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Psalms 22:6 World English Bible (WEB)

6 But I am a worm, and no man; A reproach of men, and despised by the people.

Cross Reference

Job 25:6 WEB

How much less man, who is a worm! The son of man, who is a worm!"

Isaiah 53:3 WEB

He was despised, and rejected by men; a man of suffering, and acquainted with disease: and as one from whom men hide their face he was despised; and we didn't respect him.

Isaiah 49:7 WEB

Thus says Yahweh, the Redeemer of Israel, [and] his Holy One, to him whom man despises, to him whom the nation abhors, to a servant of rulers: Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall worship; because of Yahweh who is faithful, [even] the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.

Isaiah 41:14 WEB

Don't be afraid, you worm Jacob, and you men of Israel; I will help you, says Yahweh, and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.

Matthew 11:19 WEB

The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' But wisdom is justified by her children."

John 7:20 WEB

The multitude answered, "You have a demon! Who seeks to kill you?"

Revelation 15:3 WEB

They sang the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, "Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God, the Almighty; Righteous and true are your ways, you King of the nations.

Hebrews 13:12 WEB

Therefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside of the gate.

John 8:48 WEB

Then the Jews answered him, "Don't we say well that you are a Samaritan, and have a demon?"

John 7:47-49 WEB

The Pharisees therefore answered them, "You aren't also led astray, are you? Have any of the rulers believed in him, or of the Pharisees? But this multitude that doesn't know the law is accursed."

John 7:15 WEB

The Jews therefore marveled, saying, "How does this man know letters, having never been educated?"

Matthew 27:20-23 WEB

Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the multitudes to ask for Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. But the governor answered them, "Which of the two do you want me to release to you?" They said, "Barabbas!" Pilate said to them, "What then shall I do to Jesus, who is called Christ?" They all said to him, "Let him be crucified!" But the governor said, "Why? What evil has he done?" But they cried out exceedingly, saying, "Let him be crucified!"

Matthew 12:24 WEB

But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, "This man does not cast out demons, except by Beelzebul, the prince of the demons."

Lamentations 3:30 WEB

Let him give his cheek to him who strikes him; let him be filled full with reproach.

Psalms 88:8 WEB

You have taken my friends from me. You have made me an abomination to them. I am confined, and I can't escape.

Psalms 69:19-20 WEB

You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor. My adversaries are all before you. Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; For comforters, but I found none.

Psalms 69:7-12 WEB

Because for your sake, I have borne reproach. Shame has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers, An alien to my mother's children. For the zeal of your house consumes me. The reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. When I wept and I fasted, That was to my reproach. When I made sackcloth my clothing, I became a byword to them. Those who sit in the gate talk about me. I am the song of the drunkards.

Psalms 31:11 WEB

Because of all my adversaries I have become utterly contemptible to my neighbors, A fear to my acquaintances. Those who saw me on the street fled from me.

Psalms 31:1 WEB

> In you, Yahweh, I take refuge. Let me never be disappointed: Deliver me in your righteousness.

Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 22

Commentary on Psalms 22 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary


Introduction

Eli Eli Lama Asabtani

We have here a plaintive Psalm, whose deep complaints, out of the midst of the most humiliating degradation and most fearful peril, stand in striking contrast to the cheerful tone of Psalms 21:1-13 - starting with a disconsolate cry of anguish, it passes on to a trustful cry for help, and ends in vows of thanksgiving and a vision of world-wide results, which spring from the deliverance of the sufferer. In no Psalm do we trace such an accumulation of the most excruciating outward and inward suffering pressing upon the complainant, in connection the most perfect innocence. In this respect Ps 69 is its counterpart; but it differs from it in this particular, that there is not a single sound of imprecation mingled with its complaints.

