NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: PSALM 22:19-21
19But You, O Lord, be not far off;
O You my help, hasten to my assistance.
20Deliver my soul from the sword,
My only life from the power of the dog.
21Save me from the lion's mouth;
From the horns of the wild oxen You answer me.
22:19-21 Psalm 22:19 links to 22:11. The jussive (see note below) is followed by three imperatives of request.
1. hasten to my assistance – BDB 301, KB 300, Qal imperative, cf. Ps. 38:22; 40:13; 70:1,5; 71:12; 141:1
2. deliver my soul – BDB 664, KB 717, Hiphil imperative
3. save me – BDB 446, KB 448, Hiphil imperative
This strophe closes “You answered me” with a Qal perfect verb (BDB 772, KB 851) which implies that the psalmist has come to the conviction that YHWH is/will answer him (cf. Ps. 34:4; 118:5; 120:1).
Notice again how the psalmist characterizes his enemies.
1. the sword (i.e., “pierced” of possibly the bite of dogs, cf. Ps. 22:16)
2. paw of the dog (cf. Ps. 22:16)
3. the lion's mouth (cf. Ps. 22:13; 35:17)
4. the horns of the wild oxen (symbol of power, cf. Job 39:9-10)
22:19 “be not far off” See note at Ps. 22:11.
22:20 “from the sword” It is difficult to know exactly what problems/distresses/enemies the psalmist is facing.
1. sickness
2. rebellion
3. invasion
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As we saw in our last post, when God forsakes, He hides His face from the one He forsakes, turns him over to his enemies, and is angry with him. All of this happened to Jesus while He suffered for sinners on the cross. It was a real, objective forsakenness. As a follow-up, this post will simply catalog the faithful expositions of pastors and theologians in the past and present who have rightly understood and explained Jesus’ cry of dereliction as a cry of objective forsakenness by God.
What did Jesus mean when He cried out, “My God, My God, Why have You forsaken Me?” Come and see:
Martin Luther
"So then, gaze at the heavenly picture of Christ, who descended into hell for your sake and was forsaken by God as one eternally damned when he spoke the words on the cross, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!' - 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' In that picture your hell is defeated and your uncertain election is made sure...
"He [Christ] is the heavenly image, the one who was forsaken by God as damned, yet he conquered hell through his omnipotent love, thereby proving that he is the dearest Son, who gives this to us all if we but believe" (Luther's Works, Vol. 42, 105–7).
Wilhelmus à Brakel:
"The magnitude of His soul’s suffering is also evident from His complaint upon the cross. 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me' (Matt 27:46). He was not forsaken by His divine nature, for the hypostatic union could not be dissolved. He was also not forsaken by the love of His Father, which remained immutable. Neither was He forsaken by the Holy Spirit, with whom He had been anointed in abundant measure; nor did He complain of being forsaken into the hands of men. Rather, He complained about the withdrawal of all light, love, help, and comfort during the specific moment when His distress was at its highest and when He needed them to the utmost...
. . . utterly forsaken of divine favor, sensibly experiencing the highest degree of the divine wrath and anger of God as just Judge – and at such a moment being attacked and assaulted in the most subtle and horrible manner by the powers of hell. What an extreme state of unspeakable distress this must have been! Such was Christ’s suffering according to His soul...
"Additional Objection: Christ’s human nature, in which He suffered, was finite and thus was not capable of bearing infinite wrath. Consequently His suffering was not sufficient to atone for sin which merits eternal punishment. Answer: We cannot determine to what degree Christ’s human nature was fortified, but it always remained finite. In this nature Christ endured a total being forsaken by, and the full wrath of, the infinite God against whom the elect had sinned. One should note, however, that it was not the human nature which suffered, but the Person according to this nature, and since the Person is infinite, all that He suffered was of infinite efficacy and value" (The Christian's Reasonable Service, Vol. 1, Trans. Bartel Elshout, Ed. Joel Beeke, Rotterdam, The Netherlands: D. Bolle, 1999, 579, 581, 592).
Herman Bavinck:
In the cry of Jesus we are dealing not with a subjective but with an objective God-forsakenness: He did not feel alone but had in fact been forsaken by God. His feeling was not an illusion, not based on a false view of his situation, but corresponded with reality. (Reformed Dogmatics: Sin and Salvation in Christ, Vol. 3, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006, 389)
Herman Witsius:
That when God threatened man, if he sinned, with death, he meant that death which our first parents incurred on the very day they sinned, and which Christ the Surety underwent in the room and stead of some; and which the damned themselves, who are without a Surety, shall suffer and be forced to undergo themselves. But that is the death of the whole man; because the subject of it is man, made up of soul and body united; and consists, not only in the privation of the sense of God’s favour, and of communion with him, and of a joyful delight in the enjoyment of him; but it is also attended with all the torture and racking pain which the almighty wrath of God can inflict . . . Christ the Surety, in the fulness of time, underwent this same death of the whole man, in soul and body united, while on the cross he was forsaken of God . . . who punished him with affliction and imprisonment, which will be the punishment of the damned, as it was of Christ . . . His whole man suffered this death, till divine justice was satisfied; and it sufficiently appeared to have been satisfied, when God removed the darkness, that the creature, who had before acted as an enemy against him, on whom God was taking vengeance, might again refresh himself, and when he likewise comforted him with such a sense of his paternal love, as now to be able to call God his Father, and commend his spirit into his hands . . . Moreover, he felt and properly bore this death on the cross, when he cried out, “My God! why hast thou forsaken me?” (The Economy Of The Covenants Between God And Man, 139-140)
John Owen:
"It pleased God to bruise him, to put him to grief, to make his soul an offering for sin, and to pour out his life unto death. He hid himself from him, was far from the voice of his cry, until he cried out, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'"
(The Works Of John Owen, Vol. 10, London: Paternoster Row, 118)
"They who would invent evasions for this express complaint of our Saviour, that he was deserted and forsaken, as that he spake it in reference to his church, or of his own, being left to the power and malice of the Jews, do indeed little less than blaspheme him; and say he was not forsaken of God, when himself complains that he was.
Forsaken, I say, not by the disjunction of his personal union; but as to the communication of effects of love and favour, which is the desertion that the damned lie under in hell" (Works, Vol. 9, London: Paternoster Row, 122).
"It was from the penal desertion of God. That he was under a penal desertion from God, is plain; “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” And when I say so, I know little of what I say, I mean, what it is to be under such penal desertion. For the great punishment of hell, is an everlasting penal desertion from God" (Works, Vol. 17, London: Paternoster Row, 162).
I don't claim to know all the answers in Scriptures
@MatthewG
