1To the lead player, on ayeleth hashahar, a David psalm.
2My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
Far from my rescue are the words that I roar.
3My God, I call out by day and You do not answer,
by night—no stillness for me.
4And You, the Holy One—enthroned in Israel’s praise.
5In You did our fathers trust,
they trusted, and You set them free.
6To You they cried out, and escaped,
in You they trusted and were not put to shame.
7But I am a worm and no man,
a disgrace among men, by the people reviled.
8All who see me do mock me—
they curl their lips, they shake their head.
9Who turns to the LORD, He will set him free.
He will save him, for He delights in him.
10For You drew me out from the womb,
made me safe at my mother’s breasts.
11Upon You I was cast from birth,
from my mother’s belly You were my God.
12Do not be far from me,
for distress is near,
for there is none to help.
13Brawny bulls surrounded me,
the mighty of Bashan encompassed me.
14They gaped with their mouths against me—
15Like water I spilled out,
all my limbs fell apart.
My heart was like wax,
16My palate turned dry as a shard
and my tongue was annealed to my jaw,
and to death’s dust did You thrust me.
17For the curs came all around me,
a pack of the evil encircled me,
they bound my hands and my feet.
18They counted out all my bones.
It is they who looked, who stared at me.
19They shared out my garments among them
and cast lots for my clothes.
20But You, O LORD, be not far.
My strength, to my aid O hasten!
21Save from the sword my life,
from the cur’s power my person.
22Rescue me from the lion’s mouth.
And from the horns of the ram You answered me.
23Let me tell Your name to my brothers,
in the assembly let me praise You.
24Fearers of the LORD, O praise Him!
All the seed of Jacob revere Him!
And be afraid of Him, all Israel’s seed!
25For He has not spurned nor has despised
the affliction of the lowly,
and has not hidden His face from him;
when he cried out to Him, He heard.
26For You—my praise in the great assembly.
My vows I fulfill before those who fear Him.
27The lowly will eat and be sated.
Those who seek Him will praise the LORD.
May you be of good cheer forever.
28All the far ends of earth will remember
and return to the LORD.
All the clans of the nations
will bow down before You.
29For the LORD’s is the kingship—
and He rules over the nations.
30Yes, to Him will bow down
all the netherworld’s sleepers.
Before Him will kneel
all who go down to the dust,
31My seed will serve Him.
It will be told to the Master for generations to come.
32They will proclaim His bounty to a people aborning,
PSALM 22 NOTES
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1. on ayeleth hashahar. The name elsewhere means “morning star” (or, literally, “dawn doe”). One assumes it refers to a musical instrument of some sort or, alternately, to a melody.
2. My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? These famous words are the ones pronounced by Jesus in his last agony—though in Aramaic, not in the original Hebrew. That moment in Matthew is a kind of pesher, or fulfillment interpretation, of this psalm, because there are other details here (for example, verses 16–19) that could be connected with the crucifixion.
4. And You, the Holy One—enthroned in Israel’s praise. This whole verse looks oddly out of place. Indeed, it lacks the parallelism and the rhythmic regularity of a line of poetry.
7. But I am a worm and no man. This impulse of self-revilement puts the speaker in contrast to the meritorious forefathers, who trusted in God and were rescued by Him. The speaker wonders: Could I possibly be worthy of God’s intervention in my state of utter abasement?
9. Who turns to the LORD. After the assertion of desperate doubt, the speaker affirms the sustaining idea that those who put their full faith in the LORD will be answered by Him.
10. For You drew me out from the womb. Having stated the general principle, the speaker now thinks retrospectively about how in his own life God has sustained him from birth onward—a palpable proof that his present state of abjection will not continue.
11. from birth. The Hebrew uses one of two terms for the uterus (“womb,” “belly”) that alternate in these lines.
12. Do not be far from me, / for distress is near. The far–near polarity, first announced in “Far from my rescue are the words that I roar” (verse 2), defines the urgent plea that runs through the poem.
13. Brawny bulls. The Hebrew adjective rabim usually means “many” but sometimes “big” or “large.” The latter meaning makes better sense here, especially in parallel with another epithet for powerful beasts (or men), “the mighty of Bashan” (Bashan being famous for the breeding of bulls).
