1 My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?
[Why art Thou] afar from my help, from the words of my roar?
2 My God, I cry to Thee by day, and Thou answerest not;
And by night, but there is no rest for me.
3 Yet Thou art Holy,
Throned upon the praises of Israel.
4 In Thee our fathers trusted;
They trusted and Thou deliveredst them.
5 To Thee they cried and were delivered;
In Thee they trusted and were not put to shame.
6 But I am a worm, and not a man;
A reproach of men and despised of people.
7 All who see me mock at me;
They draw open the lips, they nod the head.
8 "Roll [thy cares] on Jehovah--let Him deliver him;
Let Him rescue him, for He delights in him."
9 Yea, Thou art He who didst draw me from the womb
Didst make me trust when on my mother's breasts.
10 Upon Thee was I thrown from birth;
From my mother's womb art Thou my God.
11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near;
For there is no helper.
12 Many bulls have surrounded me,
Strong ones of Bashan have encircled me.
13 They gape upon me with their mouth,
[Like] a lion tearing and roaring.
14 Like water I am poured out,
And all my bones are out of joint
My heart has become like wax,
Melted in the midst of my bowels.
15 My strength (palate?) is dried up like a potsherd,
And my tongue cleaves to my gums,
And Thou layest me in the dust of death.
16 For dogs have surrounded me,
A pack of evil-doers closed round me,
They pierced my hands and my feet.
17 I can count all my bones,
These--they gaze, upon me they look.
18 They divide my garments among them,
And on my vesture they cast lots.
19 But Thou, Jehovah, be not far off;
My Strength, haste to my help.
20 Deliver my soul from the sword,
My only [life] from the paw of the dog.
21 Save me from the mouth of the lion,
And from the horns of the wild oxen--Thou hast answered me.
22 I will declare Thy name to my brethren,
In the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee.
23 Ye that fear Jehovah, praise Him,
All ye the seed of Jacob, glorify Him,
And stand in awe of Him, all ye the seed of Israel.
24 For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the
afflicted one.
And has not hid His face from him,
And when he cried has hearkened to him.
25 From Thee [comes] my praise in the great congregation;
My vows will I pay before them that fear Him.
26 The humble shall eat and be satisfied,
They shall praise Jehovah that seek Him;
Let your heart live for ever.
27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to Jehovah.
And all the families of the nations shall bow before Thee.
28 For the kingdom is Jehovah's;
And He is ruler among the nations.
29 All the fat ones of the earth eat and bow down;
Before His face kneel all they who were going down to the dust,
And he [who] could not keep his soul alive.
30 A seed shall serve Him;
And it shall be told of Jehovah unto the [next] generation.
31 They shall come and declare His righteousness
Unto a people that shall be born, that He has done [this].
Who is the sufferer whose wail is the very voice of desolation and
despair, and who yet dares to believe that the tale of his sorrow will
be a gospel for the world? The usual answers are given. The title
ascribes the authorship to David, and is accepted by Delitzsch and
others. Hengstenberg and his followers see in the picture the ideal
righteous man. Others think of Hezekiah, or Jeremiah, with whose
prophecies and history there are many points of connection. The most
recent critics find here "the personalised Genius of Israel, or more
precisely the followers of Nehemiah, including the large-hearted
psalmist" (Cheyne, "Orig. of Psalt.," 264). On any theory of authorship,
the startling correspondence of the details of the psalmist's sufferings
with those of the Crucifixion has to be accounted for. How startling
that correspondence is, both in the number and minuteness of its points,
need not be insisted on. Not only does our Lord quote the first verse on
the cross, and so show that the psalm was in his heart then, but the
gestures and words of mockery were verbally reproduced, as Luke
significantly indicates by using the LXX's word for "laugh to scorn"
(ver. 7). Christ's thirst is regarded by John as the fulfilment of
"scripture," which can scarcely be other than ver. 15. The physical
effects of crucifixion are described in the ghastly picture of vv. 14,
15. Whatever difficulty exists in determining the true reading and
meaning of the allusion to "my hands and my feet," some violence or
indignity to them is intended. The peculiar detail of dividing the
raiment was more than fulfilled, since the apparently parallel and
synonymous clauses were resolved into two distinct acts. The recognition
of these points in the psalm as prophecies is one thing; the
determination of their relation to the psalmist's own experience is
quite another. It is taken for granted in many quarters that every such
detail in prophecy must describe the writer's own circumstances, and the
