Psalm 22—The Chasm and the Passage

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why am I left?"

Most people think Jesus quoted the first line of Psalm 22 on the cross (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) because he was being forsaken by God.

But that isn’t what Psalm 22 is about and it isn’t why Jesus said it.

The Gospel writers included Jesus’ quotation of Psalm 22 in their accounts because they wanted to evoke not just the first line, but the whole Psalm. This is a technique known as metalepsis and, according to Richard Hays, it unlocks many hidden meanings in the ways the New Testament quotes and alludes to the Old Testament.

Yes, Jesus faced the wrath of God on the cross because he was “pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities,” but that isn’t why he quoted Psalm 22 from the cross. I think we’ve read atonement theology into Psalm 22 and missed the meaning of Jesus’ quotation of the Psalm.

A close reading of the Psalm reveals that it is not about God forsaking the afflicted because of sin, but of God’s nearness to those who suffer and his ultimate victory over sin and evil.

Here is my rendition of Psalm 22.

Rendition

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why am I left?
Why are you distant, my deliverer, from all my groaning?
O my God, I call out to you by day, but you do not answer,
And by night, but I find no rest in the silence.

Yet you are holy,
You abide in the praises of we who struggle with you, your people.
In you our fathers trusted;
They trusted you and you saved them;
They called out to you and you rescued them;
They believed and they were not disappointed.

But I am a worm, not a human,
Scorned by everyone, disdained by all.
Everyone who sees me ridicules me.
They whisper about me;  they shake their heads.
They say, “He has fallen in with the Lord, let God deliver him;
Let God snatch him from danger, for he seems to delight in God.”

Yet you, Lord, are he who drew me from the womb;
You made me trust you at my mother’s breast.
I was flung on you from birth,
And from my mother’s womb, you have been my God.
Do not forsake me,
For my trouble has come,
And there is none to help.

The beasts surround me;
The creatures of the dark gods circle around me;
They open their mouths,
They hunger and scream.

I am spilled like water,
My bones are pulled apart;
My heart is wax;
It melts inside me;
My strength is like broken pottery,
My tongue sticks in my mouth.
You have put me in the dust of death.

Monstrous men encircle me;
I am at the center of an evil congregation.
Like lions, they gnaw my hands and feet.
I can count all my bones—
They stare at me, they measure me with their eyes;
They divide my clothing among them,
And cast lots for my garments.

But you, Lord, do not forsake me!
You are my help, come to my aid!
Snatch me away from the sword,
Deliver my precious life from the hand of my enemies.
Save me from the mouths of the lions.
Hear me! Save me from the power of these creatures.

I will tell your name to my family;
In the assembly I will praise you, saying
“You who fear the Lord, praise him!
All you children of Jacob, glorify him,
Stand in awe of him, children of Israel!
He neither despises nor detests
The affliction of the afflicted,
Nor has he hidden his face from him.
He always hears those who cry out to him.

I will praise you in the midst of all your people;
I will give you all I have to give alongside those who revere you.
The afflicted will eat and be filled.
All those who seek God will praise him;
They will live forever.

The ends of the earth will remember him
And return to the Lord,
All the families of the earth
Will join in worship before God.
For God is king,
And he reigns over all the earth. 

Notes on the Rendition

Note #1: What are the Bulls of Bashan? And what do they have to do with Nephilim of Genesis 6?

ESV Psalm 22:12, 13—Many bulls encompass me;
strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
they open wide their mouths at me,
like a ravening and roaring lion.

The reference to the “bulls of Bashan” is not a throwaway comment or an odd bit of Hebrew poetry that can be easily passed over.

Understanding it is crucial to understanding what Psalm 22 is saying about the messiah. To begin to piece together what is going on with the “bulls of Bashan,” we need to take a brief tour through the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua.

First, remember, the Bible was not written by IKEA. It is not an instruction manual designed to be understood at a glance. It is ancient literature and it can often be quite subtle. Psalm 22 is an area of such subtlety.

Bashan is a territory east of the Jordan river where the Canaanite king Og ruled. Og keeps popping up in the narratives of the conquest of Canaan, enough that one begins to wonder if he has some special significance.

To understand the significance of the bulls of Bashan, we need to build a chain of linked scriptural passages. Along the way, we’ll meet giants, demons, the Sons of Anak, and, the dark and mysterious King Og of Bashan.

But the first link in the chain starts in Genesis 6 with the Nephilim.

Here is the scriptural chain that leads back to the bulls of Bashan in Psalm 22:

1. Genesis 6:1-4—The Nephilim were the offspring of humans and evil spiritual beings.

   ESV Genesis 6:1-4— “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the  Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

2. Numbers 13:33—The sons of Anak are the giant-sized descendants of the Nephilim.

   ESV Numbers 13:33— “And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

3. Deuteronomy 2:10,11—The Anakim “also count as Rephaim,” meaning the Rephaim are also descendants of the Nephilim. (This is supported by the fact that many of the Rephaim we meet in the Bible are giant-sized.)

   ESV Deuteronomy 2:10,11— “The Emim formerly lived there, people great and many, and tall as the Anakim. Like the Anakim they are also counted as Rephaim, but the Moabites call them Emim.”

4. Deuteronomy 3:11—Og is one of the giant-sized Rephaim.

   ESV Deuteronomy 3:11—(For only Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bed was a bed of iron. Is it not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits its breadth, according to the common cubit. ) 

5. Joshua 12:4—Og rules Bashan, where the cities of Edrei and Ashtaroth and Mt. Hermon are.

   ESV Joshua 12: 4—“Og king of Bashan, one of the remnant of the Rephaim who lived at Ashtaroth and at Edrei and ruled over Mount Hermon and Salecah and all Bashan…”

Bashan is connected with the Nephilim and symbolizes a place of demonic activity and ultimate rebellion against God.

