JESUS AND PSALM 22 (3)
Following the NRSB, ESV and others, the psalmist takes an entirely different tack beginning in 22:21b. Up to that point he has been lamenting, pleading and agonizing. All of a sudden he is thanking God for rescue. [Did a messenger/priest come to him to tell him God had heard his prayers? Had he written the first half of the psalm and some time later experienced rescue and now writes a “sequel”?]
At the risk of being even more tedious than I’ve been up to this point, let me ask if the man now thinks he was wrong about God all along—that is, does he now think that God had never forsaken him? [“In my stress and agony I thought God had forsaken me but now I know he had never turned away from me.”]
Or is he saying something like, “God had forsaken me for a while but he has now turned his face back to me in holy kindness”?
What we’re sure of is this. He now insists (22:24): “He has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.” This reverses what he has said in 22:1-2 but it doesn’t settle the question about the psalmist’s new perspective.
For some length of time God did not give him what he was asking for; God was not hearing his prayers (“hearing” in the sense of granting the request). If that’s what the psalmist meant by “forsaken” then God truly had forsaken the man but we need to remember, if we take that view we’re reducing “forsakenness” to mean nothing more than: “For a long time you refused to give me what I asked for.”
I confess that doesn’t sound at all right to me. It seems to me to reduce the depth of the man’s feelings and the aguish he is enduring. It’s more than that God didn’t deliver him from his physical and psychological agony—he seems to think that God has cut him off, that God has withdrawn his fellowship from him; he’s not at one with God. Once more, the suffering is bad enough but it seems to me that the serrated edge that cuts him deepest is the conviction that God has left him and the suffering is the expression of that departure. His jeering and sarcastic enemies obviously thought something like that even while they spoke of the man’s trust (22:6-8).
[Did he feel “lost” in the sense that Christians usually mean—“spiritually separated” and therefore damned or heading for eternal lostness? I don’t think he would have thought of such things. On this side of the cross Christians tend to think that all ages thought as they think. Whatever this psalmist knew or didn’t know about after-life and a final judgment it would have been enough for him to think that God had withdrawn his fellowship and commitment from him.]
Taking the above to be the case—that is, the man truly believed that God had departed from him—the next question is: was he right in thinking what he certainly felt?
It can’t be disputed that God can land a person in great trouble or watch while his servants suffer greatly! He did it with Job and he did it with Joseph but he never “forsook” them (Genesis 45:5-8 with 39:20-21). It simply isn’t possible for God to “forsake” those who trust themselves to him ("He cannot be faithless"—2 Timothy 2:13) though it is certainly possible for him to put them to grief for redemptive reasons.
If in his agony he thinks God cut him off, the man was wrong! His later remarks are (in my view) most easily understood as a confession that he had misunderstood the situation. Whatever the reason for the suffering, it was not proof that God had forsaken him. He now knows that God at no point had despised his suffering and his prayers and he wants everyone to know it, so he sings his song in church and has a meal of celebration to which he invites “the meek” to share in his joy and have his assurance (Psalm 22:22-26).
This psalm at so many points make contact with the experience of Jesus that it’s no wonder the NT makes frequent use of it.
The story involves more than this individual sufferer. In 22:4 he speaks of “our” fathers, which clearly means his story is being told with his brothers and sisters in mind. It’s “my” God but it’s also “our” fathers.
In 22:23-24 he makes his own vindication (note 22:7-8) and rescue a message to all those who trust and reverence God. He makes his own experience a model and an illustration. “What he has been to me and has done for me,” he seems to say, “he will be to you and do for you.”
The truth imbedded in this man’s experience has ramifications that go beyond Israel Israel
All that and more is in Psalm 22.
All that and more is gathered around the cross of Jesus Christ. His agony is real, the sneering enemies are real and God’s willingness to lay him “in the dust of death” is real (22:15). This too is around the cross: foreigners got the message (compare Luke 23:47)! This too was in and around the cross—the kingdom of God
Was Jesus fully aware of all this? Did he believe God had never left his side though he was making himself absent in some profound ways? I’m certain he did—Click here.
Then what are the words “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” doing on his lips?
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
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