supposition that they may transcend these is said to be "psychologically
impossible." But it is somewhat hazardous for those who have not been
subjects of prophetic inspiration to lay down canons of what is possible
and impossible in it, and there are examples enough to prove that the
relation of the prophets' speech to their consciousness and
circumstances was singularly complex, and not to be unravelled by any
such _obiter dicta_ as to psychological possibilities. They were
recipients of messages, and did not always understand what the "Spirit
of Christ which was in them did signify." Theories which neglect that
aspect of the case do not front all the facts. Certainty as to the
authorship of this psalm is probably unattainable. How far its words
fitted the condition of the singer must therefore remain unsettled. But
that these minute and numerous correspondences are more than
coincidences, it seems perverse to deny. The present writer, for one,
sees shining through the shadowy personality of the psalmist the figure
of the Prince of Sufferers, and believes that whether the former's
plaints applied in all their particulars to him, or whether there is in
them a certain "element of hyperbole" which becomes simple fact in
Jesus' sufferings, the psalm is a prophecy of Him and them. In the
former case the psalmist's experience, in the latter case his
utterances, were divinely shaped so as to prefigure the sacred sorrows
of the Man of Sorrows.
To a reader who shares in this understanding of the psalm, it must be
holy ground, to be trodden reverently and with thoughts adoringly fixed
on Jesus. Cold analysis is out of place. And yet there is a distinct
order even in the groans, and a manifest contrast in the two halves of
the psalm (vv. 1-21 and 22-31). "Thou answerest not" is the key-note of
the former; "Thou hast answered me," of the latter. The one paints the
sufferings, the other the glory that should follow. Both point to Jesus:
the former by the desolation which it breathes; the latter by the
world-wide consequences of these solitary sufferings which it foresees.
Surely opposites were never more startlingly blended in one gush of
feeling than in that plaint of mingled faith and despair, "My God, my
God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" which by its thus addressing God
clings fast to Him, and by its wondering question discloses the dreary
consciousness of separation from Him. The evidence to the psalmist
that he was forsaken was the apparent rejection of his prayers for
deliverance; and if David be the speaker, we may suppose that the
pathetic fate of his predecessor hovered before his thoughts: "I am
sore distressed ... God is departed from me and answereth me no more."
But, while lower degrees of this conflict of trust and despair belong
to all deep religious life, and are experienced by saintly sufferers
in all ages, the voice that rang through the darkness on Calvary was
the cry of Him who experienced its force in supreme measure and in
altogether unique manner. None but He can ask that question "Why?"
with conscience void of offence. None but He have known the mortal
agony of utter separation from God. None but He have clung to God with
absolute trust even in the horror of great darkness. In Christ's
consciousness of being forsaken by God lie elements peculiar to it
alone, for the separating agent was the gathered sins of the whole
world, laid on Him and accepted by Him in the perfection of His loving
identification of Himself with men. Unless in that dread hour He was
bearing a world's sin, there is no worthy explanation of His cry, and
many a silent martyr has faced death for Him with more courage derived
from Him than He manifested on His cross.
After the introductory strophe of two verses, there come seven
strophes, of which three contain 3 verses each (vv. 3-11) followed by
two of 2 verses each (vv. 12-15) and these again by two with 3 verses
each. Can a soul agitated as this singer's was regulate its sobs thus?
Yes, if it is a singer's, and still more if it is a saint's. The
fetters make the limbs move less violently, and there is soothing in
the ordered expression of disordered emotion. The form is artistic not
artificial; and objections to the reality of the feelings on the
ground of the regularity of the form ignore the witness of the
masterpieces of literature in all tongues.
The desolation rising from unanswered prayer drives to the
contemplation of God's holiness and past responses to trusting men,
which are in one aspect an aggravation and in another an alleviation.
The psalmist partly answers his own question "Why?" and preaches to
Himself that the reason cannot be in Jehovah, whose character and
former deeds bind Him to answer trust by help. God's holiness is
primarily His separation from, by elevation above, the creature, both
in regard of His freedom from limitations and of His perfect purity.
