to him. The suffering and silence imply something that the psalmist calls being “forsaken” by God.
Yes, but what does he mean by “forsaken”?
If we had a conversation with him at that time and asked him how he knew God had forsaken him he would tell us of his awful troubles.
If we asked him to put it in other words, to explain for us what he means by “forsaken”—what would he have said?
“God wants no more to do with me”?
“God will no longer have fellowship with me”?
“God has cut me off and I’m ‘lost’”?
“God no longer treats me as he said he’d treat covenant children”?
“God has stopped loving me”?
“God no longer sees me as a covenant child”?
“God doesn’t care that I’m in this deep distress”?
Once more, on face value the verse assumes that God has “forsaken” the man and he doesn’t know why. The agony is the proof that God has forsaken him but he wants to know why. The cry is more than a plea for rescue from troubles; it’s a plea for understanding—why do the troubles exist?
The implication in his “why?” is that things shouldn’t be as they are.
Yes, but once more, things “as they are”—is he speaking merely of the awful pain and loss he is experiencing God’s attitude toward him that expresses itself in pain and silence?
[The husband has the wife in the “dog-house” and it shows in his abrupt speech, his cool bearing and his sulky silence. Those are the proofs that something is “not as it should be” but they aren’t the explanation for things as they are—there’s something behind these markers. Finally she says something like, “Why am I in the dog-house?”]
Whatever God thinks of him, the psalmist sees himself as one of the covenanted people of Israel
He doesn’t see himself as an apostate but as one who belonged to God since birth; one who God took to his heart and looked after since infancy (22:9-10). He reminds God he has trusted in him and that his trust has even become a source of pain for him (22:8). Everything about his self-description tells us he is a devout believer in and a servant of God. Furthermore, since he is telling God these things about himself he has to believe they’re true because God would know if he was lying. He cannot admit to having done anything that would warrant God rejecting him and what is more, he claims implicitly that even as he speaks he is faithful to God.
All this is what generates the element of bewilderment we sense in the question. God and the man have had a lifelong relationship and if someone has definitively moved—it wasn’t the psalmist.
But he doesn’t jump to the conclusion that if he has been and is faithful to God that God must be faithless. No, he knows that God has gained for himself an established reputation as one who can be trusted because the fathers had called on him again and again when they were in trouble and he came to the rescue. They even sang songs about his faithfulness and if God was enthroned nowhere else, he was enthroned in Israel's hymns
The psalmist is faithful and God is faithful so what’s the problem? The problem is that the prolonged suffering and the jeers of his enemies are only too real. How can he answer their sneering challenge when he can’t answer it for himself (22:7-8)? [Compare 1 Peter 3:14-15.]
In Deuteronomy 31:16 God tells Moses Israel will “forsake” him, going after other gods. The word “forsake” in that case implies treachery and desertion but when God goes on to say that in response to their apostasy he will “forsake” them he isn’t saying he will be treacherous and faithless. He explains what he means (31:17); he will withdraw his protective hand and hide his face from them and they will suffer greatly. This kind of speech is commonplace in the OT. Because Israel Israel
Is this why the sufferer in Psalm 22 is enduring such grief and loss—he has despised the covenant and taken another god as his God? Does 22:1-9 sound like an apostate? This sufferer fully identifies himself with God (“My God”), knows him to be the Holy One, the one who gave him life and brought him to trust in him since infancy. He would be one of the first to understand Deuteronomy 29—31; what he can’t understand is why God has forsaken him.
Whatever he means by “Why have you forsaken me?” he believes it has happened. For him the forsakenness takes the form of unanswered prayer and unrelieved suffering which should not be happening to him.
That’s what he felt, but had God forsaken him?
If “forsaken him” means something like, God allowed him to suffer and wouldn’t rescue him then God had forsaken him for that is what was actually happening. If that’s what we take it to mean then there can be no dispute about it—God truly did forsake the man.
We’re left with the “why?”
In the second half of the Psalm there is a complete turn-around. Read Psalm 22:22-31 and note that the man praises God for deliverance. But ask yourself these questions:
“Does he confess he had misread the situation?”
“Does he now confess he had been mistaken when he said God had forsaken him?”
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
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