Ps. 22 (part 1)

My God, / my God / why have you / forsaken me? My moaning / is of the distance / of my salvation!  O my God / I cry out / by day / but you don’t answer,  and by night / but there is / no rest for me.  In these four lines, three times does the psalmist say, “my God”. When the covenant was originally entered into between Yhwh and Israel, Yhwh said “You will be my people, and I will be your god.” This language seems, then, to immediately place us in the context of covenant. The psalmist does not question this reality: Yhwh is “his god”. This is personal, possessory and something like the appeal of a lover to a beloved. The devotion is singular, absolute and without qualification. The fact that it is repeated twice gives voice to this very emotional plea and attachment to Yhwh; repetition, in this context, always caries with it the sense of betrayed and severely wounded love. But, and this is crucial, this is not a covenant of equals: the psalmist knows he stands on the receiving end, that his partner is his lord and master (his ‘God’); that the covenant was given to him, bestowed upon him. It is from this single-hearted devotion, and the expectation that such possession flowed both ways, that the wrenching cry emerges: “why have you forsaken me”. This is a covenantal cry, not something that could be understood apart from that context in a type of abstract sense. To the psalmist there is no sense of guilt. Whatever has caused the rupture in the covenantal relationship does not emerge with him but seems to stand purely on the side of Yhwh; although I am not sure I would imagine that the work ‘forsaken’ carries with it a sense of covenant negligence.

My moaning / is of the distance / of my salvation. This line represents, in short, the first half of the psalm with use of ‘my’: my moaning – distance – my salvation. The line actually reads like the gulf that separates the psalmist from ‘his salvation’. Likewise, the use of ‘my’ resonates with the opening ‘my god, my god’. Here we enter into the depths of this man’s being; he sides with “his”/”my” God as his covenantal partner and yet at the same time his/my moaning expresses the distance between him and his God/salvation. He is, in effect, torn asunder, inhabiting neither the side of death (where God is ‘not remembered’), nor the side of covenantal solidarity with God (he feels forsaken). This is of the type of anguished love/devotion. “Moaning” is also something we have encountered before in psalms that speak of severe sickness; this type of verbal expression conjures up images of extreme pain, such that uncontrollable moans grind away from the psalmist’s mouth. These moans, however, are not simply of physical pain but, as above, the fact that ‘salvation’ (healing, and restoration) seem to be so far when they should be close at hand. It is, I think, that sense that is so painful: the feeling that his ‘salvation’ is ‘far’ from him while at the same time it is almost palpable. So, again, he returns to his covenantal plea of “O my God” except now we see that the ‘distance’ has caused an interruption in the psalmists experience of time: God’s absence is total (day and night; contrast with Ps. 1 and the one who meditates on torah day and night). For that reason, the daytime is experienced as a perpetual question (no answer) and the nighttime, which should be a time of rest and entering into a ‘new day’, becomes an insomniac nightmare (no rest for me). We have seen this before: the fact that the severity of the psalmist’s anguish is most poignant in sleepless nights. But you / are holy – enthroned / upon the praises / of Israel. This verse represents a type of transition between the lament and the appeal to the ‘faith of our fathers who were saved’. It is therefore important to reflect on. “But you are holy”—Why ‘but’? It is a word of contrast but it is not immediately clear what it is referring to. The previous verses spoke of God as distant and as forsaking the psalmist who deserves to be answered. It would seem them, that this ‘holiness’ of God must be contrasting to these terms. On the other hand it could also refer to the fact that God is ‘holy’ and so set apart that it would be presumptuous of the psalmist to urge more from God than what he has already requested. He is like a petitioner to a great king who, realizing his place, now concedes that his petition has been made and he will no longer presume upon the sovereign’s authority and freedom. I confess it seems both are applicable. The very next description is of God’s ‘enthronement’ upon the ‘praises of Israel’. It is an odd description and one we have not encountered thus far. The image is of God throne being raised above the joyous exclamations and praise of Israel. What follows give’s flesh to this: Our fathers / trusted in you -  they trusted / and you / delivered them.  They cried out / to you / and were delivered;  they trusted in you / and were not disappointed.  

