Psalm 22: the separation; lowliness; and spiritual affliction Jesus endured for you

Psalm 22

My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?
Why are You so far from helping Me,
And from the words of My groaning?
2 O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear;
And in the night season, and am not silent.

3 But You are holy,
Enthroned in the praises of Israel.
4 Our fathers trusted in You;
They trusted, and You delivered them.
5 They cried to You, and were delivered;
They trusted in You, and were not ashamed.

6 But I am a worm, and no man;
A reproach of men, and despised by the people.
7 All those who see Me ridicule Me;
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
8 “He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him;
Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!”

9 But You are He who took Me out of the womb;
You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts.
10 I was cast upon You from birth.
From My mother’s womb
You have been My God.
11 Be not far from Me,
For trouble is near;
For there is none to help.

12 Many bulls have surrounded Me;
Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled Me.
13 They gape at Me with their mouths,
Like a raging and roaring lion.

14 I am poured out like water,
And all My bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax;
It has melted within Me.
15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
And My tongue clings to My jaws;
You have brought Me to the dust of death.

16 For dogs have surrounded Me;
The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me.
They pierced My hands and My feet;
17 I can count all My bones.
They look and stare at Me.
18 They divide My garments among them,
And for My clothing they cast lots.

19 But You, O Lord, do not be far from Me;
O My Strength, hasten to help Me!
20 Deliver Me from the sword,
My precious life from the power of the dog.
21 Save Me from the lion’s mouth
And from the horns of the wild oxen!

You have answered Me.

22 I will declare Your name to My brethren;
In the midst of the assembly I will praise You.
23 You who fear the Lord, praise Him!
All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him,
And fear Him, all you offspring of Israel!
24 For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;
Nor has He hidden His face from Him;
But when He cried to Him, He heard.

25 My praise shall be of You in the great assembly;
I will pay My vows before those who fear Him.
26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied;
Those who seek Him will praise the Lord.
Let your heart live forever!

27 All the ends of the world
Shall remember and turn to the Lord,
And all the families of the nations
Shall worship before You.
28 For the kingdom is the Lord’s,
And He rules over the nations.

29 All the prosperous of the earth
Shall eat and worship;
All those who go down to the dust
Shall bow before Him,
Even he who cannot keep himself alive.

30 A posterity shall serve Him.
It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation,
31 They will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born,
That He has done this.

This Psalm's time of writing is approximate, around 1,000 years before Jesus walked the earth, yet to anybody who has read the account of the death of Jesus it is clear that Psalm 22 is referring to Jesus' crucifixion, which adds weight to the fact that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. 

Psalm 22:1-2 Separation
In Deuteronomy 6:14-15 God warned the Israelites about going after the other gods that their new neighbours (since coming out of Egypt to the promise land) followed "14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you—15 for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth." (N.B.: the fact that the Israelites would even consider following such a god as Baal really shows the seriousness of the idolatry that the nation of Israel were guilty of in the Old Testament!)
Baal was known as the God of fertility and was depicted as a bull, having supposedly fathered a divine bull. Baal was considered the most powerful God by the Canaanite's. Throughout the Old Testament the power of God is directly contrasted against the shortcomings of Baal (which again warrants a study in itself). (1 Kings 17 describes how Elijah showed that God was in control and not Baal by commanding the rain to cease for seven years in the name of the Lord. In 1 Kings 18, 450 prophets of Baal attempt to have fire rained down from the heavens. After their unsuccessful attempts, God sends down fire upon the prayer request of Elijah, causing the people around to fall down and declare that the Lord is the one true God and not Baal.
For Christ Jesus is the perfect Son of God who has defeated death. Death could not hold Him. We are told that he rose again on the third day.
1 Corinthians 15:3-4 "For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures."
1 Corinthians 15:55-57

Verse 1 begins with the phrase spoken by Jesus before He gives up His life. 

Matthew 27:46  And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?

Jesus prays to His Father many times throughout the Gospels. The last time before His crucifixion being the prayer in the garden of Gethsemane.  (Matthew 26:39 ... “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”). When the Lord cries out on the cross this is the first time that He refers to God as God and not as "my Father", signifying the separation that had come about between God the Father and Jesus the Son whilst He was hanging on the cross. 

2 Corinthians 5:21 states "God made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us, so that in Him we may be made righteous." 

God is a God of righteousness and perfection and can have no part with the ways of the world. When Jesus was upon the cross He took your sin upon Himself. 2 Corinthians 5:21 states that He became sin. All of the evil and bad of the world was upon His shoulders at that time. What a grave weight He had to bear. It was such that Isaiah tells us that He became unrecognisable to those who looked at Him (Isaiah 52:14 "Just as many were astonished at you, So His visage was marred more than any man, And His form more than the sons of men;").

God the Father, who declared in Matthew 4 regarding Jesus, "This is My Son, with whom I am well pleased", had no choice but to forsake His only Son, for He could not have any part with the sin that Jesus had become. Just as God had to hide Himself from the Children of Israel through fire or cloud (Psalm 78:14 "Then He led them with the cloud by day And all the night with a light of fire") because His glory was so perfect that the Israelites could not comprehend it, lest they surely die like in the story of Uzzah, the Levite man who touched the Ark of the Covenant and was instantly struck down dead (2 Samuel 6:1-7 & 1 Chronicles 13:9-12), God hid Himself from Jesus when He was upon the cross.

Isaiah 59:2 states "But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear."

Psalm 22:6-8 Lowliness

We cannot underestimate how low Jesus became upon the Cross. It was not just a horrific bloody execution which took place; this was the death of a perfect man who took upon Himself wilfully the sin of the world so that through His sacrifice we may be made free.

