1 My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? [Why art Thou] afar from my help, from the words of my roar? 2 My God, I cry to Thee by day, and Thou answerest not; And by night, but there is no rest for me.
3 Yet Thou art Holy, Throned upon the praises of Israel. 4 In Thee our fathers trusted; They trusted and Thou deliveredst them. 5 To Thee they cried and were delivered; In Thee they trusted and were not put to shame.
6 But I am a worm, and not a man; A reproach of men and despised of people. 7 All who see me mock at me; They draw open the lips, they nod the head. 8 "Roll [thy cares] on Jehovah--let Him deliver him; Let Him rescue him, for He delights in him."
9 Yea, Thou art He who didst draw me from the womb Didst make me trust when on my mother's breasts. 10 Upon Thee was I thrown from birth; From my mother's womb art Thou my God. 11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near; For there is no helper.
12 Many bulls have surrounded me, Strong ones of Bashan have encircled me. 13 They gape upon me with their mouth, [Like] a lion tearing and roaring.
14 Like water I am poured out, And all my bones are out of joint My heart has become like wax, Melted in the midst of my bowels. 15 My strength (palate?) is dried up like a potsherd, And my tongue cleaves to my gums, And Thou layest me in the dust of death.
16 For dogs have surrounded me, A pack of evil-doers closed round me, They pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I can count all my bones, These--they gaze, upon me they look. 18 They divide my garments among them, And on my vesture they cast lots.
19 But Thou, Jehovah, be not far off; My Strength, haste to my help. 20 Deliver my soul from the sword, My only [life] from the paw of the dog. 21 Save me from the mouth of the lion, And from the horns of the wild oxen--Thou hast answered me.
22 I will declare Thy name to my brethren, In the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee. 23 Ye that fear Jehovah, 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 has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted one. And has not hid His face from him, And when he cried has hearkened to him. 25 From Thee [comes] my praise in the great congregation; My vows will I pay before them that fear Him. 26 The humble shall eat and be satisfied, They shall praise Jehovah that seek Him; Let your heart live for ever.
27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to Jehovah. And all the families of the nations shall bow before Thee. 28 For the kingdom is Jehovah's; And He is ruler among the nations. 29 All the fat ones of the earth eat and bow down; Before His face kneel all they who were going down to the dust, And he [who] could not keep his soul alive. 30 A seed shall serve Him; And it shall be told of Jehovah unto the [next] generation. 31 They shall come and declare His righteousness Unto a people that shall be born, that He has done [this].
Who is the sufferer whose wail is the very voice of desolation and despair, and who yet dares to believe that the tale of his sorrow will be a gospel for the world? The usual answers are given. The title ascribes the authorship to David, and is accepted by Delitzsch and others. Hengstenberg and his followers see in the picture the ideal righteous man. Others think of Hezekiah, or Jeremiah, with whose prophecies and history there are many points of connection. The most recent critics find here "the personalised Genius of Israel, or more precisely the followers of Nehemiah, including the large-hearted psalmist" (Cheyne, "Orig. of Psalt.," 264). On any theory of authorship, the startling correspondence of the details of the psalmist's sufferings with those of the Crucifixion has to be accounted for. How startling that correspondence is, both in the number and minuteness of its points, need not be insisted on. Not only does our Lord quote the first verse on the cross, and so show that the psalm was in his heart then, but the gestures and words of mockery were verbally reproduced, as Luke significantly indicates by using the LXX's word for "laugh to scorn" (ver. 7). Christ's thirst is regarded by John as the fulfilment of "scripture," which can scarcely be other than ver. 15. The physical effects of crucifixion are described in the ghastly picture of vv. 14, 15. Whatever difficulty exists in determining the true reading and meaning of the allusion to "my hands and my feet," some violence or indignity to them is intended. The peculiar detail of dividing the raiment was more than fulfilled, since the apparently parallel and synonymous clauses were resolved into two distinct acts. The recognition of these points in the psalm as prophecies is one thing; the determination of their relation to the psalmist's own experience is quite another. It is taken for granted in many quarters that every such detail in prophecy must describe the writer's own circumstances, and the supposition that they may transcend these is said to be "psychologically impossible." But it is somewhat hazardous for those who have not been subjects of prophetic inspiration to lay down canons of what is possible and impossible in it, and there are examples enough to prove that the relation of the prophets' speech to their consciousness and circumstances was singularly complex, and not to be unravelled by any such _obiter dicta_ as to psychological possibilities. They were recipients of messages, and did not always understand what the "Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify." Theories which neglect that aspect of the case do not front all the facts. Certainty as to the authorship of this psalm is probably unattainable. How far its words fitted the condition of the singer must therefore remain unsettled. But that these minute and numerous correspondences are more than coincidences, it seems perverse to deny. The present writer, for one, sees shining through the shadowy personality of the psalmist the figure of the Prince of Sufferers, and believes that whether the former's plaints applied in all their particulars to him, or whether there is in them a certain "element of hyperbole" which becomes simple fact in Jesus' sufferings, the psalm is a prophecy of Him and them. In the former case the psalmist's experience, in the latter case his utterances, were divinely shaped so as to prefigure the sacred sorrows of the Man of Sorrows.