When was psalm 22 written

Let Him deliver him since He delights in him. Let's go to what actually happened, as recorded again in the Gospel of Matthew. Likewise, the chief priest also mocking with the scribes and elders said, "He saved others. Himself He cannot save. He trusted in God. Remember that from Psalm Let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him. For He said, 'I am the Son of God. It absolutely boggles your mind.

Here is the son of David - that's one of the Messianic titles of Jesus, son of David - and here is David in Psalm 22 describing his passion, describing how people were going to mock Him. Here it is in Psalm I have struggled with this for a long time, and I finally got it in a Hebrew translation, an orthodox rabbinical translation from a group called Art Scroll out of New York City.

It's a wonderful illumination of the Psalms. And here you've got two words. Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. And so the bulls there get big and beefy.

When I saw The Passion , and I remembered this, it came to me that here is a visual description of beefy Roman soldiers who were then coming after the Messiah, coming after the chosen one. But even more importantly, this word here, "they encircled me. When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on His head and a reed in His hand.

It also gets specific about what happens during crucifixion. Here it is, Psalm "My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and I'm as dry as an old piece of pottery. My tongue clings to my jaws. You have brought me to the dust of death. The fluid starts to collect down in the legs and the extremities. And literally, your mouth, your tongue starts to cling to the roof of your palate. You cannot imagine the thirst created by crucifixion. Here it is a thousand years before, predicted what was going to happen to the Messiah as He hung on the cross.

Jesus quoted Psalm on the cross, loudly enough for the crowd to hear him. From a medical perspective , breathing while being crucified is incredibly painful. The weight of the body pulls down on the diaphragm and the air moves into the lungs and stays there.

In order to exhale, the crucified must push themselves upon nailed feet ouch to breathe out. Speaking loudly, therefore, would be horribly painful. Mark and Matthew both record this. How is God forsaking God? There are two plausible explanations for this: For one, Christians believe that Jesus was bearing our sin and the judgment we deserve on the cross. He was taking our godforsaken condition so that we could have forgiveness and access to God. He wanted them to draw on their memories of the Psalm in order to make an obvious parallel.

If this Psalm applies to David, we know there was a time he was chased by Saul and then later his own son. At times he was despised. If this applies to Jesus, him being scorned and despised would apply as well. A Messiah that is cursed by God would be like a married bachelor or a squared circle in the minds of many Jews.

You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross! The charge against the gospel writers is that they added these details into the narratives to make it look more like Jesus was fulfilling scripture. But this just seems to be arguing in a circle. But starting with that assumption just begs the question. Critics need to do better than reject these accounts because they fit the prophecy.

These details fit very plausibly into the narrative. Jesus was referring to the temple of his body, and his critics twisted it into him sounding like a terrorist. And this is not just the experience of David. We wonder how our loving heavenly Father can stand idly by when we are in such distress.

Yet, even in this extreme distress, David never loses faith or falls into complete hopelessness. In the midst of his anguish, he articulates that faith. O you my help, come quickly to my aid!

We must never stop praying, even in our deepest distress. John Calvin in his commentary concluded that a sense of being forsaken by God, far from being unique to Christ or rare for the believer, is a regular and frequent struggle for believers. According to the judgment of the flesh, he thinks he is cast off and forsaken by God, while yet he apprehends by faith the grace of God, which is hidden from the eye of sense and reason.

This psalm is not only the experience of every believer, but it is also a very remarkable and specific prophecy of the sufferings of Jesus. Here we see that indeed this psalm comes to its fullest realization in Jesus. Jesus knew this psalm and quoted its first words to identify with us in our suffering, since He bore on the cross our agony and suffering.

Jesus does deliver us by becoming our substitute and the sacrifice for our sins. In the second part of this psalm, the mood and tone change dramatically. God seems far away; but trouble is near — and there is none to help , so You must help me, God! Many bulls have surrounded Me; Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled Me.

They gape at Me with their mouths, Like a raging and roaring lion. I am poured out like water, And all My bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It has melted within Me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And My tongue clings to My jaws; You have brought Me to the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded Me; The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me.

