Ps 22 — He Cried and God Answered Him

Introduction

On the evening of the first day of the week, two disciples walked the road to Emmaus—confused, grieving, and disappointed. And then a stranger joined them. That stranger, the risen Christ, opened the Scriptures to them in a way that set their hearts burning. He asked them a question that is still echoing across the centuries: “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And then, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself (Luke 24:26–27).

This reading enters the same hermeneutical school, sitting at the feet of the risen Christ and reading the Old Testament as he taught his disciples to read it: as Scripture concerning him. Psalm 22 descends into the pit and rises into global praise. The Gospel writers understood it as a lens through which to view the crucifixion, and it remains a framework for the church’s identity and worship.

The interpretation follows a three-part movement: David, Christ, and the church.

I. The Necessity of the Messiah’s Sufferings

Before we enter the psalm itself, we need to establish the interpretive framework that governs our reading. In Luke 24, Jesus provides that framework. The risen Christ tells his disciples that the pattern of suffering followed by glory is not an unfortunate detour in the divine plan. “Was it not necessary?” he asks. The cross was not an accident, not a tragedy that God turned to good after the fact. It was the predetermined path of the anointed king.

When Christ then works his way through “Moses and all the prophets,” he is doing more than hunting for individual prophetic oracles. He is showing us a pattern that runs through the whole of the Scriptures: the righteous sufferer who is vindicated by God. That is a theme found throughout the Psalms. Psalm 22 is just one of the most concentrated.

Psalm 22 is the cry of David, yet its language of suffering and glory exceeds David’s experience and anticipates one greater than David.

II. David’s Righteous Suffering: Lament, Deliverance, and Thanksgiving

The psalm must first be read as the prayer of the historical David before its fuller significance is considered.

The Lament (vv. 1–21)

The psalm opens with perhaps the most famous words of desolation in all of Scripture: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (v. 1). What is striking is the dual address—“My God, my God.” This is not the cry of a man who has abandoned his faith; it is the cry of a man who clings to God even in the experience of divine absence. It is not a cry of despair but of trust.

The lament unfolds in waves. There is the contrast between Israel’s history of answered prayer and the psalmist’s present experience of unanswered cry (vv. 3–5).

There is the contrast between God’s intimate involvement in the psalmist’s formation in the womb and his apparent absence now (vv. 9–11). And throughout, there is the relentless encirclement of enemies—strong bulls of Bashan surrounding him (v. 12), a roaring lion tearing at him (v. 13), dogs surrounding him (v. 16). These enemies are mocking. They wag their heads, they sneer: “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him” (vv. 7–8). The affliction is both physical and social. The psalmist is not only under attack. He is being publicly humiliated.

The physical description in verses 14–18 is harrowing. His bones are out of joint; his heart is like wax, melted within him; his strength is dried up; his tongue cleaves to his jaws. He is, by his own description, brought to the dust of death. And his clothing is divided among those who stand over him (v. 18). This is someone at the absolute limit of human endurance.

And yet, even in the depths of this lament, there is petition. Verses 19–21 turn from describing the suffering to crying out for rescue. “Do not be far from me, O Lord. O my help, hasten to my assistance” (v. 19). “Save me from the mouth of the lion” (v. 21). The lament is not a resignation to despair; it is a sustained address to the God who, the psalmist is convinced, is capable of answering.

The Turning Point (vv. 22-24)

Verse 22 marks a dramatic turning point.

Verse 24: “For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.”

The psalm insists that God did not turn away in the end. The cry of forsakenness of verse 1 was not the final word. It seemed as if God had forsaken him and forgotten him. But the God who seemed so far away and silent was listening.

The cry for help gives way to praise for answered prayer. The psalm’s mood is transformed into jubilant thanksgiving.

The Thanksgiving and Praise (vv. 22–31)

The second half of the psalm is an extended song of thanksgiving and praise. It begins in the congregation of Israel (v. 22) and expands to “all the ends of the earth” (v. 27).

The scope of this praise is cosmological. The deliverance of one righteous sufferer becomes the occasion for the praise of all peoples, of all generations, even of the dead.

The psalmist is describing a divine act so significant that it cannot be contained within the individual history of one man. It radiates outward in every direction.

The vindication of the righteous sufferer is now the reason for the praise of the congregation and indeed the entire world.

III. David as a Type of the Anointed One

David does not write Psalm 22 as a private individual pouring out his personal distress into a journal. He writes as the Lord’s anointed king—the one who bears the covenant promises of God, the representative head of Israel, the figure in whom God’s redemptive purposes for the world are concentrated. This is what it means to be the mashiach, the anointed one. His experience is not merely his own; it is inherently representative. When David suffers and is vindicated, Israel suffers and is vindicated in him. When David praises God in the congregation, he leads the whole people into that praise.

This typological logic means that Psalm 22 is always pointing beyond itself. The anointed king’s suffering and vindication are, by definition, the pattern that the ultimate Anointed One will fulfill. As the history of redemption unfolds and the gap between what David experienced and what the Davidic promises required became more apparent, the Psalms increasingly functioned as prophetic anticipations of the Messiah.

Jesus is that future king. And in him, the typological logic of Psalm 22 finds its perfect, unrepeatable fulfillment. His suffering is not analogous to David’s; it is the reality to which David’s suffering pointed. His vindication—the resurrection—is the eschatological event that David’s deliverance foreshadowed.