If He is thus "holy," He will not break His promise, nor change His
ways with those who trust. It takes some energy of faith to believe
that a silent and apparently deaf God is "holy," and the effect of the
belief may either be to crush or to lift the spirit. Its first result
with this psalmist seems to have been to crush, as the next strophe
shows, but the more blessed consequence is won before the end. Here it
is partly a plea urged with God, as is that beautiful bold image of
God enthroned "on the praises of Israel." These praises are evoked by
former acts of grace answering prayers, and of them is built a yet
nobler throne than the outstretched wings of the Cherubim. The daring
metaphor penetrates deeply into God's delight in men's praise, and the
power of Israel's voice to exalt Him in the world. How could a God
thus throned cease to give mercies like those which were perpetually
commemorated thereby? The same half-wistful, half-confident retrospect
is continued in the remaining verses of this strophe (vv. 4, 5), which
look back to the "grey fathers'" experience. Mark the plaintive
reiteration of "trust" and "deliver," the two inseparables, as the
days of old attested, which had now become so sadly parted. Not more
certainly the flow of water in a pipe answers the application of
thirsty lips to its opening than did God's rescuing act respond to the
father's trust. And now!--
The use of "Our" in reference to the fathers has been laid hold of as
favouring the hypothesis that the speaker is the personified nation;
but no individual member of a nation would speak of the common
ancestors as "My fathers." That would mean his own family progenitors,
whereas the psalmist means the Patriarchs and the earlier
generations. No argument for the national theory, then, can be drawn
from the phrase. Can the reference to Jesus be carried into this
strophe? Assuredly it may, and it shows us how truly He associated
Himself with His nation, and fed His faith by the records of the past.
"He also is a son of Abraham."
Such remembrances make the contrast of present sufferings and of a
far-off God more bitter; and so a fresh wave of agony rolls over the
psalmist's soul. He feels himself crushed and as incapable of
resistance as a worm bruised in all its soft length by an armed heel.
The very semblance of manhood has faded. One can scarcely fail to
recall "his visage was so marred more than any man" (Isa. lii. 14),
and the designation of Jehovah's servant Israel as "thou worm" (Isa.
xli. 14). The taunts that wounded the psalmist so sorely have long
since fallen dumb, and the wounds are all healed; but the immortal
words in which he wails the pain of misapprehension and rejection are
engraved for ever on the heart of the world. No suffering is more
acute than that of a sensitive soul, brimming with love and eagerness
to help, and met with scorn, rejection and ferocious mockery of its
sacredest emotions. No man has ever felt that pang with the intensity
with which Jesus felt it, for none has ever brought such wealth of
longing love to be thrown back on itself, nor been so devoid of the
callousness with which selfishness is shielded. His pure nature was
tender as an infant's hand, and felt the keen edge of the spear as
none but He can have done. They are His sorrows that are painted here,
so vividly and truly that the evangelist Luke takes the very word of
the LXX. version of the psalm to describe the rulers' mockery (Luke
xxiii. 35). "They draw open the lips," grinning with delight or
contempt; "they nod the head" in mockery and assent to the suffering
inflicted; and then the savage hate bursts into irony which defiles
the sacredest emotions and comes near to blaspheming God in ridiculing
trust in Him. The mockers thought it exquisite sarcasm to bid Jesus
roll His troubles on Jehovah, and to bid God deliver Him since He
delighted in Him. How little they knew that they were thereby
proclaiming Him as the Christ of prophecy, and were giving the
unimpeachable testimony of enemies to His life of devout trust and His
consciousness of Divine favour! "Roll (it) on God," sneered they; and
the answer was, "Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit." "Let Him
deliver Him, since He delighteth in Him," they impiously cried, and
they knew not that God's delight in Him was the very reason why He did
not deliver Him. Because He was His Son in whom He was well pleased,
"it pleased the Lord to bruise Him." The mockery of opponents brings
into clear light the deepest secrets of that cross.
Another wave of feeling follows in the next strophe (vv. 9-11).
