Context No. 3255 of 4322 · Psalms

Psalms 22:1-16: in context

1My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning? 2My God, I cry in the daytime, but you don’t answer; in the night season, and am not silent. 3But you are holy, you who inhabit the praises of Israel. 4Our fathers trusted in you. They trusted, and you delivered them. 5They cried to you, and were delivered. They trusted in you, and were not disappointed. 6But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people. 7All those who see me mock me. They insult me with their lips. They shake their heads, saying, 8“He trusts in the LORD. Let him deliver him. Let him rescue him, since he delights in him.” 9But you brought me out of the womb. You made me trust while at my mother’s breasts. 10I was thrown on you from my mother’s womb. You are my God since my mother bore me. 11Don’t be far from me, for trouble is near. For there is no one to help. 12Many bulls have surrounded me. Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. 13They open their mouths wide against me, lions tearing prey and roaring. 14I am poured out like water. All my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within me. 15My strength is dried up like a potsherd. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You have brought me into the dust of death. 16For dogs have surrounded me. A company of evildoers have enclosed me. They have pierced my hands and feet.

This psalm gives voice to a soul's anguish: my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me? And Jesus made these very words his own from the cross. Yet even in the cry, the psalm keeps turning back to trust: but you are holy; our fathers trusted in you and were delivered; you brought me out of the womb. And it foresees the mockery, the pierced hands and feet.

Notice how the psalm holds together two things that feel impossible together: the cry of abandonment, and steady trust. The psalmist feels forsaken and still addresses God as my God, still rehearses his past faithfulness. Faith is not the absence of the feeling of abandonment; it is continuing to cry out to God, still calling him mine, from within that feeling. And the mocking, the pierced hands and feet, the Gospels see fulfilled at the cross, where God was not truly absent but was accomplishing our rescue in the very hour that felt most forsaken.

When I feel forsaken by God, can I still, like this psalm, keep crying out to him as my God, trusting he has not truly abandoned me?

Sources

Psalm 22:1: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me?"
Psalm 22:16: "They have pierced my hands and feet."
Matthew 27:46: "Jesus cried with a loud voice... My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"