 

Our fathers / trusted in you;  they trusted / and you / delivered them.  They cried out / to you / and were delivered;  They trusted in you / and were not disappointed. There are several things about this transition that deserve attention: First, the ‘our’ is in contrast to the ‘my God, my God’ that has come before. It is likely this refers to the fact that this prayer is a communal event; several are gathered with this sick man in order to pray for him. It is interesting, though, how this move to communal identity alters, to some extent, the prayer (or, perhaps, broadens it). The psalmist places himself in the ‘genetic line’ of a trusting family; hence, he asserts, again, that he is a part of the covenantal family and appeals to the same covenantal reality that saved his family before him. However, at the same time, they seem far removed from the psalmist: they are constantly referred to as “they”. At the same time that the psalmist senses himself a child of these trusting men, he also feels as if he has been disowned in some form or another (this will be most emphatically seen when he describes himself as “not human” and “a worm”). Second, the use of the word “trusted’ is reiterated three times, which seems to relate back to the three times the psalmist refers to god as ‘my God’, or, it may also relate to the three ways God has remained silent (forsaken, not answered, no rest). Whereas his father’s trust was met with deliverance, this son’s crying out/trust is met with silence. These men were ‘not forsaken’, they were answered and they received their rest (deliverance). To the psalmist, something dreadful has happened to sever him, and him in particular, from this covenantal family, and it seems to reside with God. But I am a worm / and not a man. This line directly refers to “But you are holy – enthroned on the praises of Israel.” Whereas God is holy—clean, pure and set apart—the psalmist is the emblem of death and destitution (the worm as referring to the beginnings of the ‘worm of death’ that devours the body). To the psalmist, he has lost even his trace of humanity and become the lowest of animals that feeds on death (nothing could be more impure and the opposite of holy). Whereas Yhwh’s ‘set-apart’ is due to his overpowering holiness and cleanliness, the psalmist is ‘set-apart’ from the community because of his filth and closeness to death:. “scorned by mankind / and despised by people.” He is “not a man” “scorned by mankind”. His alienation is complete, total, and absolute. As far above as God stands in his holiness, he resides below in his filth. Whereas God is ‘enthroned’, he has been cast down and out. The natural kingship that everyone shares due to their being an ‘image of God’ is almost lost to him who is “not a man”. These lines also emphasize that the contrast this way: whereas Yhwh was ‘cired to’ because he represented the power to save, this man is likewise ‘cried at’ but in “scorn’ and “despising”. “All that see me / deride me; they curl their lip / and they shake their heads.” God is the object of blessing; the psalmist is the object of curse. “He trusted in Yhwh / Let him deliver him. Let him rescue him / since he delights in him.” One pictures these men talking to themselves as they watch this spectacle of the ‘worm’ writhing in pain; and they, who could alleviate the suffering, instead place it on Yhwh’s shoulders. They will do nothing, let Yhwh do it. There is a zone or sphere that this man inhabits that the scorners will not enter. It is a shocking thing that Yhwh’s first mention comes on the lips of scorners (we will see in the end that Yhwh is, not surprisingly, mentioned seven times in the psalm), although it is difficult to discern whether this is a mocking of Yhwh or of the man or of both. Read one way, it is not focused as much on Yhwh as the fact that this man is so utterly abandoned. On the other hand, it could be that these scorners are accusing Yhwh of unfaithfulness and abandonment. The use of the word ‘trust’ here is interesting, referring back to the ‘fathers’ who trusted in God. These men/scorners point, rather poignantly, to the fact that this ‘worm’ is utterly removed Yhwh’s care and concern

 

You are the one / who drew me forth / from the belly – the one who made me safe / upon my mother’s breasts. – I was cast upon you / from the womb – from my mother’s belly / you have been my God. There is a very interesting dynamic at work in these two lines: it begins with the assertion of Yhwh as a type of wet-nurse to the psalmist’s birth, ‘drawing’ him ‘forth’ in language reminiscent of deliverance from water (Moses and other psalms speak of being ‘drawn out of’ the water depths). This is matched by the very abstract ‘the belly’; at this point it is not ‘my mother’s’ belly but something akin to an impersonal object. By doing so, the action is entirely Yhwh’s—even the ‘mother’ is absent from this delivery. The image then shifts to Yhwh delicately placing the psalmist upon his ‘mother’s breast’, for