Psalms 22

9. Thou shalt make them like a fiery furnace at the time of Thy presence. To make them like a furnace here means, not to make them the destroyers of others, but, by a natural abbreviation, to make them as if they were in a fiery furnace. At the time of Thy presence, literally, Thy face, which may be understood to mean, when Thou lookest at them. A.

9-12. There is no escaping God’s avenging eye, no going out of the reach of His hand; rocks and mountains will be no better shelter at last than fig-leaves were at first. The destruction will be an utter destruction. Their fruit and thir seed shall be destroyed (v. 10). The enemies of God’s kingdom, in every age, shall fall under the same doom, and the whole generation of them will at last be rooted out, and all opposing rule, principality, and power shall be put down. The arrows of God’s wrath shall confound them and put them to flight, being levelled at the face of them (v. 12). That will be the lot of daring enemies that face God. Those that might have had Christ to rule and save them, but rejected Him and fought against Him, shall find that even the remembrance of that will be enough to make them to eternity a fiery oven to themselves; it is the worm that dies not. H.

1. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? 2 O my God, I cry in the day-time, but thou answerest not; And in the night season, and am not silent. 3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. 4 Our fathers trusted in thee: They trusted, and thou didst deliver them. 5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: They trusted in thee, and were not ashamed. 6 But I am a worm, and no man; A reproach of men, and despised of the people. 7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, 8 Commit thyself unto the LORD; let him deliver him: Let him deliver him, seeing he delighteth in him. 9 But thou art he that took me out of the womb; Thou didst make me trust when I was upon my mother’s breasts. 10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: Thou art my God since my mother bare me. 11 Be not far from me; for trouble is near; For there is none to help 12 Many bulls have compassed me: Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. 13 They gape upon me with their mouth, As a ravening and a roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, And all my bones are out of joint: My heart is like wax; It is melted in the midst of my bowels. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; And my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; And thou hast brought me into the dust of death. 16 For dogs have compassed me: The assembly of evil-doers have inclosed me; They pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I may tell all my bones; They look and stare upon me: 18 They part my garments among them, And upon my vesture do they cast lots.

19. But be not thou far off, O LORD : O thou my succour, haste thee to help me. 20 Deliver my soul from the sword ; My darling from the power of the dog. 21 Save me from the lion’s mouth ; Yea, from the horns of the wild-oxen thou last answered me. 22 I will declare thy name unto my brethren : In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. 23 Ye that fear the LORD, praise him ; All ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him ; And stand in awe of him, all ye the seed of Israel. 24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted ; Neither hath he hid his face from him ; But when he cried unto him, he heard. 25 Of thee cometh my praise in the great con- gregation : I will pay my vows before them that fear him.

THE Psalm has three distinct parts. The first (1-11) describes the deep anguish of the sufferer apparently forsaken by God, and de- spised by man, alternating with strong expres- sions of trust in God’s holiness and love. In the second (12-21), the circumstances which cause the anguish are vividly portrayed, but the description is blended with earnest and de- vout supplication. In the third part (22-31), the strain changes suddenly, the Psalm calls on all to join in praising God for an accomplished deliverance, and announces the extension of God’s kingdom to all kindreds of the earth.

The Messianic character of the twenty second Psalm is vindicated by a remarkable variety of evidences, which are separately strong, and in their combination overwhelming. We have, in the first place, positive evidence : the use of the first words by our Lord in His last agony. This may, of course, be explained away either as a simple reminiscence, or at the most a recogni- tion of the typical character of the Psalmist’s sufferings ; but, considering the solemnity of the occasion, we most naturally regard this, like other words and acts connected with the crucifixion, as a seal and attestation to prophe- cy. This is confirmed by the direct and un- qualified testimony of the Apostle John, and by direct quotations and many clear references in the other evangelical accounts of the cruci- fixion. We have, in the second place, a corre- spondence with all the details of the sufferings of Christ so minute and exact as to make it cer-

26. The meek shall eat and be satisfied : They shall praise the LORD that seek after him : Let your heart live for ever. 27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the LORD : And all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. 28 For the kingdom is the LORD’s : And he is the ruler over the nations. 29 All the fat ones of the earth shall eat and worship : All they that go down to the dust shall bow before him. Even he that cannot keep his soul alive. 30 A seed shall serve him ; It shall be told of the Lord unto the next generation. 31 They shall come and shall declare his right- eousness Unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done it.

tain that, if those details are truly narrated by the evangelists, they were the fulfilment of prophecy. At the same time it is certain that the traits in their combination are wholly in- applicable to David. There is not only a total absence of consciousness of sin, which might be partly accounted for, supposing them to be a product of his early manhood ; but, as is shown in the commentary, from first to last the feelings and events are true of the Man of sor- rows, and, to a great extent, of Him alone. The only explanation which meets and satisfies all the conditions of a sound exegesis, that which has been held fast by the Church in all times, and has a sure foundation in Holy Scrip- ture, is that the Psalmist was moved by the Spirit of Christ, so that, whether consciously or unconsciously, he recorded his afflictions, and expressed his hopes, in language which found its perfect fulfilment in the Messiah, of whom David undoubtedly was, and knew him- self to be, one of the very chiefest types. Cook.

