Psalms 22:1 - Meaning and Application

Some think they can find Christ in the title of this psalm, “The hind of the morning.” Christ is like a swift deer on the mountains of spices (Song of Songs 8:14), like the loving hind and pleasant deer to all believers (Proverbs 5:19), and like Naphtali, who is compared to a doe let loose because he gives beautiful words (Genesis 49:21). He is the hind of the morning, marked out by God’s eternal plan to be pursued by the dogs that surrounded him (Psalm 22:16). Others think the title only tells the tune to which the psalm was set.

In these verses, we first see a sad complaint about God’s seeming withdrawal, in Psalm 22:1, Psalm 22:2. This can be applied to David, or to any child of God, when the signs of God’s favor seem gone. Such a person feels the weight of God’s displeasure, groans under it, cries out for relief, and may even feel forsaken, unhelped, and unheard. Yet he still keeps calling God “my God,” and keeps crying to him day and night. Spiritual desertion, when a believer feels cut off from God’s comfort, is one of the hardest trials saints face. When their proofs of God’s love seem cloudy, their comforts dry up, their fellowship with God is interrupted, and God’s terrors seem set against them, their spirits grow heavy.

Even their complaint about this pain is a good sign. It shows spiritual life and spiritual feelings are still working. If someone cries, “My God, why am I sick? Why am I poor?” that may show discontent or love of the world. But “Why have you forsaken me?” is the cry of a heart that finds its happiness in God’s favor. When we mourn God’s withdrawals, we must still call him our God. We must keep trusting him, even when we lack full assurance. However it may feel, God is still good, and he is still mine. Though he seem slow to answer, I will keep praying and waiting. Though he seem silent, I will not be silent.

But this psalm must be applied to Christ as well. In the first words of this complaint, he poured out his soul before God on the cross (Matthew 27:46). Likely he went on to the next words too, and some think he repeated the whole psalm, if not out loud, then at least to himself. Christ, in his sufferings, cried earnestly to his Father for favor and presence. He cried by day on the cross, and by night in the garden. He offered up strong cries and tears to the One able to save him, with deep distress as well (Hebrews 5:7).

Yet God forsook him, was far from helping him, and did not answer him. This was the hardest part of his suffering. God gave him into the hands of his enemies. By God’s settled purpose, he was crucified and killed, and he did not receive felt comfort. Since Christ made himself sin for us, the Father laid on him the present weight of wrath and displeasure against sin. “It pleased the Lord to crush him and cause him to suffer” (Isaiah 53:10). Even then, Christ held fast to his relation to the Father as his God, the One who had sent him, whom he was serving, and with whom he would soon be glorified.

He then draws encouragement from this situation in Psalm 22:3-5. Though God did not hear him or help him at once, he still speaks well of God. “But you are holy.” God is not unjust, untrue, or unkind in any of his ways. Though he does not immediately come to the aid of his suffering people, he still loves them, keeps faith with his covenant, and does not approve the sin of their enemies (Habakkuk 1:13). Because God is perfectly pure and upright, he delights in the worship of upright people. He dwells among the praises of Israel. He is pleased to show his glory, grace, and special presence with his people in the sanctuary, where they come before him with praise.

This shows God’s great kindness toward faithful worshipers. Though he is surrounded by the praises of angels, he is pleased to live among the praises of Israel. That can comfort us in our complaints too. Though God may seem for a while to ignore our cries, he is so pleased with his people’s praise that he will, in due time, give them cause to change their tune, “Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him.” Our Lord Jesus, in his sufferings, kept God’s holiness in view, so that he might protect and honor it, and also honor God’s grace in dwelling among the praises of Israel despite the failures mixed with their worship.

He also comforts himself with what earlier saints experienced through faith and prayer, in Psalm 22:4-5. “Our fathers trusted in you, cried to you, and you delivered them.” Therefore, he will deliver me too in due time. No one who has hoped in God was ever put to shame, and no one who sought him ever sought in vain. God is still the same in himself, and the same to his people, as he always was. They were our fathers, and God’s people are still loved because of the fathers (Romans 11:28). The covenant promise is meant to support the children of the faithful. The God of our fathers must be our God, and so he will be.

