¹My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning … ²¹Save me from the lion’s mouth; from the horns of the wild oxen You answer me. ²²I will tell of Your name to my brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will praise You.

Jesus quoted this well-known psalm in His dying moments on the cross. We include it here for the sake of precise clarity:

At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Mark 15:34)

Although Arabic was the everyday language in common use in His day, in His suffering, Jesus chose to quote the psalm in the original Hebrew language. He wanted the connection to be unmistakable, that He was applying the psalm to Himself. It is widely understood that the Jewish rabbis would quote the first verse of an OT passage to refer to the entire passage, a kind of short-form reference. Jesus intended His listeners to see His experience in light of the whole psalm.

In verse 21, the psalm writer says, “Save me.” Of course, Jesus as the Messiah did not sin, so the psalm, if applicable to Jesus, would not be a cry for spiritual salvation from His own sin. Nor would it be salvation from the sin of mankind, for which He came to provide the sacrifice. He was not asking the Father to deliver Him from sin in any shape or form.

Taking this psalm to be fully Messianic, Jesus was asking the Father to save Him not from but out of Satan’s greatest and final weapon against Jesus, namely death, pictured here as the lion’s mouth. His prayer then was for resurrection out of death, not preventing death from happening. That is why verse 21 switches from the request (“Save me”) to an acknowledgment of fact (“You have heard me”). From that point on, the lament (vss. 1-21a) turns into praise and commitment (vss. 21b-31).

So, in the first section, we see the suffering of Christ, His sense of forsakenness and groaning. His psychological state of mind reflects a truly human experience: “But I am a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and despised by the people” (Ps. 22:6). We see the mocking of the people:

All who see me sneer at me; they separate with the lip, they wag the head, saying, Commit yourself to the Lord; let Him deliver him; let Him rescue him, because He delights in him.” (Ps. 22:7–8, see Matt. 27:39, Luke 23:35, also Isaiah 53)

Yet, our Lord continued to trust in His heavenly Father in His suffering. What we read in Psalm 22:9-11 we see in His suffering:

[W]hile being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously … (1 Peter 2:23)

So much of Psalm 22 finds a parallel in Christ’s suffering on the cross, which we don’t have room here for comment. But we must not miss that much of the psalm’s second part describes the resurrection. The psalm writer (which we apply to Jesus as well) writes about his enthusiastic desire to proclaim the good news of what God has done in shutting the lion’s mouth. The original writer, David, was probably writing about his own experience of feeling abandoned by God, then praising Him for his deliverance. Jesus likewise praises His Father for rescuing Him out of death through the resurrection. Jesus also set His post-resurrection ministry around the Great Commission, to the assignment to His followers to preach the gospel to the world (Matt. 28:18-20).

The foundational message reverberates in the words of the psalm:

I will tell of Your name to my brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will praise You. You who fear the Lord, praise Him; all you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him, and stand in awe of Him, all you descendants of Israel. 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 for help, He heard. (Ps. 22:22–24)

If we follow Christ’s example, then our psychological despondency of feeling forsaken by God and despised by others will be eclipsed by our awe of God and His great salvation. How can we not praise God and tell others about His salvation: the resurrection of Jesus out of death, the salvation from our sin, and the good news that God will save those who hear the message and believe?

Lord, because You died and rose again, I am saved. What great news You have given me to share with