The passages which are quoted from it by the New Testament writers are declared, or as- sumed to be, prophecies of Christ ; the language of this Psalm is appropriated by Christ and used of Himself ; and is also taken up, unwit- tingly, we suppose, yet very suggestively, by Christ’s enemies. The very mode of Christ’s death is indicated, and this mode is utterly for- eign to Jewish usage in capital punishment ; and such a death and even such wounds are un- known to Jewish history save in the death of

Christ. Furthermore, the co-relation between the latter and former portions of the Psalm conclusively show its Messianic character. The latter portion gives us the results of these sufferings. And what are they? First, I will declare Thy name unto My brethren’—words which appear in the last verses of the longest recorded prayer of Jesus (John 17: 23), and are here as one of the great ends of His mission to earth. Next a thanksgiving feast in which the sufferer pays his vows after the manner of pious Israelites. This remarkably shades off into the great Gospel feast, probably suggesting this current usage of Jesus and of the Gospel historians; for in this case, as in that of Gospel history, the ‘meek’ (i.e., the humble, the broken of heart for sin) ‘shall eat and be satisfied;’ their mouths are filled with praise; their ‘hearts live forever’ with that eternal life which none can give but Jesus; and then the range and scope of these blessings spread out to embrace the ‘wide, wide world,’ for ‘all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee.’ The Gospel goes forth conquering and to conquer; the rightful rule of the Lord Jehovah becomes supreme over all the nations. Generation after generation, down through the lapse of the ages, this supremacy endures, His kingdom an everlasting kingdom, and His dominion one that has no end. Such are the results of glorious victory and triumph to the Gospel and to the kingdom of Christ over the nations which come of the sufferings through which this Great Sufferer is presented in this Psalm as passing. These results can be no other than those which attend the sufferings of the great Messiah. In Him we see them fully developed. That His sufferings and the consequent ‘glory’ were bound together by the strongest mutual co-relation is signified in those comprehensive words of Peter, giving the gist of Old Testament prophecy, in which ’the Spirit of Christ testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow’ (1 Pet. 1: 11). Precisely this co-relation appears in Isaiah 53, where, ‘making His soul an offering for sin,’ but seeing the fruit of this agony to His full satisfaction, and ‘dividing the spoil with the mighty,’ are the attendant results. The scope of this Psalm, co-relating such results of Gospel victory with such sufferings, shut us up to Christ only and alone as fulfilling this Psalm. C.

The first half of this Psalm coincides with the passion of Jesus Christ, and the second with the consequences that have resulted from His resurrection. It is the agonizing situation of a crucified one that is pictorially and faithfully presented to us in vs. 14-17: the spreading out of the limbs of the naked body, the torturing of the hands and feet, and the burning thirst which the Redeemer, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, announced in the cry, John 19: 28. Men who reviled Him and shook their head at Him passed by His cross just as v. 7 says; scorners cried to Him: ‘Let the God in whom He trusts deliver Him,’ just as v. 8 says; His garments were divided and lots were cast for His coat in order that v. 18 of our Psalm might be fulfilled. The third last of the seven words of the dying one is the first word of our Psalm and the appropriation of the whole. And the Epistle to the Hebrews (2: 11 f.) quotes v. 22 as the words of Christ, in order to show that He is not ashamed to call those His brethren, whose sanctifier God has appointed Him to be, just as the risen One has actually done (Matt. 28: 10; John 20: 17). We are far from having exhausted the reciprocal relations. The Psalm so sets before our eyes not merely the suffering of the crucified One, but also the redemption of the world that resulted from His resurrection and the sacramental appropriation of that redemption.

For us, who look upon the whole Psalm as the words of David, it does not thereby lose anything of its prophetic character. It is a typical Psalm. The very same God, who communicates His thoughts of redemption to the spirit of man and there causes them to become the word of prophetic proclamation, has also so shaped history itself that it has become a prefigurative representation of the coming salvation; and the evidence for the truth of Christianity which may be deduced from these prophetic facts of history is no less convincing than that which may be deduced from verbal prophecy. That David, the anointed of Samuel, before he reached the throne had to go a way of suffering which resembles the way of suffering of Jesus, the Son of David baptized by John, and that this typical suffering of David is fixed for us in the Psalms as in images reflected from a mirror—this is also an appointment of Divine power, grace, and wisdom. But this Psalm is not merely typical. For in it David descends with his complaints to a depth that lies beyond the depth of his suffering, and rises with his hopes to a height which lies beyond the height of the reward of his suffering. The typical is elevated into the prophetic. Since David has been anointed with the oil of royal consecration and at the same time also with the Holy Spirit, the official Spirit of the kingship of promise, he looks upon himself as the Messiah of God, to whom the promises point; and in virtue of this way of looking at himself in the light of the highest calling that could be assigned to one in connection with the history of redemption, the historical reality of his experiences becomes idealized to him, and both what he experiences and what he hopes for thereby acquire a depth and height of background which reach out into the history of the final and true Christ of God. He sees in himself the coming One, the image of whom does not till somewhat later detach itself from him, and whose history will completely coincide with all that is hyperbolical in the expressions that he employs. For as God the Father fashions the history of Jesus Christ in conformity with His own counsel, so His Spirit fashions also the statements of David, the type of the coming One, regarding himself, with a view to that history. By means of this Spirit, which is at once the Spirit of God and of the coming Christ, David’s typical history, as he narrates it in his Psalms and more especially in this one, has acquired that ideal depth, transfiguration and intensity, in virtue of which it is far more than a mere statement of typical facts, penetrates to the root of these facts in the Divine counsel, and grows to be the word of prophecy; so that, to a certain extent, it may rightly be said that Christ speaks here through David, inasmuch as the Spirit of Christ speaks through him and makes the prefigurative suffering of His ancestor the means whereby His own future passion is represented. Without the recognition of this irrefragable state of the case, this Psalm can neither be understood nor sympathetically reproduced. D.