feeding and nourishment. He delivers the psalmist over to his mother. Suddenly, the image shifts: no longer is this the image of normal birth but of the psalmist being ‘cast upon’ Yhwh from the womb. Now, the nurturing that was inherent in the image of the feeding breasts is replaced with Yhwh being the sole protector of this child. To be ‘cast upon’ Yhwh highlights a dangerous vulnerability to the child; it is as if he has been shipwrecked and I ‘cast upon’ Yhwh as his only rock of safety. At this point the ‘belly’ reappears but now it is ‘my mother’s belly’ and yet, again, it seems impersonal as to the mother: from my mother’s belly you have been my God. Throughout these two lines then we have Yhwh both delivering, handing over, protecting and being the only source of security to the psalmist. In the context of the psalm this is important for a few reasons: the psalmist claims no other source of protection, from his very birth, other than Yhwh, who now seems to have abandoned him; Yhwh is the one who brought him into this world, and it seems as if the psalmist is saying he has some type of responsibility to make sure he is not removed from this world unnaturally; by using the term ‘my god’, he is directly referring back to the opening lines and highlighting that he has, from his very conception, been a ‘covenantal’ being/partner of Yhwh—his very birth is marked by a type of adoption by Yhwh as one of his own. In some way, he is Yhwh’s son/child. Noticeably absent in these lines is the ‘father’—only the mother is mentioned. Perhaps, his absence points to the fact that Yhwh has been his ‘father’, in some form. Or, perhaps this ‘father’ has already been mentioned (‘our fathers trusted in you…’). Maybe, it was through his ‘fathers’ that he was born into the covenantal community, and through his ‘mother’ that he was given life. There is, manifestly, a concern here with the totality of human familial connections (‘our fathers’…my ‘mother’s belly’), both of which point to covenantal bonds in their comprehensiveness—and the fact that the psalmist feels as if he has been abandoned/disowned. This image will be picked up again later on in the section dealing with Yhwh’s answer; there, the generations will be healed. What deserves comment here thought is this sense that the psalmist finds himself ‘always already’ at Yhwh’s service: Yhwh ‘pulled him’ into the world and he was ‘cast upon’ Yhwh from his earliest remembrance. Don’t be distant/ from me – for trouble / is near – there is certainly / no helper!  These lines should be read in the context of the above: since you, Yhwh, delivered me into this world, now do not be distant from me. In addition, the ‘distance’ referred to here must also refer back to the fact that the psalmist’s ‘moaning’ is “of the distance of my salvation”. And, what has already been made manifest by the fact that he sees himself as merely a worm that ‘everyone’ mocks, this psalmist is alone. There is no ‘salvation’ for him. Many bulls / have surrounded me - mighty bulls / of Bashan / have encircled me. – They have opened / their mouths, - like a lion / about to rend and roar. There are two things interesting about these lines: the first is that throughout the psalm the ‘enemies’ are going to be characterized as beasts of some sort (bulls, lions or dogs). This is interesting in light of the fact that the psalmist has also called himself an animal—a ‘worm’—and ‘not a man’. Are we to see here something to the effect that these enemies are also ‘not human’ in the sense that they have lost their ‘image of God’ and become nothing more than beasts? Or, are we to see here the fact that in Yhwh’s ‘absence’, the wicked become horrendous, powerful beasts? (And, are these two questions essentially the same thing?) And, I wonder how much this idea plays into apocalyptic images of beasts: enemy nations are always characterized as beasts (bears, lions, etc…). This leads into the second point: these are bulls that act like lions. Bulls, as is later evident, ‘gore’—but here they open their mouths like lions to rend and tear. This combining of images from different animals lends itself to rather horrifying image—something also very characteristic of apocalyptic literature (the combining of various animal parts into a single entity). As to the specific animals: this is the first time we have encountered bulls; lions have been, by far, the most common image. I have been / poured out / like water, - and all my bones / have become disjointed; my heart was like wax; - it melted / within my inwards. – my strength / dried up / like a potsheard, - and my tongue / was fused / to my jaws. From the description of the impending and congregating beasts, we now turn inward. “poured out like water”: might this refer to tears? Or, are we to see his strength ‘pouring’ out of him? It is a particularly disturbing image regardless of how it is taken, although the second I find much more poignant, and emotionally descriptive of the feeling of helplessness. “Bones