This is the culmination of a perfect man who humbled Himself to the point of death for our sakes. Hebrews 2:9 states "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone." 

Isaiah 53:2-3 states "For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him.3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him."

Psalm 22:6 states "But I am a worm and no man".

Verses 1-2 show the separation between God the Father and Jesus the Son upon the cross. Verse 6 begins to show us the severity of this separation and how far Jesus has fallen for our sakes. Christ upon the cross is a 'worm and no man'. 

To understand why Jesus is described as a worm we can turn to the Old Testament. Jacob is referred to as a worm in Isaiah 41:14: “Fear not, you worm Jacob, You men of Israel! I will help you”, says the Lord and your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.”

In Job 25:1-6 we read, "Then Bildad the Shulite answered and said: “Dominion and fear belong to Him; He makes peace in His high places. Is there any number to His armies? Upon whom does His light not rise? How then can man be righteous before God? Or how can he be pure who is born of a woman? If even the moon does not shine, and the stars are not pure in His sight How much less man, who is a maggot, and a son of man who is a worm?" 

Here in Job, the oldest book in the Bible, Job's friend Bildad is talking to Him about the contrast between the glory of God and mankind who are sinful. He ends the comparison looking at the son of man. If even the moon does not shine (for it does not, it merely reflects the light of the sun) and the stars are impure in the sight of God then how much less must we as humans be considered in comparison to God's glory, and how much less the son of man, who is a worm.

In Matthew 20:28 Jesus states: "Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

Psalm 22:8 can be seen fulfilled in Matthew 28:41 "41 Likewise the chief priests also, mocking with the scribes and elders, said, 42 “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. 43 He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”

Note that even at this point, when Jesus the man is suffering upon the cross to the point that those around are astonished, even then, Matthew 28:41 says that the chief priests were "mocking" Jesus and Matthew 28:39 states "those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads" (Psalm 22:7 "All those who see Me ridicule Me;" ).

Philippians 2:5-8, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross."

Psalm 22:12-13 Spiritual Affliction

It is said that the mention of bulls in verses 12-13 refers to the spiritual torment that Jesus endured upon the cross. Indeed the Son of God Almighty, who had come to earth and lived a perfect life - God's plan for our salvation, the Saviour and Messiah who was expected to come to earth as a warrior and defeat the oppression over Israel by the Romans and reunite the land as in the days of King David - was dying upon the cross. This was a time for celebration amongst Satan and the evil spirits that roam this earth. Their job was done. Jesus' own people had rejected Him and led Him to slaughter. How gleeful and tormenting the evil spirits and Satan would have been during this time.

The ancient Evil spirits warrants a study in itself, to see how it all links in with the bigger picture and to show once again how the Bible is the Word of God. For now, to briefly explain, Baal is an ancient god that was worshipped by the Gentiles (specifically the Canaanite's and Amorite's) during the Old Testament period. Baal worship is documented both in the Bible and other historic sources. Knowledge of Baal greatly increased following the discovery of stone tablets dated back to the 2nd century in Northern Syria in 1929, which detailed who Baal was and old Canaanite practices. It was common practice for followers of Baal to offer human sacrifices. In Jeremiah 19:5, Jeremiah speaks out against the rituals of those who worshipped Baal: "and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind—".

The reference to bulls in Psalm 22:12 is likely to be evil spirits in reference to Baal. Psalm 22 goes on to refer to the 'bulls of Bashan'.

Bashan was a place to the east of the River Jordan where the people worshipped demon spirits.The first mention of Bashan is in Genesis 14:5 which makes reference to Ashteroth Karnaim - a city in the land of Bashan. Funnily enough, the name Ashteroth Karnaim literally translates to "Ashteroth of the horns". Ashteroth was the female fertility Goddess of the Canaanites. 

It is truly amazing to delve deep into the Bible as you begin to see how everything links together and how everything coincides and coheres in such a way that the Bible must be what it says it is: the Word of God.

Psalm 22:13 states that the bulls of Bashan "gape at me like a roaring lion". 1 Peter 5:8 states "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour."

The End:

We have looked at Jesus' separation from His Father, His lowliness and meekness to the point that He is unrecognisable and His spiritual affliction He endured whilst separated from His father. 

What terrible things Jesus endured for you. How sobering the thought of His crucifixion is and how we will never be able to truly imagine what He went through. However, we also know that the gospel is good news. 

Christ Jesus made Himself low for our sakes. However we know that when you are weak, then you are strong (2 Corinthians 12:10). We know that those who are last shall be first in the Kingdom of heaven (Matthew 20:16). We know that in Genesis 32 when Jacob is wrestling with God that it is the point when he is at his weakest, and his hip joint is dislocated so that he can no longer stand, that he is finally blessed and renamed as Israel - all pictures of Christ to come. 

Psalm 22:21 "Save Me from the lion’s mouth And from the horns of the wild oxen! .... You have answered Me."

God does not neglect His Son. God does not allow Him to see corruption. Psalm 16:10, "For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption."

We read in Philippians 2:5-8 above how Christ made Himself low for our sakes and humbled Himself to the point of death. However if we read on  we are told: "9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and thatevery tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."



“O Death, where is your sting O Hades, where is your victory?”

56 The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us not treat the cross and what Christ did as an emotionless historic fact. Let us remember what He endured upon that cross for our sake. How terrible it must have been and oh how we do not deserve anything from Him. Yet let us also not forget the good news that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am chief! (2 Timothy 1:15) and that He is now seated at the right hand of God waiting for the enemies to be made His footstool. 

-BACChristian