Loaded with the sins of the world, Jesus began the Psalm upon the Cross to show that it was His. Four out of the last Seven Words certainly are taken from, or refer to, this portion of the Psalter. From the first verse on, there is scarcely a line which might not have come from the pen of an evangelist. Instead of a colorless scene, instead of unmitigated darkness and inextricable confusion, there is color and detail. The echo of part of this very Psalm, hideously distorted and caricatured, comes up in the ears of the Forsaken One. Burning thirst; violent tension of suspended members, making the frame like that of a living skeleton; rude spectators gambling over the raiment; some wrong, probably piercing, done to the hands and feet; the feeling strange and out of place in God’s universe—all these are represented vividly and powerfully. Nineteen centuries of contemplation at the foot of the Cross have shown faith no discord between the Crucified Lord whom she adores, and Him who cries “Eli, Eli.” If she ever tries in vain to get a glimpse of His features, it is because she cannot see distinctly for tears. But there is more than this. The sufferer passes to glory by the edge of the sword (or a violent death), from the lion’s mouth, from the claws of the dog, from the horns of the unicorn. The minute touch in the twenty-second verse, referred to in the Epistle to the Hebrews (“He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare Thy Name unto My brethren”), might not, by itself, attract our attention; but then it comes from Him who has cried, “Eli, Eli,” whose hands and feet have been pierced; and we note that twice only, in quick succession, just after the Resurrection, our Lord is recorded to have applied the word “brethren” to His servants. The wonder of the Psalm is brought to a climax by the ordered development in which all is given. First, He who suffers is laid into the very dust of death. Then, risen from that dust, He proclaims His Name to His brethren, beginning from the Jews, and ending with the Gentiles from the very furthest parts of the earth. Bishop Alexander.

1-11. The cry of anguish, which begins with a lamentation over prolonged desertion by God, struggles through to a trustful prayer. The question (v. 1) is not an expression of impatience and despair, but of surprise and yearning. The sufferer feels himself to be rejected by God; the feeling of Divine wrath surrounds him entirely with darkness; and yet he knows himself to be united to God in fear and love; his present condition is wholly out of keeping with the real nature of his relationship to God; and it is this very contradiction that urges him to put the plaintive question, which rises from the lowest depths. Why hast Thou forsaken me? But notwithstanding this feeling of desertion by God, the bond of love is not broken; the mourner calls God, my God; urged on by the longing that God would grant him once more to feel this love, he calls Him my God! my God! The crucified One’s desertion by God, however, must not be measured by that of David and of other sufferers who thus complain when they find themselves exposed to sore trial. The crucified One is even to His latest breath the Holy One of God, and the propitiation, for which He offers Himself, is God’s own eternal, gracious will, which is now being realized in the fulness of the times; but seeing that He submits Himself with the sin of His people and of the whole of humanity to God’s judgment, it cannot be spared Him to experience God’s wrath against sinful humanity as if He were personally guilty; and out of the infinite depths of this tasting of wrath, which in His case rests upon no mere appearance but upon the sternest reality, there comes His complaint, which penetrates the wrath and appeals to God’s love. D.

1. Why?** Not the “why” of impatience or despair, not the sinful questioning of one whose heart rebels against his chastening, but rather the cry of a lost child who cannot understand why his father has left him, and who longs to see his father’s face again. It is the question of faith as well as of an anguish that cannot be told. For he who asks “why,” nevertheless calls God “my God,” and repeats the appropriating word again and again, with the very emphasis of faith. Indeed, such a question can only be asked by one whom God has taken into covenant with Himself, and to whom He has vouchsafed His promises. What these words were in the lips of the Holy One of God, heart of man may not conceive. For a moment, in that last agony, the Perfect Man was alone—alone with the sin of the world. But it is going beyond Scripture to say that a sense of God’s wrath extorted that cry. For to the last breath He was the well-beloved of the Father, and the repeated “My God,” “My God,” is a witness even then to His confidence in the Father’s love. Stier says, with great truth: “Neither could the damned in hell so call to God and ask, nor could Christ have done so if He were really to be considered here as suffering in their place.” P.

When God chose that costliest means of our deliverance, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, we may be quite sure that at no lower price would our redemption have been possible, that nothing short of this could have satisfied that righteousness of His, which He was bound to maintain; which He could not forego, without shaking to their strong foundation those eternal pillars on which the moral universe reposes; we may be quite sure that no weaker or poorer motives than those in this way presented to man would have ever succeeded in making him holy, and thus capable of blessedness. Trench.