Our Lord Jesus, in his sufferings, drew strength from this. All the fathers who were types of him in suffering, Noah, Joseph, David, Jonah, and others, were delivered in due time. They also pointed ahead to his exaltation. So he knew that he too would not be put to shame (Isaiah 50:7).

The complaint then returns to another grief, the contempt and mockery of people. This is not as bitter as the sense of God’s withdrawal, but it strikes a very tender place in a gracious soul, in Psalm 22:6-8. Our fathers were honored, and the patriarchs, in their day, were seen as great by the world, such as Abraham, Moses, and David. But Christ is “a worm and not a man.” It was great humility that he became man, a downward step that will always astonish angels. Yet, as if that were too much, he is described as a worm and not a man.

He was a true man, but a lowly, sorrowful one, not one the world thought important. He took the form of a servant, and his face was disfigured more than any man’s (Isaiah 52:14). At the best, man is only a worm. But Christ became a worm, and not a man. If he had not made himself so low, he could not have been trampled on as he was. The word also suggests a worm used in making scarlet or purple dye, which some take as a hint of his bloody sufferings. See what shameful treatment was heaped on him.

He was insulted as a bad man, a blasphemer, a Sabbath-breaker, a wine-drinker, a false prophet, an enemy of Caesar, and a partner with the prince of demons. He was also looked down on as a worthless, ordinary man, not worth noticing. His own country had no honor, his relatives were poor tradesmen, and his followers were not rulers or Pharisees, but common people.

He was mocked as a foolish man, one who had fooled others and even fooled himself. Those who saw him hanging on the cross laughed at him. They did more than fail to pity him, they added to his pain by showing open disrespect and scorn. They mocked him, made faces at him, and treated his suffering as a joke: they tossed up their lips, shook their heads, and said, “This is the one who said he trusted God to save him; now let God rescue him.”

David was sometimes mocked for trusting in God, but in Christ’s sufferings this was fulfilled in the fullest and clearest way. The people who insulted Jesus used the same gestures, and even the same words, recorded in (Matthew 27:39) and (Matthew 27:43). Our Lord Jesus had taken on himself the task of making up for the dishonor we had done to God by our sins, and he did it by submitting to the lowest shame and disgrace.

There is also encouragement in this. People despise me, but you are the one who took me from my mother’s womb. David and other godly people often strengthened themselves with the thought that God was not only the God of their fathers, as in (Psalm 22:4), but also the God of their earliest days. He began caring for them as soon as they came into being, and so they trusted that he would not cast them off later.

He who cared so well for us when we were helpless and unable to help ourselves will not abandon us now that we are grown and able to serve him. We can see God’s early care in several ways. At birth, he brought us out of the womb, or else we would have died there or been smothered in birth. At the breast, he gave us hope by providing food and protection, teaching us to trust him for all our days. The blessings of nursing are a sign of the blessings of the whole life. Surely the God who fed us then will not leave us without need later, as in (Job 3:12).

There is also our early dedication to God. “I was cast on you from birth” may point to circumcision on the eighth day. Then, by his parents, he was set apart and given over to God as the God of the covenant. Circumcision was the sign of that covenant, and this gave him reason to trust God. Those have good reason to feel safe who were so early and so solemnly gathered under the shelter of God’s power.

We can also think of God’s goodness to us all along the way, shown in a steady line of protection and provision. “You have been my God from my mother’s womb” means that God watched over and cared for him from the time he entered the world until that very day. If, as soon as we were old enough to think, we trusted God and gave ourselves and our lives to him, we need not doubt that he will remember that early love, as in (Jeremiah 2:2).

This also points to our Lord Jesus. God’s providence, his wise and caring rule, watched over Jesus’ birth with special care. He was born in a stable, laid in a manger, and at once exposed to Herod’s malice, then forced to flee into Egypt. When he was a child, God loved him and called him out, as in (Hosea 11:1), and that memory comforted him in his sufferings. Men reproached him and tried to shake his trust in God, but God had honored him and strengthened that trust.