Backwards and forwards, from trust to complaint and from complaint to
trust, rolls the troubled sea of thought, each mood evoking its
opposite. Now reproach makes the psalmist tighten his grasp on God,
and plead former help as a reason for present hearing. Faith turns
taunts into prayers. This strophe begins with a "Yea," and, on the
relationship with God which the enemies had ridiculed and which his
heart knows to be true, pleads that God would not remain, as ver. 1
had wailed that He was, far off from His help. It goes back to the
beginning of life, and in the mystery of birth and the dependence of
infancy finds arguments with God. They are the personal application
of the wide truth that God by His making us men gives us a claim on
Him, that He has bound Himself by giving life to give what is needful
for its development and well-being. He will not stultify Himself by
making a man and then leaving him to struggle alone, as birds do with
their young, as soon as they can fly. He is "a faithful Creator." May
we venture to find special reference here to the mystery of the
Incarnation? It is noticeable that "my mother" is emphatically
mentioned, while there is no reference to a father. No doubt the cast
of the thought accounts for that, but still the special agency of
Divine power in the birth of Jesus gives special force to His prayer
for Divine help in the life so peculiarly the result of the Divine
hand. But while the plea had singular force on Christ's lips, it is
valid for all men.
The closing verse of this strophe takes the complaint of ver. 1 and
turns it into prayer. Faith does not rest with plaintively crying "Why
art Thou so far?" but pleads "Be not far"; and makes the nearness of
trouble and the absence of all other help its twofold pleas. So much
the psalmist has already won by his communing with God. Now he can
face environing sorrows and solitary defencelessness, and feel them to
be reasons for God's coming, not tokens of His distance.
We now come to two strophes of two verses each (vv. 12-15), of which the
former describes the encircling foes and the latter the psalmist's
failure of vital power. The metaphor of raging wild animals recurs in
later verses, and is common to many psalms. Bashan was a land of
pastures over which herds of half wild cattle roamed. They "have
surrounded me" is a picturesque touch, drawn direct from life, as any
one knows who has ever found himself in the midst of such a herd. The
gaping mouth is rather characteristic of the lion than of the bull. The
open jaws emit the fierce roar which precedes the fatal spring and the
"ravening" on its prey. The next short strophe passes from enemies
around to paint inward feebleness. All vital force has melted away; the
very bones are dislocated, raging thirst has supervened. These are
capable of being construed as simply strong metaphors, parallels to
which may be found in other psalms; but it must not be left unnoticed
that they are accurate transcripts of the physical effects of
crucifixion. That torture killed by exhaustion, it stretched the body as
on a rack, it was attended with agonies of thirst. It requires
considerable courage to brush aside such coincidences as accidental, in
obedience to a theory of interpretation. But the picture is not
completed when the bodily sufferings are set forth. A mysterious
attribution of them all to God closes the strophe. "Thou hast brought me
to the dust of death." Then, it is God's hand that has laid all these on
him. No doubt this may be, and probably was in the psalmist's thought,
only a devout recognition of Providence working through calamities; but
the words receive full force only by being regarded as parallel with
those of Isa. liii. 10, "He hath put Him to grief." In like manner the
apostolic preaching regards Christ's murderers as God's instruments.
The next strophe returns to the three-verse arrangement, and blends
the contents of the two preceding, dealing both with the assailing
enemies and the enfeebled sufferer. The former metaphor of wild
animals encircling him is repeated with variations. A baser order of
foes than bulls and lions, namely a troop of cowardly curs, are
snarling and snapping round him. The contemptuous figure is explained
in ver. 16 _b_, as meaning a mob of evildoers, and is then resumed in
the next clause, which has been the subject of so much dispute. It
seems plain that the Massoretic text is corrupt. "Like a lion, my
hands and my feet" can only be made into sense by violent methods. The
difference between the letters which yield "like a lion" and those
which give "they pierced" is only in the length of the upright stroke
of the final one. LXX. Vulg. Syr. translate _they dug_ or _pierced_,
and other ancient versions attest that they read the word as a verb.