The Incarnation is not the whole Gospel. The body of His flesh becomes the means of our reconciliation “through death.” Christ’s death has so met the requirements of the Divine law that the Divine love can come freely forth, and embrace and forgive sinful men.

That fact is the very centre of the revelation of God in Christ, the very secret of His power. He has died. Voluntarily and of His own love, as well as in obedience to the Father’s loving will, He has borne the consequences of the sin which He had never shared, in that life of sorrow and sympathy, in that separation from God which is sin’s deepest penalty, and of which the solemn witness comes to us in the cry that rent the darkness, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” and in that physical death which is the parable in the material sphere of the true death of the spirit. We do not know all the incidence of Christ’s death. The whole manner of its operation has not been told us, but the fact has been. It does not affect the Divine heart. That we know, for “God so loved the world, that He sent His Son.” But it does affect the Divine government. Without it, forgiveness could not have been. Its influence extends to all the years before, as to all after Calvary, for that Man continued to be after Man had sinned, was because the whole Divine government then had respect to the sacrifice that was to be, as now it all is moulded by the merit of the sacrifice that has been. As for us, that wondrous love—mightier than death, and not to be quenched by many waters—is the one power that can change our alienation to glad friendship, and melt the ice of indifference and dread into love. That, and that alone, is the solvent for stubborn wills, the magnet for distant hearts. The cross of Christ is the keystone of the universe and the conqueror of all enmity. A. M.

2,3. He hears nothing from God as to the deliverance prayed for, yet no murmuring at God’s proceedings; nay, quite the contrary, for he justifies and praises God: “But Thou art holy, O Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.” Observe whether thou canst not gather something from the manner of God’s denying the thing prayed for, which may sweeten it to thee! Haply thou shalt find He denies thee, but it is with a smiling countenance, and ushers it in with some expressions of grace and favor that may assure thee His denial proceeds not from displeasure. Gurnall.

3. And Thou (art) holy, inhabiting the praises of Israel. Here begins his statement of the grounds on which he might claim to be heard, and all which may be summed up in this, that Jehovah was the covenant God of Israel. The word translated holy, in its widest sense, includes all that distinguishes God from creatures, not excepting what are usually termed His natural perfections. Hence the epithet is often found connected with descriptions of His power, eternity, etc. A.

Thou art holy. Does it seem strange that the heart in its darkness and sorrow should find comfort in this attribute of God? No, for God’s holiness is but another aspect of His faithfulness and mercy. And in that remarkable name, “the Holy One of Israel,” we are taught that He who is the “holy” God is also the God who has made a covenant with His chosen. It would be impossible for an Israelite to think of God’s holiness without thinking also of that covenant relationship. “Be ye holy; for I, the Lord your God, am holy,” were the words in which Israel was reminded of their relation to God. P.

Inhabitest. Or, “dwellest among.” God is thus represented as enthroned in His sanctuary, where the praises and adorations of His worshippers, symbolized by the streams of incense, rise continually before Him. The word “inhabitest” refers to the throne, of which the cherubim, whose forms were on the mercy-seat, are the mystic supporters. The appeal expresses with infinite tenderness and delicacy the thought that, since God is ever receiving the prayers of His people, He will surely answer them in the person of their representative; a thought enlarged upon in the following verses. Cook.

6. Each word re-echoes in the second part of the Book of Isaiah. There, as here, Israel is called a worm (41 : 14); there all these traits of suffering are found in the picture of the Servant of God (49 : 7 ; 53 : 3), and more especially in 52 : 14: “So marred was His visage, that He no longer looked like a man.” D.

7,8. The scornful ridicule of our Lord was universal; all sorts of men were unanimous in the derisive laughter, and vied with each other in insulting Him. Priests and people, Jews and Gentiles, soldiers and civilians, all united in the general scoff, and that at the time when He was prostrate in weakness and ready to die. Which shall we wonder at the most, the cruelty of man or the love of the bleeding Saviour? How can we ever complain of ridicule after this? On reading these verses one is ready, with Trapp, to ask, Is this a prophecy or a history? for the description is so accurate. We must not lose sight of the truth which was unwittingly uttered by the Jewish scoffers. They themselves are witnesses that Jesus of Nazareth trusted in God; why then was He permitted to perish? Jehovah had aforetime delivered those who rolled their burdens upon Him; why was this man deserted? Oh, that they had understood the answer! Note further, that their ironical jest, “seeing He delighted in Him,” was true. The Lord did delight in His dear Son, and when He was found in fashion as a man, and became obedient unto death, He still was well pleased with Him. Jehovah delights in Him, and yet bruises Him; is well pleased, and yet slays Him. S.