have become disjointed”: in Psalm 6, I believe, the sick man complained that his bones had become ‘disturbed’. Here, we find the image of, literally, ‘coming undone’. Following and developing on the previous image we see a type of progression: strength and vitality as turning from hardness and security into water and ‘pouring out’ of the psalmist, to, here, the image of the bones, themselves, now dissolving and losing their cohesiveness. He is becoming dispersed, separated from himself, and dissolving. To further the image of becoming ‘incorporeal’—the heart, the seat of all reason and emotion, is now the image of wax under an intense heat: it melts, it loses its shape and its consistence. Any form, formerly impressed upon it (any ‘image’) is lost within the furnace of the impending beasts. We see here the image of the heart actually dissipating, melting within the ‘innards’ and disappearing. This man senses that his life is, literally, ebbing away. At the end of these images of ‘pouring’ and ‘water’ we are left with a dessert: he is nothing but a dried up potsherd; he has become hollowed out and nothing but wind remains inside. He is fragile as a clay vessel. And finally, even his ability to communicate this tortuous ordeal is taken from him. Not only is he alone, without any helper, but he is alone to himself: he cannot even speak under the weight of the doom surrounding him. Notice how the tongue is the object of the verb: my tongue was fused to my jaw. It is as if these enemies, or the anxiety they induce, were the perpetrators. This man is truly portrayed as the victim, nothing but the recipient of these forces. This is the farthest cry from the ‘child’ who had been ‘safely put upon my mother’s breast’, where he drank in strength. “And you deposited me / in deaths dust.” Here, in a type of horrible conclusion, we find Yhwh returning this man, merely ‘depositing him’, in death’s dust. A conclusion because this line feels very similar to when Yhwh ‘delivered’ the psalmist in birth. Now, by contrast he is ‘delivering’ him to death. The sense here is of a progressive ‘drying up’, of becoming more and more fragile, to the point where he is but an empty jar dropped (discarded?) onto the ground. This also picks up on the theme of him as feeling abandoned by his covenantal family (he no longer seems a part of his ‘fathers’ and now is the reverse of who he was with his ‘mother’).
For dogs / have surrounded me; - a pack of thugs / have encompassed me. – My hands / and my feet / were exhausted. – I count all my bones. Again, we are the realm of the beast rather than the human. We have already noted how the ‘human’ has slipped from this psalm; the psalmist describes himself as a ‘worm’ and, specifically, as ‘not a man’; his enemies have been described (only) in terms of bestiary (oxen and lions and, here, dogs). It probably goes without saying but these are all menacing creatures: the oxen stands for a type of brutal strength; the lion for its speed and violence in its kill. Here, dogs speak of a different image: a roving, menacing and chaotic group of enemies. Dogs, alone, are not of as much threat; it is when they travel in ‘packs’ that they can become terrifying. An ox can gore, a lion can tear at the throat, dogs, though, tear at a person from every direction (if you kill one, it is of little consequence). It is precisely their number that we are too fear here: they ‘surround’, they are a ‘pack’, the ‘encompass’. The ox and the lion have been multiplied into a surrounding and pressing force, bent on his destruction. It is because of this awareness that images of utter fear and helplessness again emerge; and, just as total as the dogs are, so too is the total weakness of psalmist. He knows he has no chance of escape. In the face of the ‘lion’ his bones became ‘disjointed’; here, again, his bones can ‘be counted’. He is intimately aware of how frail his entire life has become. They stare / and look at me! – They divide / my garments / among themselves – and cast lots / for my clothing. At this point of total vulnerability we pause, briefly, and move away from the psalmist and back to the dogs—and what they are doing is worse than tearing at him. Their ‘stare’ is horrible; it heightens the sense of finality and horror that the psalmist is about to encounter. It is the playing (tormenting) gaze of the enemy who knows he has his prey, but wants to psychologically torture him before physically destroying him. In this way one senses the joy these ‘dogs’ feel at watching this man ‘melt’. This is pleasurable to them. Horribly, this must be similar to the feeling of woman staring a gang of men before she is raped, and the pleasure those men derive in watching her squirm. Now, without preparation, the physical violence begins—although only its effect is described (the actual stripping of his clothes is never mentioned). They divide / my garments / among themselves – Instead of tearing at his flesh they have torn off his clothing. To be stripped naked