They pierced My hands and My feet; I can count all My bones. They look and stare at Me. They divide My garments among them, And for My clothing they cast lots. He described the people tormenting Him as strong bulls of Bashan , large animals proverbial for their strength. They surround Him and threaten Him. I am poured out like water : The Forsaken One felt completely empty.

He perceived no resource in Himself able to meet the crisis at hand. Whatever strength or resistance He had was poured out like water upon the ground.

My bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; it has melted within Me : This described the physical extremity of David at the time, but it also is an amazingly specific prophecy of the future suffering of the Son of David on the cross. My tongue clings to My jaws : As was normal for anyone under the agony of crucifixion, Jesus suffered great thirst on the cross John You have brought me to the dust of death : David used this moving poetic phrase to describe the extent of his misery.

He probably had in mind the curse God pronounced upon Adam after his sin: For dust you are, and to dust you shall return Genesis Since all humanity was contained in Adam, this curse extends to the entire human race, and David felt himself close to the dust of death. Obviously, David did not die in the crisis described by this psalm; he lived to write it and others.

He came to the edge of mortality when God brought him to the dust of death. Yet Jesus, the Son of David, did not merely come to the edge of death; He was plunged into the dust of death and into all of the cursedness implied by that. In His death, the Son of David had few sympathizers. Haters, scoffers, and mockers surrounded Jesus on the cross and sought to make His suffering worse Matthew , Mark They pierced My hands and My feet : Perhaps here David referred to wounds he received in struggling against these determined enemies; perhaps he wrote purely prophetically.

In any regard, hundreds of years before the Romans adopted the Persian practice of crucifixion, the prophet David described the wounds of crucifixion that his Greater Son would bear. I can count all My bones : David examined his wounds and understood that he had no broken bones. The Son of David also, despite his great suffering on the cross, suffered no broken bones. John carefully noted this John This fact fulfilled this prophecy, as well as Psalm and the pattern of the Passover lamb as described in Exodus and Numbers They look and stare at Me : In his crisis, David was the focus of unwanted attention.

His tormentors did not allow him the dignity of private suffering, but exposed all things to their stare. Luke also noted, the whole crowd who came together to that sight, seeing what had been done, beat their breasts and returned Luke They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots : David was so humbled before his adversaries, so powerless against them, that they took even his clothing and used it for themselves.

As with other aspects of Psalm 22, this was fulfilled even more literally in the experience of Jesus than in the life of David. As was the custom of that time, Jesus was stripped naked or nearly naked for the cross, and soldiers gambled cast lots for his clothing at the very foot of the cross.

John and Matthew quote this line of Psalm 22 as being fulfilled. The sight of the agonizing body ought to have ensured sympathy from the throng, but it only increased their savage mirth, as they gloated their cruel eyes upon his miseries. Deliver Me from the sword, My precious life from the power of the dog.

David seemed to believe that he could endure anything if he enjoyed the conscious presence of God. His plea is not focused on the change of his situation, but on the presence of God in the crisis.

Hasten to help Me…. Deliver Me…. These lines reflect not only the great danger and misery of both David and his Greater Son, but especially their trust in the LORD God as their deliverer. He and He alone is their hope. You have answered Me. The crisis became bearable in the knowledge that God is not removed from His suffering nor silent in it. The answer of God to the Forsaken One instantly meant that He no longer felt forsaken. The deliverance from the crisis itself may be yet to come, but the deliverance from the sense of being forsaken by God in the midst of the crisis was His.

It is like a parting burst of sunshine at the end of a day of tempest. It is easy to see these words fulfilled in the experience of David; but they were perfectly completed in Jesus. This was also the resolution that another forsaken one — Job — fought so hard for. Even without an immediate deliverance from difficulty, there is immense comfort in knowing that God is there and that He is not silent in the midst of our crises.

Perhaps it was after the triumphant announcement, It is finished! Those words point to a re-established sense of fellowship replacing the prior sense of forsakenness. I will declare Your name to My brethren : Having been delivered — if not from the crisis itself, certainly from the sense of being forsaken in the crisis — now the promise is made to glorify and praise the God of deliverance.