8. Trust in Jehovah! He will deliver him, He will save him, for He delights in him. The literal meaning of the first clause is: roll to (or on) Jehovah, which would be unintelligible but for the parallel expressions in Psalm 37 : 5, roll thy way upon Jehovah, and in Prov. 16 : 3, roll thy work upon Jehovah, where the idea is evidently that of a burden cast upon another by one who is unable to sustain it himself. This burden, in the first case, is his way, i.e., his course of life, his fortune, his destiny, and in the other case, his work, i.e., his business, his affairs, his interest. In evident allusion to these places the Apostle Peter says, casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you. By these three parallels light is thrown on the elliptical expression now before us, roll, i.e., thy burden or thy care, upon Jehovah. Perhaps the best solution of the syntax is to make this clause a quotation or derisive repetition of the sufferer’s own words, as if they had said: ‘This is he who was so fond of repeating the precept, Trust in Jehovah! Let him now try its virtue in his own case. He in whom he has trusted, and exhorted others to trust also, will no doubt deliver him.’ A.

The Hebrew word translated “trusted” (i.e., “on the Lord”) means primarily to roll, i.e., to devolve upon the Lord whatever may be your burden. It stands here in the imperative—a fact best explained by supposing that his revilers tauntingly retort his own words: “Thou who hast so often said, Roll every burden upon Jehovah, try it in thine own time of need. God will doubtless deliver thee! God will rescue him, for He delights in him!"—all said in contemptuous irony. The men who thus reviled him were the last men in the world to believe one word of it. All these words were said by the scribes and Pharisees to the suffering Jesus in the very spirit which is here indicated. Unconsciously to themselves they were fulfilling prophecy, altogether unaware that “thus it was written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer” (Luke 24 : 46). C.

9-11. He mentions his mother twice. Throughout the whole of the Old Testament there is no mention whatever of a human father, i.e., begetter, of the Messiah; it is always only

His mother or bearer that is spoken of. The words of the one who is praying here also imply that, looked at with respect to its outward circumstances, the beginning of his life was poor and needy; and this likewise accords with the picture of Christ drawn in the Old Testament, as well as with that in the New. On the ground of his fellowship with God, which reaches so far back, there is now (v. 11) raised the cry for help, which already runs through all he has as yet said, but which only now finds expression. D.

9. “Thou drew me out of the womb, and caused me to hope upon the breast.” Thus David claims kindness to God, because he is His workmanship, that he may draw nearer to Him, to clasp Him, as a Redeemer. The most tempted soul cannot deny but it is God’s creature; and those who are most hardly exercised and doubt if ever Christ minded to save them, and will disclaim Him as a Redeemer, yet will they not disclaim Him as a Creator. If then, in the time of sore tentation, thou wilt grant that thou art His creature, are there not some bands between thee and God? Claim to God as thy creator, to get farther kindness; by this means a door is open to go in to God’s outer court, and from that to the inner court also. Dickson.

14,15. The comparison with water is applied to moral weakness also in Gen. 49: 4. The parting of the bones may either denote dislocation or extreme emaciation, making the bones prominent. In either case the essential idea is still that of desperate exhaustion and debility. A.—These various phrases combine to give the idea of extreme nervous exhaustion. Such we know to have been the last hours of Jesus. A whole night, not only sleepless but full of earnest thought and intense emotion; the passover, the long conversations and prayer which fill five precious chapters in John’s narrative (13-17); the scenes of Gethsemane, the betrayal and arrest; the preliminary examination before Ananias; the more protracted one before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrim; the hearing before Pilate; then before Herod; then again before Pilate; the decree for His crucifixion; the weary faintness which sunk under the wood of His own cross—all these things were at once the causes and the proofs of exhaustion really extreme, leaving no nervous energy to bear up against the terrible agony of crucifixion. C.

16. For dogs are come about me. The enemies are still compared to savage animals, but the figure is somewhat different; “dogs,” not only as fierce, but as unclean. Almost the only trait of bitterness in the

Psalm. We must remember that these dogs are the savage wild dogs of the East. P.—Every Oriental city and village abounds with troops of hungry and half-savage dogs, which own allegiance to the place rather than to persons, and wander about the streets and fields, howling dismally at night, and devouring even the dead bodies of men when they can reach them. Tristram.

The word for “pierced” has tasked the labors of critics to the utmost. In view of all the evidence in the case I concur in the conclusion reached by Feurst, the latest authority in lexicography—viz., that “it should be translated either ‘piercing,’ or ’they pierced my hands and my feet.’’ This sense being granted, the passage becomes a remarkably definite prediction of the manner of the Saviour’s death on the cross. C.—The fulfilment by the nailing of the hands and (at least the binding fast) of the feet of the crucified One is exceedingly plain. Not only here is it prophesied that the coming Christ will be murderously pierced, but also in Isa. 53: 5, where He is said to be pierced through because of our sins, and in Zech. 12: 10. D.—The very manner of His death is described, though never in use among the Jews. They pierced my hands and my feet, which were nailed to the accursed tree, the effect of which must needs be the most exquisite pain and torture. There is no one passage in all the Old Testament which the Jews have so industriously corrupted as this, because it is such an eminent prediction of the death of Christ, and was so exactly fulfilled. H.

Of all sanguinary punishments, that of crucifixion is one of the most dreadful—no vital part is immediately affected by it. The tearing asunder of the tender fibres of the hands and feet, the lacerating of so many nerves and bursting so many blood-vessels, must be productive of intense agony. The nerves of the hand and foot are intimately connected with the nerves of the whole body; their laceration therefore must be felt over the entire frame. When, therefore, the hands and feet of our blessed Lord were transfixed with nails, He must have felt the sharpest pangs shoot through every part of His body. John Stevenson.—Some have thought that those scars remain still in His glorious body, to be showed at His second appearing: “They shall see Him whom they have pierced.” That is improbable, but this is certain; there remains still an impression upon Christ’s hands and His heart, the sealing and wearing of the elect there, as precious jewels. T. Adams.

