Scripture Daily

Context No. 561 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 22:17-31: in context

17I can count all of my bones. They look and stare at me. 18They divide my garments among them. They cast lots for my clothing. 19But don’t be far off, LORD. You are my help. Hurry to help me! 20Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. 21Save me from the lion’s mouth! Yes, you have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen. 22I will declare your name to my brothers. Among the assembly, I will praise you. 23You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him! Stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel! 24For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither has he hidden his face from him; but when he cried to him, he heard. 25My praise of you comes in the great assembly. I will pay my vows before those who fear him. 26The humble shall eat and be satisfied. They shall praise the LORD who seek after him. Let your hearts live forever. 27All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD. All the relatives of the nations shall worship before you. 28For the kingdom is the LORD’s. He is the ruler over the nations. 29All the rich ones of the earth shall eat and worship. All those who go down to the dust shall bow before him, even he who can’t keep his soul alive. 30Posterity shall serve him. Future generations shall be told about the Lord. 31They shall come and shall declare his righteousness to a people that shall be born, for he has done it.

This is the second half of the psalm that begins, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, the words Jesus cried from the cross. Its opening lines here are almost unbearably specific: I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing. It reads like an eyewitness account of a crucifixion written a thousand years before crucifixion existed. This is a person at the absolute bottom, stripped, mocked, surrounded, feeling utterly abandoned by God. And yet the psalm does not stay there. Right in the middle of the suffering, it turns, and the turn hinges on one verse worth clinging to.

For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, the psalmist says, neither has he hidden his face from him; but when he cried to him, he heard. That is the fear at the heart of deep suffering, that God finds my pain contemptible, that he has looked at my affliction with distaste and turned his face away. The psalm denies it flatly. God did not despise the affliction; he did not turn away; when the sufferer cried out, he heard. And from that hinge the psalm opens outward into astonishing praise, a vision of all the ends of the earth turning to the LORD, of future generations being told of him, ending on the note, he has done it, a Hebrew phrase very close to it is finished.

That whole arc is a promise for the depths. When I am afflicted and feel not just the pain but the terrible suspicion that God is repelled by it or has hidden his face, the psalm that voices that very abandonment insists God has not despised my affliction and has heard my cry, and it bends, from the cry of forsakenness, all the way to triumph. When I am at the bottom and convinced God has turned away in contempt or indifference, can I trust the witness of this psalm, that he has not despised my affliction, that he hears, and that the story does not end in the dark?

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