Local Canaanite religion held that the Rephaim were the spirits of dead warrior-kings and that Edrei and Ashtaroth were the gateway to the underworld. Jewish tradition held that Mount Hermon was the place the “sons of God” (basically, evil angels) of Genesis 6:1-4 has descended from the heavens to corrupt humankind and breed with human women, producing the Nephilim. `

Let’s look at two more passages to help fill out the symbolism around Bashan.

Bashan in Psalm 68

ESV Psalm 68:15, 16— “O mountain of God, mountain of Bashan;
O many-peaked  mountain, mountain of Bashan!
Why do you look with hatred, O many-peaked mountain,
at the mount that God a desired for his abode,
yes, where the  Lord will dwell forever?”

Here you have the psalmist poetically putting Bashan’s mountain (Mount Hermon) against Mount Zion (literally, Jerusalem; symbolically, God’s abode). Bashan “looks with hatred” at God’s abode. It is the antagonist to Jerusalem’s protagonist.

Bashan in Matthew 16

This also helps fill out some of the context of the famous “gates of Hades” passage in Matthew 16 as well.

ESV Matthew 16:18— “And I tell you you are Peter, and agon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

When Jesus said this to Peter, they were near Caesarea Phillippi, at the base of Mount Hermon, know as the gates to the underworld. I’ve always thought Jesus was telling Peter that no offensive strike will prevail against the “gates” of the church, but in the context of the meaning of Mount Hermon, that isn’t correct. Jesus standing with his apostles at the gates of the underworld and tells them Jesus will build them into a church that will invade the underworld and conquer the forces of evil. The gates are Hade’s defensive structures and they will not prevail against the power of the church. Jesus is saying that God will take back everything that has fallen for so long under the shadow of his enemy.

In Psalm 22 you have the messiah surrounded by the “bulls of Bashan” as a symbol-laden way to point to the forces of evil moving behind the scenes in the death of the messiah.

So the bulls of Bashan are more than just bulls. In order to capture the larger significance (and going with the biblical motif of depicting evil as a monster), I rendered the verses is Psalm 22 this way:

The beasts surround me;
The creatures of the dark gods circle around me;
They open their mouths,
They hunger and scream.

[If you want to dive deeper into this note, read Mike Heiser’s The Unseen Realm.]

Note #2: What happened to his hands and feet? Were they “pierced” or “bitten like a lion”?

ESV Psalm 22:16 “For dogs encompass me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet—

There is some debate about the accurate translation of the word the ESV has rendered “pierced.”

The debate comes from the manuscript record. The Masoretic text (younger than the Septuagint, but in Hebrew) has the word aryeh, or “lion.” A plausible translation of that line could be something like “They gnaw at my hands and feet like lions.”

The Septuagint (older that the Masoretic, but in Greek) has a word that means “dig.” A plausible translation of that line could be something like, “They dig into my hands and feet.”

Because of the other references to Jesus’s crucifixion in Psalm 22, most English translations have rendered the verb as “pierced,” probably using the Septuagint word for “dig.”

I rendered these verses this way:

Monstrous men encircle me;
I am at the center of an evil congregation.
Like lions, they gnaw my hands and feet.

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Notes on the Poem

This poem is written as a dialogue between the suffering son Jesus and God the Father. The stanzas alternate between the speaker/Son figure in the poem lamenting and reminding himself of truths from Psalm 22.

I wanted to walk the line between Jesus’ suffering as something God is doing to him and something in which God’s nearness is experienced by Jesus. So God is both the recipient of Christ’s lament and the source of his comfort. As he is ours.

Just as the gospel writers sprinkled their accounts of the crucifixion with events and words from Psalm 22, I have peppered the poem with the events of the crucifixion. In the gospels, each of the strange things that happen during or after Jesus’ crucifixion is laden with Old Testament meaning, such as the tearing of the curtain in the temple.

The poem is a collage of biblical references, some more overt than others. See how many you can find.

Poem

My God, My God,
You are the sparrow’s fall
And the flower’s garments.
You are the hallowed hammer 
And the hanging tree.
I am poured out like water.
Why have you forsaken me, my father?

Yet surely I was cast on you from birth.
From the ordinary altar of my mother’s womb
You have been my God.

You are the light’s benediction
And the silent sky,
Both the chasm and the passage.
Mine is groan and parting.
Yours is the silence between stars,
Yet you are my canticle and call.
You are unyielding.
I am cross-hearted and heaving.

You have pierced my hands and feet,
Yet as long as light has walked between stars
You have been my God.

You shake the shattered earth of its ancient dead.
You are the breath in buried chests
Who rise and walk and praise you again.
I am the fountain found
I am the holy wine swallowed down.
I am trussed and scattered.
As grapes are crushed, I stagger.

Why are you so far from saving me?
I can count all my bones.
My heart melts. I lay in the dust.
As long as the afflicted have lifted prayers to you,
You have been my God.

Mine is the skull’s way where
All that is crushed, is crushed.
What must be carried, is borne,
And all that can die, is sent to the tomb to wait.
I am the holy bread, chewed and eaten.
I am the Prince of Peace crowned and beaten.

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Psalms: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34, 35, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 46, 50, 51, 53, 54, 62, 63, 65, 66, 73, 74, 75, 84, 86, 88, 90, 91, 100, 107, 110, 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 139, 140, 142, 147, 148.

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