17. Some suppose, not improbably, that this verse presents the sufferer as stripped by His enemies, and looking with grief and wonder at His own emaciation, while they gaze at it with delight, as the Hebrew phrase implies.

18. They (are about to) divide my garments for themselves, and on my clothing they (are ready to) cast lots. This is the last stroke necessary to complete the picture. Having stripped him, nothing more is left but to appropriate his garments, whether from cupidity or in derision. The futures intimate that things can go no further without actual loss of life, and that the case is therefore an extreme one. The providential realization of this ideal scene in our Lord’s history is expressly mentioned by all the four evangelists. A.—From the pen of John (19: 23, 24) we have the particulars in full. The crucifixion was performed by four Roman soldiers. According to usage, the clothes of the malefactor were their perquisite. In the present case they divided all except the seamless robe into four parts, but this robe (such as the priests wore), a garment woven without seam, was so peculiar and so valuable they said, Let it not be rent, i.e., for division among us, but let the lot determine who shall have it. It is safe to say that such a series of particulars could not be combined in any merely human prophecy and its fulfilment more than once in ten thousand public executions. Such cases test the genuineness of prophecy. No eye save that of God could foresee such minute yet improbable events. C.

How deep must be the humiliation of the King of glory! The twenty-second Psalm answers: He shall be abased even unto abandonment by God, unto desertion and mockery at the hands of all men. He shall be as a crushed worm. His hands and feet shall be pierced; yea, even His clothes shall be taken and divided under the eyes of the Martyr, as though He were already dead, and the inheritance had fallen to His murderers. Go to Golgotha, and there see the fulfilment. Jesus prays: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” His disciples forsake Him in Gethsemane. Those who pass by the cross blaspheme and mock Him with the words: “If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.” They pierce His hands and His feet with iron nails, and under the cross the soldiers cast lots for His garments. A. Caspars.

“Vicarious suffering!"—it is strange to hear the mighty uproar which is made about it; when, indeed, in lower forms—not low in themselves, though low as compared with the highest—it is everywhere where love is at all. For, indeed, is not this, of one freely taking on himself the consequence of others’ faults, and thus averting from those others, at least in part, the penalties of the same, building what others have thrown down, gathering what others have scattered, bearing the burdens which others have wrapped together, healing the wounds which others have inflicted, paying the things which he never took, smarting for sins which he never committed—is not this, I say, the law and condition of all highest nobleness in the world?—is it not that which God is continually demanding of His elect, they approving themselves His elect, as they do not shrink from this demand, as they freely own themselves the debtors of love to the last requirements which it makes? And if these things are so, shall we question the right of God Himself to display this nobleness which He demands of His creatures? Shall we wish to rob Him of the opportunity, or think to honor Him who is highest love, by denying Him the right to display it? Trench.

19-21. Christ’s desertion is preventive of our final desertion. Because He was forsaken for a time we shall not be forsaken forever. For He was forsaken for us. Flavel.—There was no failure in Christ’s obedience, and yet Christ was forsaken in point of comfort; therefore desertion, in point of comfort, may consist with truth of grace, yea, with the highest measure of grace; so it did in our Saviour. John Roe.

22-31. In these verses the great plaintive prayer concludes with thanks and hope. In the assurance of being answered there follows the vow of thanksgiving. His fellow countrymen, who are connected with him not only by ties of nature, but also, as the following expression, “Ye that fear Jehovah,” shows, by spiritual ties, he calls “brethren.” The sufferer is conscious of the significance that his lot of suffering has in connection with the history of redemption. He will, therefore, make the salvation which has been granted him common property. The community shall hear the Gospel of his deliverance. In v. 23 there follows the preamble of this proclamation of salvation, a proclamation which is addressed to the whole of Israel, so far as it fears the God of revelation. D.

22,23. The whole strain changes; the clouds are dispersed; from the depth of humiliation, the prostration of strength, the agony of death, the dust of the grave, the speaker passes at once into a state of perfect peace and exultation. Such a transition David may have been able to realize by events in his own life, else had the representation been unreal and cold; but in order to realize it so vividly his spirit must have been raised into a sphere of spiritual life, which gave a new meaning to all that he had experienced. We may also surely infer that this Psalm could not have been written in the midst of afflictions so terrible—then the joy would have been premature; nor could it have been written afterward by David in his own person, for the sufferings are represented as present, and as terminating in death. Spoken in the person of Christ all is clear; the transition of feeling corresponds exactly to that described in the last verses of the fifty-third and the first part of the fifty-fourth chapters of Isaiah, where the joy of God’s sacrificed servant is shared by the redeemed people, and sealed by the conversion of the heathen.