The spelling of the word is anomalous, if we take it to mean _dig_,
but the irregularity is not without parallels, and may be smoothed
away either by assuming an unusual form of a common verb or a rare
root cognate with the more common one. The word would then mean "they
dug" rather than _pierced_, but the shade of difference in meaning is
not so great as to forbid the latter rendering. In any case "it is the
best attested reading. It is to be understood of the gaping wounds
which are inflicted on the sufferer's hands and feet, and which stare
at him like holes" (Baethgen, "Hand Comment.," p. 65). "Behold my
hands and my feet," said the risen Lord, and that calm word is
sufficient proof that both bore the prints of nails. The words might
be written over this psalm. Strange and sad that so many should look
on it and not see Him!
The picture of bodily sufferings has one more touch in "I can count
all my bones." Emaciation would produce that effect. But so would
crucifixion which extended the frame and threw the bones of the thorax
into prominence. Then the sufferer turns his eyes once more to his
enemies, and describes the stony gaze, protracted and unfeeling, with
which they feed upon his agonies. Crucifixion was a slow process, and
we recall the long hours in which the crowds sated their hatred
through their eyes.
It is extremely unlikely that the psalmist's garments were literally
parted among his foes, and the usual explanation of the singular
details in ver. 18 is that they are either a metaphor drawn from
plundering the slain in battle or a proverbial expression. What
reference the words had to the original speaker of them must, in our
ignorance of his circumstances, remain uncertain. But they at all
events depict his death as so sure that his enemies regard his dress
as their perquisite. Surely this is a distinct instance of Divine
guidance moulding a psalmist's words so as to fill them with a deeper
meaning than the speaker knew. He who so shaped them saw the soldiers
dividing the rest of the garments and gambling for the seamless cloak;
and He was "the Spirit of Christ which was in" the singer.
The next strophe closes the first part with petition which, in the
last words, becomes thanksgiving, and realises the answer so fervently
besought. The initial complaint of God's distance is again turned into
prayer, and the former metaphors of wild beasts are gathered into one
long cry for deliverance from the dangerous weapons of each, the dog's
paw, the lion's mouth, the wild oxen's horns. The psalmist speaks of
his "soul" or life as "my only one," referring not to his isolation,
but to his life as that which, once lost, could never be regained. He
has but one life, therefore he clings to it, and cannot but believe
that it is precious in God's eyes. And then, all at once, up shoots a
clear light of joy, and he knows that he has not been speaking to a
deaf or remote God, but that his cry is answered. He had been brought
to the dust of death, but even thence he is heard and brought out
with no soil of it upon him. Such suddenness and completeness of
deliverance from such extremity of peril may, indeed, have been
experienced by many, but receives its fullest meaning in its Messianic
application. "From the horns of the wild oxen," says he, as if the
phrase were still dependent, like the preceding ones, on the prayer,
"deliver me." But, as he thus cries, the conviction that he is heard
floods his soul, and he ends, not with a cry for help, but with that
one rapturous word, "Thou hast answered me." It is like a parting
burst of sunshine at the end of a day of tempest. A man already
transfixed by a buffalo's horns has little hope of escape, but even
thence God delivers. The psalmist did not know, but the Christian
reader should not forget that the Prince of sufferers was yet more
wondrously delivered from death by passing through death, and that by
His victory all who cleave to Him are, in like manner, saved from the
horns even while these gore them, and are then victors over death when
they fall beneath its dart.
The consequences of the psalmist's deliverance are described in the last
part (vv. 22-31) in language so wide that it is hard to suppose that any
man could think his personal experiences so important and far-reaching.
The whole congregation of Israel are to share in his thanksgiving and to
learn more of God's name through him (vv. 22-6). Nor does that bound his
anticipations, for they traverse the whole world and embrace all lands
and ages, and contemplate that the story of his sufferings and triumph
will prove a true gospel, bringing every country and generation to
remember and turn to Jehovah. The exuberant language becomes but one
mouth. Such consequences, so wide-spread and agelong, can follow from
the story of but one life. If the sorrows of the preceding part can only
be a description of the passion, the glories of the second can only be a
vision of the universal and eternal kingdom of Christ. It is a gospel
before the Gospels and an Apocalypse before Revelations.