14. a ravening roaring lion. To the modern eye, this might look like a contradictory image. But the sequence works as follows: First the crowd of enemies is likened to a herd of brawny bulls; then the poet focuses on the gaping mouths, presumably imagined as human mouths (because bulls gore but are not carnivorous). In the final step, these rapacious men ready to swallow him are likened to lions.
15. Like water I spilled out. This verse and the next describe the psychological impact of sheer terror and impotence induced by the menacing foes.
melting within my chest. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “melting within my innards.”
16. My palate turned dry as a shard. The translation adopts an emendation proposed by many interpreters, medieval and modern, reading ḥiki, “my palate,” for the Masoretic koḥi, “my vigor” (a simple reversal of letters in the consonantal text). Palate and tongue recur as parallel terms in biblical poetry.
17. curs. While the Hebrew is the ordinary word for dog, because dogs were not domesticated in ancient Israel (though they had long been domesticated elsewhere) and roamed about in packs as scavengers, the biblical term is wholly negative. Hence a pejorative English equivalent seems justified.
they bound my hands and my feet. The received Hebrew text—literally “like a lion my hands and feet”—makes no sense. The translation adopts one proposed emendation—reading karkhu, “they bound,” for kaʾari, “like a lion”—though there is admittedly no ancient textual warrant for this reading.
18. They counted. The received text has “I counted,” which is puzzling. The small emendation is made in the interest of coherence and on the basis of the parellelism with the second verset.
20. My strength. The Hebrew term ʾeyalut is an unusual epithet for the deity. Some have argued that it brings out the etymology of the ordinary word for God, ʾel. It has even been suggested that the term may play on ayeleth in the superscription of this psalm.
21. from the cur’s power. The literal sense is “from the cur’s hand,” but because dogs don’t have hands, the translation here adopts the extended sense of “hand.”
22. You answered me. This is how the received text reads, though we might have expected an imperative parallel to “rescue me”—that is, “answer me.” Because the rest of the psalm is devoted to praising rather than imploring God, perhaps the verb in the past tense is intended as a compact turning point: God has indeed answered the speaker’s prayer.
26. My vows I fulfill. This phrase refers regularly in Psalms to a votive offering that the speaker, his prayers having been answered, offers in the Temple. Thus “my praise in the great assembly” invokes the crowd of worshippers in the Temple.
27. May you be of good cheer forever. The Hebrew says literally, “May your heart live forever.” The conjectural translation depends on a recurrent idiomatic use of “heart” in expressions that refer to mood, good or bad.
30. Yes, to Him will bow down / all the netherworld’s sleepers / . . . all who go down to the dust. The received text seems to say, “They ate and bowed down,” ʾakhlu wehistaḥawu, which does not make much sense. The translation adopts a commonly proposed emendation that involves merely a respacing of the consonants and one change in a vowel, ʾakh lo hishtaḥawu. This inclusion of the dead among God’s worshipful subjects is unusual because a reiterated theme in Psalms is that the dead, mute forever, cannot praise God. Perhaps the poet, having imagined God’s dominion extending to the far ends of the earth, also wants to extend it downward—against common usage—into the very underworld. The Masoretic Text continues to be incoherent here, reading kol-dishney-ʾarets, “all the fats [?] of the earth.” The translation assumes a widely accepted emendation, kol-yesheiney-ʾarets (the last word, ʾarets, means both “earth” and “netherworld”).
whose life is undone. Again, the Hebrew is enigmatic—literally: “and his life he did not cause to survive.” This sounds unidiomatic, but in all probability the reference is to the condition of death. Beginning with this phrase, everything in the Hebrew through the end of the next verse (and the psalm) is opaque, bearing the look of a word salad tossed by a bewildered scribe.
31. My seed. The Masoretic Text simply says, unidiomatically, “seed,” but there are manuscripts that show “my seed.”
for generations to come. The received text places yavoʾu (literally, “they will come”) at the beginning of the next verse. But dor yavʾo, “a generation to come,” makes good sense. (The waw at the end that turns it into a plural, yavʾou, is probably a dittography from the waw at the beginning of the next word, weyagidu, “they will proclaim.”)
32. to a people aborning. Again, the Hebrew is a little strange—literally, “a people born.” The translation is based on my inference that the reference is to futurity, parallel to “a generation to come.”
for He has done. The abruptness reflects the Hebrew. What God has done, in any case, would have to be His bounty or kindnesses (Hebrew tsedaqot) to those who fear Him