22. I will declare.** See Heb. 2: 12, where these words are expressly assigned to the “Captain of our salvation” made “perfect through sufferings.” Cook.—The same that began the Psalm complaining, who was no other than Christ in His humiliation, ends it here triumphing, and it can be no other than Christ in His exaltation. And as the first words of the complaint were used by Christ Himself upon the cross, so the first words of the triumph are expressly applied to Him (Heb. 2: 12), and are made His own words: I will declare Thy name unto My brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto Thee. The certain prospect which Christ had of the joy set before Him not only gave Him a satisfactory answer to His prayers, but turned His complaints into praises; He saw of the travail of His soul, and was well satisfied; witness that triumphant word wherewith He breathed His last, It is finished. H.—The very point affirmed here, “I will declare Thy name unto My brethren,” expresses in briefest, most comprehensive terms, one of the main purposes of His earthly mission, and, moreover, in the very language which Himself used in His remarkable prayer (John 17: 26): “I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it.” That is, I have done what the Spirit of prophecy by the mouth of David indicated as the first and chief end of My earthly mission touching My redeemed brethren. “In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee”—following in the manner of public praise the usages of pious Israelites in the age of David. So we should expect. How else could the sense be conveyed save by words and allusions familiar to those Hebrew readers? C.

**23. Fearers of Jehovah, praise Him! All the seed of Jacob, glorify Him! And be afraid of Him, all the seed of Israel! These words are uttered, as it were, in the midst of the ideal congregation mentioned in the verse preceding. That the call, though formally addressed to the whole race, was really intended for the spiritual Israel, excluding wicked Israelites and including the righteous of whatever name or nation, is indicated by the words of the first clause, while the last shows that the praise required is not familiar, but in the highest degree reverential. A.

25. Of thee cometh my praise.** True praise is of celestial origin. The rarest harmonies of music are nothing unless they are sincerely consecrated to God by hearts sanctified by the Spirit. Oh, when shall our service of song be a pure offering! S.

26. The meek shall eat and be satisfied.** The words of blessing are, they shall eat and be satisfied. In order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the art and joy of humble life—this, at present, of all arts or sciences being the one most needing study. Humble life—that is to say, proposing to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet continuance; not excluding the idea of foresight, but wholly of foresorrow, and taking no troublous thought for coming days; so, also, not excluding the idea of providence or provision, but wholly of accumulation; the life of domestic affection and domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind pleasure; therefore largely to the loveliness of the natural world. Ruskin.

The Mosaic thanksgiving festival became the germ of the New Testament Gospel feast to which our Lord so often compared the Gospel “kingdom of heaven.” Of this it is here said, “The meek shall eat and be satisfied.” The “meek” in the sense of the Hebrew are the afflicted who have borne their sufferings in patient submission; the humble, the lowly of heart—the very class whom our Lord continually invites to the great Gospel feast. They shall find this provision all-sufficient, and adapted perfectly to their wants. Then they who thus seek God shall have infinite cause to praise Him. “Their heart shall live,” in the highest, noblest sense of life, forever. Such life lacks no element of real bliss. Its blessedness shall be eternal at God’s right hand! Surely this can be nothing less than the blessedness which comes through the glorious Gospel of Jesus! Thus manifestly does this thanksgiving festival bring us into the very marrow and fatness of Gospel blessings. C.

It is the same great feast of which Isa. 25: 6 prophesies, and which he accompanies there with the music of his words. And what the Gospel of the great deed of deliverance effects is not only of unlimited universality, but also of unlimited duration; it propagates itself from generation to generation. That God has accomplished what He proposed to Himself when He anointed the son of Jesse and the Son of David to be the mediators of His work of salvation; that He has accomplished it by leading the former through suffering to the throne and by making the cross the ladder whereby the latter ascended to heaven: this is the purport of the preparatory Gospel as well as that of the Gospel in its fulfilment, the purport of the Divine proclamation which is transmitted from generation to generation. D.

A spiritual banquet is prepared in the Church for the “meek” and lowly in heart. The death of Christ was the sacrifice for sin; His flesh is meat indeed and His blood is drink indeed. The poor in spirit feed on this provision in their hearts by faith, and are satisfied; and thus while they “seek” the Lord, they “praise” Him also, and their souls are preserved unto eternal life. Anon.—The meek shall eat and be satisfied; eat of the bread of life, feed with an appetite upon the doctrine of Christ’s mediation, which is meat and drink to the soul that knows its own nature and case. They that hunger and thirst after righteousness in Christ shall have all they can desire to satisfy them and make them easy, and shall not labor for that which satisfies not. They that are much in praying shall be much in thanksgiving; they shall praise the Lord that seek Him, because through Christ they are sure of finding Him; and the more earnest they are in seeking Him the more will their hearts be enlarged in His praises when they have found Him. The souls that are devoted to Him shall be forever happy with Him—“Your heart shall live forever. Yours that are meek, that are satisfied in Christ, that continue to seek God; whatever becomes of your bodies, your hearts shall live forever; the graces and comforts you have shall be perfected in everlasting life. Christ has said, Because I live, ye shall live also, and therefore that life shall be as sure and as long as His.” H.