In the first strophe (vv. 22-6) the delivered singer vows to make
God's name known to His brethren. The epistle to the Hebrews quotes
the vow as not only expressive of our Lord's true manhood, but as
specifying its purpose. Jesus became man that men might learn to know
God; and the knowledge of His name streams most brightly from the
cross. The death and resurrection, the sufferings and glory of Christ
open deeper regions in the character of God than even His gracious
life disclosed. Rising from the dead and exalted to the throne, He has
"a new song" in His immortal lips, and more to teach concerning God
than He had before.
The psalm calls Israel to praise with the singer, and tells the ground
of their joyful songs (vv. 23, 24). Here the absence of any reference
to the relation which the New Testament reveals between these
sufferings and that praise is to be noted as an instance of the
gradual development of prophecy. "We are not yet on the level of
Isaiah liii." (Kirkpatrick, "Psalms," 122). The close of this part
speaks of a sacrifice of which "the humble shall eat and be
satisfied"--"I will pay my vows"--_i.e._ the thank-offerings vowed
when in trouble. The custom of feasting on the "sacrifices for
peace-offering for thanksgiving" (Lev. vii. 15) is here referred to,
but the ceremonial garb covers spiritual truth. The condition of
partaking in this feast is humility, that poverty of spirit which
knows itself to be hungry and unable to find food for itself. The
consequence of partaking is satisfaction--a deep truth reaching far
beyond the ceremonial emblem. A further result is that "your heart
shall live for ever"--an unmeaning hyperbole, but in one application
of the words. We penetrate to the core of the psalm in this part, when
we read it in the light of Christ's words. "My flesh is meat indeed,
and my blood is drink indeed," and when we connect it with the central
act of Christian worship, the Lord's Supper.
The universal and perpetual diffusion of the kingdom and knowledge of
God is the theme of the closing strain (vv. 27-31). That diffusion is
not definitely stated as the issue of the sufferings or deliverance,
but the very fact that such a universal knowledge comes into view here
requires that it should be so regarded, else the unity of the psalm is
shattered. While, therefore, the ground alleged in ver. 28 for this
universal recognition of God is only His universal dominion, we must
suppose that the history of the singer as told to the world is the
great fact which brings home to men the truth of God's government over
and care for them. True, men know God apart from revelation and from
the gospel, but He is to them a forgotten God, and the great influence
which helps them to "remember and turn to Jehovah" is the message of
the Cross and the Throne of Jesus.
The psalm had just laid down the condition of partaking in the
sacrificial meal as being lowliness, and (ver. 29) it prophecies that
the "fat" shall also share in it. That can only be, if they become
"humble." Great and small, lofty and low must take the same place and
accept the food of their souls as a meal of charity. The following words
are very difficult, as the text stands. There would appear to be a
contrast intended between the obese self-complacency of the prosperous
and proud, and the pauper-like misery of "those who are going down to
the dust" and who "cannot keep their soul alive," that is, who are in
such penury and wretchedness that they are all but dead. There is a
place for ragged outcasts at the table side by side with the "fat on
earth." Others take the words as referring to those already dead, and
see here a hint that the dim regions of Sheol receive beams of the great
light and some share in the great feast. The thought is beautiful, but
too remote from anything else in the Old Testament to be adopted here.
Various attempts at conjectural emendations and redivision of clauses
have been made in order to lighten the difficulties of the verse.
However attractive some of these are, the existing reading yields a not
unworthy sense, and is best adhered to.
As universality in extent, so perpetuity in duration is anticipated
for the story of the psalmist's deliverance and for the praise to God
thence accruing. "A seed shall serve Him." That is one generation of
obedient worshippers. "It shall be told of Jehovah unto the [next]
generation." That is, a second, who shall receive from their
progenitors, the seed that serves, the blessed story. "They ... shall
declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born." That is,
a third, which in its turn receives the good news from parents' lips.
And what is the word which thus maintains itself living amid dying
generations, and blesses each, and impels each to bequeath it as their
best treasure to their successors? "That He hath done." Done what?
With eloquent silence the psalm omits to specify. What was it that was
meant by that word on the cross which, with like reticence, forbore
to tell of what it spoke? "He hath done." "It is finished." No one
word can express all that was accomplished in that sacrifice. Eternity
will not fully supply the missing word, for the consequences of that
finished work go on unfolding for ever, and are for ever unfinished,
because for ever increasing.