It is David, who here struggles upward out of the gloomiest depth to such a bright height. It is a Davidic Psalm belonging to the time of the persecution by Saul. Ewald brings it down to the time preceding the destruction of Jerusalem, and Bauer to the time of the Exile. Ewald says it is not now possible to trace the poet more exactly. And Maurer closes by saying: illue unum equidem pro certo habeo, fuisse vatem hominem opibus praeditum atque illustrem, qui magna auctoritate valeret non solum apud suos, verum etiam apud barbaros . Hitzig persists in his view, that Jeremiah composed the first portion when cast into prison as an apostate, and the second portion in the court of the prison, when placed under this milder restraint. And according to Olshausen, even here again, the whole is appropriate to the time of the Maccabees. But it seems to us to be confirmed at every point, that David, who was so persecuted by Saul, is the author. The cry of prayer אל־תרחק (Psalms 22:12, Psalms 22:20; Psalms 35:22; Psalms 38:22, borrowed in Psalms 71:12); the name given to the soul, יחידה (Psalms 22:21; Psalms 35:17); the designation of quiet and resignation by דומיה (Psalms 22:3; Psalms 39:3; Psalms 62:2, cf. Psalms 65:2), are all regarded by us, since we do not limit the genuine Davidic Psalms to Psalms 3:1 as Hitzig does, as Davidic idioms. Moreover, there is no lack of points of contact in other respects with genuine old Davidic hymns (cf. Psalms 22:30 with Psalms 28:1, those that go down to the dust, to the grave; then in later Psalms as in Psalms 143:7, in Isaiah and Ezekiel), and more especially those belonging to the time of Saul, as Ps 69 (cf. Psalms 22:27 with Psalms 69:33) and Ps 59 (cf. Psalms 22:17 with Psalms 59:15). To the peculiar characteristics of the Psalms of this period belong the figures taken from animals, which are heaped up in the Psalm before us. The fact that Ps 22 is an ancient Davidic original is also confirmed by the parallel passages in the later literature of the Shı̂r (Psalms 71:5. taken from Psalms 22:10.; Psalms 102:18. in imitation Psalms 22:25, Psalms 22:31.), of the Chokma (Proverbs 16:3, גּל אל־ה taken from Psalms 22:9; Psalms 37:5), and of prophecy (Isaiah, Isaiah 49:1, Isaiah 53:1; Jeremiah, in Lamentations 4:4; cf. Psalms 22:15, and many other similar instances). In spite of these echoes in the later literature there are still some expressions that remain unique in the Psalm and are not found elsewhere, as the hapaxlegomena אילוּת and ענוּת . Thus, then, we entertain no doubts respecting the truth of the לדוד . David speaks in this Psalm, - he and not any other, and that out of his own inmost being. In accordance with the nature of lyric poetry, the Psalm has grown up on the soil of his individual life and his individual sensibilities.

There is also in reality in the history of David, when persecuted by Saul, a situation which may have given occasion to the lifelike picture drawn in this Psalm, viz., 1 Samuel 23:25. The detailed circumstances of the distress at that time are not known to us, but they certainly did not coincide with the rare and terrible sufferings depicted in this Psalm in such a manner that these can be regarded as an historically faithful and literally exact copy of those circumstances; cf. on the other hand Psalms 17:1-15 which was composed at the same period. To just as slight a degree have the prospects, which he connects in this Psalm with his deliverance, been realised in David's own life. On the other hand, the first portion exactly coincides with the sufferings of Jesus Christ, and the second with the results that have sprung from His resurrection. It is the agonising situation of the Crucified One which is presented before our eyes in Psalms 22:15 with such artistic faithfulness: the spreading out of the limbs of the naked body, the torturing pain in hands and feet, and the burning thirst which the Redeemer, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, announced in the cry διψῶ , John 19:28. Those who blaspheme and those who shake their head at Him passed by His cross, Matthew 27:39, just as Psalms 22:8 says; scoffers cried out to Him: let the God in whom He trusts help Him, Matthew 27:43, just as Psalms 22:9 says; His garments were divided and lots were cast for His coat, John 19:23., in order that Psalms 22:19 of our Psalm might be fulfilled. The fourth of the seven sayings of the dying One, Ἠελί, Ἠελί κ. τ. λ . , Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34, is the first word of our Psalm and the appropriation of the whole. And the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hebrews 2:11., cites Psalms 22:23 as the words of Christ, to show that He is not ashamed to call them brethren, whose sanctifier God has appointed Him to be, just as the risen Redeemer actually has done, Matthew 28:10; John 20:17. This has by no means exhausted the list of mutual relationships. The Psalm so vividly sets before us not merely the sufferings of the Crucified One, but also the salvation of the world arising out of His resurrection and its sacramental efficacy, that it seems more like history than prophecy, ut non tam prophetia, quam historia videatur (Cassiodorus). Accordingly the ancient Church regarded Christ, not David, as the speaker in this Psalm; and condemned Theodore of Mopsuestia who expounded it as contemporary history. Bakius expresses the meaning of the older Lutheran expositors when he says: asserimus, hunc Psalmum ad literam primo, proprie et absque ulla allegoria, tropologia et ἀναγωῇ integrum et per omnia de solo Christo exponendum esse . Even the synagogue, so far as it recognises a suffering Messiah, hears Him speak here; and takes the “hind of the morning” as a name of the Shechı̂na and as a symbol of the dawning redemption.