27. Remember and return to Jehovah shall all the ends of the earth, and worship before Thee all the kindreds of the nations. As the joyful effects of this deliverance were to be extended to the great congregation of God’s people, so, too, we now read that they shall not be confined to any one race, but made to embrace all. The ends of the earth, here put for the remotest nations. These are named as the least likely to be comprehended in the promise, but, of course, without excluding those less distant. As if he had said, the ends of the earth and all that is between them. A.—The Church of Christ, and with it the kingdom of God among men, should extend itself to all corners of the earth, and should take in all sorts of people. Whereas the Jews had long been the only professing people of God, now all the ends of the world should come into the Church, and, the partition-wall being taken down, the Gentiles should be taken in. It is here prophesied that they should be converted; they shall remember, and turn to the Lord. Serious reflection is the first step, and a good step, toward true conversion. We must consider and turn. The prodigal came first to himself, and then to his father. That then they should be admitted into communion with God, and with the assemblies that serve Him: they shall worship before Thee. H.

28. For unto Jehovah is the kingdom, and (He is) governor among the nations. This will not be a gratuitous extension to the Gentiles of what properly belongs to Israel alone, but a restoration of God’s mercies, after ages of restriction, to their original and proper scope. For Jehovah is not the king of Israel only, but of all mankind. A.—He who by His own power reigns supreme in the domains of creation and providence has set up a kingdom of grace, and by the conquering power of the cross that kingdom will grow until all people shall own its sway and proclaim that “He is the governor among the nations.” Amid the tumults and disasters of the present the Lord reigneth; but in the halcyon days of peace the rich fruit of His dominion will be apparent to every eye. Great Shepherd, let Thy glorious kingdom come. S.

29. The distinction of ranks shall be as little regarded at this feast as that of nations. Eaten and worshipped, partaken of the sacrificial feast in honor of this great salvation. Fat, a common Oriental figure for the prosperous and especially the rich. The idea is, that this enjoyment shall be common to the rich and those who are ready to perish, or, as it is expressed in the last clause, he who cannot keep his soul (or himself) alive, a strong expression for the extreme of destitution. He who before, or a little while ago, no longer kept himself alive, but was just about to perish, is now seen kneeling at the sacrificial feast in honor of this great salvation. A.—As if he had said, rich and poor, high and low, the king and the beggar, have alike need of salvation by Jesus Christ, and must submit unto Him, that they may be saved; for, as it follows, “none can keep alive his own soul.” The captivity of the Jews in Babylon is expressed under those notions of death, and of dwelling in the dust (Isa. 26: 19); to show how low, that no power but His who can raise the dead could work their deliverance. Caryl.

31. They.** This new generation, this church which the Lord has planted. His righteousness not only as manifested in the deliverance of His righteous servant, but as manifested in all His great work of salvation, both in the suffering and in the exaltation of Christ, and also in providing the feast for all who will partake thereof.

In the latter part of the Psalm—from the words “Thou hast answered me” (v. 21) to the last word, “He hath done it”—the heart lifts itself up on the wings of faith, and the prophet sees visions ever brighter and brighter opening before his gaze. First, he will praise God in the congregation of Israel, and make known His name to his brethren. Then, all nations shall come and sit down at the banquet of fat things, and worship before the Lord. Lastly, to future ages also shall God’s righteousness be declared. P.

He hath done it, the great deed of righteousness, at the same time a deed of salvation through grace. The great consummating act of mercy and truth was the death and resurrection of the Messiah, the Son of God, who died to make atonement, and rose again as the Righteous One. This transcendent deed is the foundation of salvation; and accordingly, when Jesus was in the act of accomplishing it, He cried out, “It is finished,” with no obscure allusion to this closing sentence. This Psalm is truly the plaint of the sufferer pleading in hope. It takes its flight, especially in these last strains, far above the region of David, the son of Jesse. M.

The Psalm opens with the most despairing cry ever wrung from a troubled soul: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” It pictures the sufferer oppressed with all manner of physical pains and tortures, and set upon by enemies who make a mock of his anguish, and taunt and revile him. All these sorrows meet in Jesus on the cross. Yet in them all He clung to His Father: “My God, My God!” was still His cry. And at last that cry was answered in the vision of that feast of redeeming love, to which the high and the low shall be brought together; of that seed gathered out of all nations to serve and glorify the Lord. For this Christ stands as the High Priest of His people, leading their praises to the God of Israel. J. P. T.

I believe that Jesus, the Lord, became in the flesh a sacrificer and a sacrifice for sin; a satisfaction and price to the justice of God; a meriter of glory and the kingdom; a pattern of all righteousness; a preacher of the Word which Himself was; a finisher of the ceremonies; a corner-stone to remove the separation between Jew and Gentile; an intercessor for the Church; a lord of nature in His miracles; a conqueror of death and the power of darkness in His resurrection; and that He fulfilled the whole counsel of God, performing all His sacred offices and anointing on earth; accomplished the whole work of the redemption and restitution of man to a state superior to the angels; whereas the state of man by creation was inferior; and reconciled and established all things according to the eternal will of the Father. Bacon.

The Psalter emptied of Christ would still be a collection of lyric poems of admirable beauty, breathing a pure and lofty devotion, representing in vivid colors the events and persons of the most remarkable people in the world’s history. It would retain its position among the noblest and most interesting products of human genius. But to the Christian it would have no voice, no meaning. Cook.