in this manner is something that resonates throughout the prophets (Israel is often described as a woman who Yhwh will strip in front of her lovers, in public). It is utter and total shame. They uncover what Yhwh covered upon Adam and Eve’s expulsion in order to hide their shame. It is particularly effective that the actual stripping takes place ‘off-stage’. Throughout, and surprisingly, there has been no physical violence to the psalmist: the ox’s threat was found in the fact that he had ‘a mouth like a lion’; the dogs surrounded, but merely ‘looked at him’. Here, the violence begins as a stripping, a humiliation. It is still psychological, a preparation for something worse. This form of exposure is, perhaps, the worse and highest form of torture these men can engage in prior to physical violence. As we have noted in other psalms, this is incredibly important in a culture where honor and shame are central; this is no stoic individual—his sense of self is part-and-parcel with the community. To be shamed in this way is intentionally barbaric and an attempt to truly destroy something in this man—his pride/honor/respect. In this way, this could look back to the lines where he describes himself as a ‘worm’ and not a man, “scorned and despised” by mankind. In this shaming he has, himself, lost his humanity because his identity is tied to those around him. In a sense, the worse possible form of ‘defilement’, in this context, would be to be made a spectacle. It is no surprise then that, at the height of this torture, we finally come around to the cry to Yhwh: But you / O Yhwh / do not be distant!   
This statement really does stand at almost the direct middle of the poem and there are a few things of importance to recognize about it. First, it is only the second time (out of ‘seven’) that Yhwh’s name appears. The first, as described above, was on the lips of the mockers—they mocked this ‘worm’, that Yhwh would have to come to his aid because no one else was going to (or, were they making fun of Yhwh, and the fact that he couldn’t come to his aid? Or, were they saying that this man is so deplorable that no god would come to his aid?). Whatever their intent they were doubting that Yhwh would, in fact, deliver the psalmist from death. It was an accusation that his ‘trust’ in Yhwh would go unfulfilled. Here, we find the psalmist not losing his faith but, rather, expressing that rust in his plea/demand. This represents, then, a reversal, a combative assertion against the attacker/mockers/oxen/lions/dogs, that Yhwh will in fact draw close. Which leads to the second observation: those who are currently ‘close’ are the attackers (the dogs who surround/encompass). The constant refrain throughout has been that Yhwh is distant, and far away; the ‘distance of my salvation’ is the reason for his groaning. However, there has been another use of ‘distance’: those who see this man in his shame will not draw near to him; rather they stand far off and mock him (I think this is one reason why physical violence is not emphasized as much as verbal; no one wants to get close to him, probably for fear of contamination). Here, the psalmist asks that Yhwh come close to him in his wretchedness and unholiness. In this way Yhwh will overcome both problems: he will deliver him from his attackers as well as heal him of what distances him from his human community (if Yhwh draws close he will be healed and therefore brought back into communion, Job-like). In a sense this is a request that Yhwh reintegrate the psalmist back into his ‘family’: through his mother (personally visiting him and heal him) and his father (honoring his trust as his people had). From this point on Yhwh’s name will flow easily off of the psalmist’s tongue and every distance that had been created by the first half will be closed.

O my help / hasten to my aid! – Deliver my soul / from the sword, - my life / from the paw of the dog. – Save me / from the mouth of the lion, - from the horns / of wild oxen. There is no mistaking, from what has gone before, that this man has no interior resources (or exterior) from which to draw on: Yhwh is the only ‘help’ he is able to call on. Likewise, as has been described above, the final act is about to descend upon him; he has already been exposed and the only thing left for him is physical death. For that reason, Yhwh must ‘hasten’ to him. And, for the first time in describing his enemies, something human emerges: a ‘sword’. Set up as parallelism, this ‘sword’ is matched by the ‘paw of the dog’, the ‘mouth of the lion’ and the ‘horns of wild oxen’. This order reverses the order they have appeared in the psalm—oxen-lion-dog (is now) dog-lion-oxen. Yhwh is called upon to be the ultimate ‘reverser’, setting things to right, beginning with those who are closest to him (the dogs) and proceeding to the those who are strongest in themselves (the ox). This ‘reversal’ concludes the first half of the psalm. The ‘reversal’ will continue, however, in its fulfillment in part two.