IV. Psalm 22 in the Gospel Passion Narratives

The Gospel passion narratives present several specific correspondences with Psalm 22.

First, the most prominent: the cry of dereliction. Matthew 27:46 records that at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani). This is a verbatim citation. Jesus on the cross is consciously and publicly identifying himself as the speaker of Psalm 22.

Second, the mockery. Verses 7–8 of the psalm describe the taunting of onlookers who say, in effect: you trusted in God—let God deliver you now. Compare Matthew 27:39–43, where passers-by wag their heads, and the chief priests and scribes say, “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him.” The verbal correspondence is unmistakable.

Third is the division of garments. Psalm 22:18 states, “They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” John 19:24 makes the connection explicit: “This was to fulfill the Scripture.” Matthew 27:35 likewise records the soldiers dividing his garments. Even the casting of lots over the clothing of the condemned man fulfills Scripture written centuries earlier.

The pattern of Psalm 22—the righteous sufferer stripped, mocked, surrounded by enemies, brought to the dust of death, then vindicated by God—corresponds to the suffering and vindication of Jesus.

V. From Lament to Praise: The Risen Christ and His People

Most New Testament uses of Psalm 22 draw from its lament, but Hebrews quotes from its section of vindication and praise.

Hebrews 2 is arguing that the Son of God became genuinely human—flesh and blood, capable of suffering and death—precisely so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, and deliver those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. And to establish that Christ is not ashamed to call redeemed humanity his brothers, the author quotes Psalm 22:22: “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”

The author of Hebrews reads the second half of Psalm 22—the praise section—as the voice of the risen Christ. The one who cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” at Golgotha is now saying “I will tell of your name to my brothers” in the assembly of the redeemed. The cross gave way to the empty tomb, and the empty tomb has given way to the gathering of a people—a congregation—among whom the risen Christ stands, leading them in praise.

Christ is present in the congregation and leads its praise. He calls the church his brothers and sings in their midst. The corporate praise of God’s people is therefore Christ’s own praise to the Father, in which the church is included.

The Afflicted Brought into His Vindication

The people gathered in this praise are identified in verse 26: “The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord.”

The congregation that gathers around the vindicated sufferer is not made up of the strong and successful. It is made up of the afflicted—precisely the category of person that the psalm’s first half has been lamenting.

Verse 29: “Those who go down to the dust shall bow before him, even the one who could not keep himself alive.”

The vindication of the righteous sufferer extends even to those who have nothing left—not even life itself. The outcome of this one man’s deliverance is life and joy for people who had no resources of their own to draw upon.

This is already, within the Old Testament psalm itself, an anticipation of the gospel. One suffers; God delivers; many share in the result.

The righteous sufferer’s vindication is not a private transaction between one man and God; the psalm presents it as a cosmic event with universal implications.

The nations turn to God (v. 27). Generations yet unborn will hear and tell of what he has done (vv. 30–31). The singular event of one man’s deliverance becomes the ground and occasion of a global, multigenerational proclamation.

Union with Christ: Sharing His Sufferings and His Glory

Paul describes the same pattern in 2 Corinthians 1:3–5: God comforts believers in affliction so that they may comfort others, for “as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”

The same pattern—suffering, then glory—that we see in Psalm 22 and that was embodied in Christ, is now the pattern of the Christian life.

The sharing is real on both sides of the equation. We genuinely share his suffering. We will genuinely share his glory.

This doctrine of union with Christ is taught in Psalm 22. We are united to Christ and thus share in his sufferings and in his resurrection.

VI. The Church Today: Brothers

Psalm 22 identifies the church as the congregation gathered around the vindicated Messiah.

First, believers are the brothers of the risen Christ. He assumed their nature, died their death, and was raised as the firstfruits of a new humanity. He is not ashamed to call them brothers but stands among the gathered congregation and leads its praise.

Second, believers are among “the afflicted who eat and are satisfied” (v. 26). They bear experiences of forsakenness, mortality, unhealed wounds, and unrelenting enemies. They are the afflicted whose own resources cannot answer their condition.

Third, believers have been delivered—not yet fully or visibly, but truly and certainly. God answered their cry by vindicating his servant Jesus. His resurrection announces God’s verdict not only for him but for all who are united to him. Psalm 22’s movement from lament through turning point to praise is therefore the story of the people of God in every generation.

Conclusion

The disciples on the road to Emmaus were walking away from Jerusalem, the place of death and disappointment. Their hope appeared to have been crucified with Jesus. The risen Christ opened the Scriptures and showed them that suffering was the path to glory rather than the end of the story. Their hearts burned within them.

Psalm 22 was surely among the texts Christ expounded. It dares to cry out in desolation without releasing its hold on God. It trusts the turning point before that turning has come, and its final movement looks beyond any individual life to the ends of the earth, generations yet unborn, and those unable to preserve their own lives.

David did not compose Psalm 22 merely as a private individual. The Spirit of Christ within him bore witness to the one who would fulfill it. That fulfillment has come. The cry of dereliction was uttered at Golgotha; the answer was announced at the empty tomb; and the praise in the congregation continues whenever the church gathers in the name of the risen Lord.

The church is the congregation of Psalm 22: the brothers of the risen Christ and the afflicted who have been drawn into his vindication. Its proclamation goes to generations not yet born: “They shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it” (Ps. 22:31).

He has done it. That is the gospel.