To ourselves, who regard the whole Psalm as the words of David, it does not thereby lose anything whatever of its prophetic character. It is a typical Psalm. The same God who communicates His thoughts of redemption to the mind of men, and there causes them to develop into the word of prophetic announcement, has also moulded the history itself into a prefiguring representation of the future deliverance; and the evidence for the truth of Christianity which is derived from this factual prophecy ( Thatweissagung ) is as grand as that derived from the verbal prediction ( Wortweissagung ). That David, the anointed of Samuel, before he ascended the throne, had to traverse a path of suffering which resembles the suffering path of Jesus, the Son of David, baptized of John, and that this typical suffering of David is embodied for us in the Psalms as in the images reflected from a mirror, is an arrangement of divine power, mercy, and wisdom. But Ps 22 is not merely a typical Psalm. For in the very nature of the type is involved the distance between it and the antitype. In Ps 22, however, David descends, with his complaint, into a depth that lies beyond the depth of his affliction, and rises, with his hopes, to a height that lies far beyond the height of the reward of his affliction. In other words: the rhetorical figure hyperbole (Arab. mubâlgt , i.e., depiction, with colours thickly laid on), without which, in the eyes of the Semite, poetic diction would be flat and faded, is here made use of by the Spirit of God. By this Spirit the hyperbolic element is changed into the prophetic. This elevation of the typical into the prophetic is also capable of explanation on psychological grounds. Since David has been anointed with the oil of royal consecration, and at the same time with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the kingship of promise, he regards himself also as the messiah of God, towards whom the promises point; and by virtue of this view of himself, in the light of the highest calling in connection with the redemptive history, the historical reality of his own experiences becomes idealised to him, and thereby both what he experiences and what he hopes for acquire a depth and height of background which stretches out into the history of the final and true Christ of God. We do not by this maintain any overflowing of his own consciousness to that of the future Christ, an opinion which has been shown by Hengstenberg, Tholuck and Kurtz to be psychologically impossible. But what we say is, that looking upon himself as the Christ of God, - to express it in the light of the historical fulfilment, - he looks upon himself in Jesus Christ. He does not distinguish himself from the Future One, but in himself he sees the Future One, whose image does not free itself from him till afterwards, and whose history will coincide with all that is excessive in his own utterances. For as God the Father moulds the history of Jesus Christ in accordance with His own counsel, so His Spirit moulds even the utterances of David concerning himself the type of the Future One, with a view to that history. Through this Spirit, who is the Spirit of God and of the future Christ at the same time, David's typical history, as he describes it in the Psalms and more especially in this Psalm, acquires that ideal depth of tone, brilliancy, and power, by virtue of which it (the history) reaches far beyond its typical facts, penetrates to its very root in the divine counsels, and grows to be the word of prophecy: so that, to a certain extent, it may rightly be said that Christ here speaks through David, insofar as the Spirit of Christ speaks through him, and makes the typical suffering of His ancestor the medium for the representation of His own future sufferings. Without recognising this incontestable relation of the matter Ps 22 cannot be understood nor can we fully enter into its sentiments.

The inscription runs: To the precentor, upon (after) the hind of the morning's dawn, a Psalm of David . Luther, with reference to the fact that Jesus was taken in the night and brought before the Sanhedrim, renders it “of the hind, that is early chased,” for

Patris Sapientia, Veritas divina,

Deus homo captus est horâ matutinâ .