Psalm 22 Does Psalm 22 refer to the crucifixion of Christ?
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? From saving me, from the words of my groaning? 2 My God, I call by day, but you do not answer; by night I call, but I have no rest. 3 But you are the Holy One, enthroned among the praises of Israel. 4 Our fathers trusted in you; they trusted, and you delivered them. 5 They cried to you, and were delivered; they trusted in you, and were not put to shame. 6But I am a worm and not a man, A reproach to men, And despised by the people. 7All who see me mock me; They gape with the lips, And shake the head, And say, 8He trusted in the LORD; Let him deliver him; Let him deliver him, For he delighteth in him. 9For thou didst draw me from the womb; Thou didst make me trustful at my mother's breasts. 10Unto thee was I cast from the womb. From my mother's womb you are my God. 11Do not be far from me, for trouble is near, for there is none to help. 12Many bulls compassed me; the mighty ones of Bashan encompassed me. 13They opened their mouths wide against me, Like a ravening and roaring lion. 14I am poured out like water; all my bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It melts within my bowels. 15My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And my tongue clings to the roof of my mouth; And you bring me down to the dust of death. 16For dogs have compassed me about; A company of evildoers has encompassed me; They have pierced my hands and my feet. 17I can count all my bones; They look and stare at me. 18They divide my garments among themselves; And for my clothing they cast lots. 19But you, O LORD, do not be far off; O my strength, make haste to help me. 20Deliver my soul from the sword; my only child from the paw of the dog. 21Save me from the mouth of the lion; Answer me from the horns of the wild oxen. 22I will declare your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you. 23You who fear the LORD, praise him; you descendants of Jacob, glorify him. And fear him, all you seed of Israel. 24For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, nor has he hidden his face from him, but has heard when he cried to him. 25My praise is from you in the great congregation; I will pay my vows before those who fear him. 26The meek shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD. Your heart shall live forever. 27All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall bow down before you. 28For the kingdom is the LORD’s, and he rules over the nations. 29All the fat ones of the earth have eaten and worshiped; everyone who descends to the dust shall bow before him, even he who does not save his life. 30The seed shall serve him; the generation to come shall declare the LORD. 31They will come and declare his righteousness to a people who are to be born, that he has done it.
This psalm is one of the most quoted psalms by the Gospel writers, who used it to color the story of the cross and suffering. It is the preferred Christian evidence for the alleged suffering of Christ on the cross as a prophecy in the Old Testament.
Response:
The Jews, who are the original authors of the book and its language, confirm that this psalm speaks of David’s ordeal and personal experiences. And verse 12 of the Psalm says: “ Many bulls have surrounded me; the mighty men of Bashan have encompassed me; they have opened wide their mouths against me, like a ravening and roaring lion. ” The mighty men of Bashan—or rather the tribes of Gad and Manasseh—were among the ten lost tribes whose mention was erased from history, after they were swallowed up by the Assyrian captivity in 721 B.C., and therefore none of them participated in the crucifixion that occurred more than 750 years after that captivity, and none of them surrounded the crucified one “ and opened wide their mouths against him, like a ravening and roaring lion .”
And if Christians insist on considering this Psalm as a prophecy spoken by David about what would happen to the Messiah, then it cannot be a prophecy of his being killed and tasted death, but quite the opposite, it is a prophecy of his escape from being killed, for verse 19 of the Psalm the psalmist says in it: “ But you, O Lord, be not far off; my strength Make haste to help me. 20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my only child from the paw of the dog. 21 Save me from the mouth of the lion; answer me from the horns of the wild oxen.
Here we notice that the psalmist asks God to save his only child, that is, his life, from the hand of the dog and the mouth of the lion : that is, those who want to kill him. And we find in verse 24 God’s response to him, that is, God saved him from the hand of the dog, the mouth of the lion, and the claws of the dogs who wanted to kill him, not that he should die and be tortured by their hand and then rise again. Verse 24 of the psalm says: “For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, nor has he hidden his face from him, but hearkened to his cry.” Then the psalmist says in verse 20: “ Deliver my soul from the sword .”
Was the alleged death of Christ by crucifixion or by the sword?
The King James Version states in the introduction to this psalm that it consists of three main elements:
- Complaint filed by David
- Then he prays the prayer of someone who is afflicted with grief and deep sadness.
- Finally, he praises the Lord for his salvation.
The ordeal of David:
This psalm is in fact nothing more than a report of a severe ordeal that David, peace be upon him, was exposed to, which almost killed him at the hands of his enemies, had God not saved him from their evil.
The enmity between Saul, the first king in Israel, and David was very strong. David said: “ I will surely perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than to escape to the land of the Philistines, and Saul will despair of me, and will not search for me any longer in all the borders of Israel, so that I may escape from his hand.” So David arose and crossed over, he and the six hundred men who were with him, to Achish the son of Maoch, king of Gath. David stayed with Achish in Gath, he and his men, each with his household, David and his two wives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the Carmelite, Nabal’s wife. When it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, he no longer sought him. Then David said to Achish, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, please give me a place in one of the towns of the field, that I may dwell there.” So Achish gave him Daqlag that day. David and his men went up and raided the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites, for these have been inhabitants of the land from ancient times, from Shur to the land of Egypt. David struck the land, and did not leave a man or a woman alive, and he took sheep, oxen, donkeys, and camels. And clothes, and returned and came to Achish . 1 Samuel 27:1-9.
David had conquered the Amalekites and others, and he and his men used his sword against them, so it was natural that they would return the sword to him and go down to fight him, and this is what actually happened, and we will see it in a little while.
During the time that David was a refugee in Ziklag, he was joined by a number of strong warriors from the tribes of Benjamin, Gad, and Manasseh. 1 Chronicles 12:1-22 says about them: “ And these are they who came to David at Ziklag, while he was yet kept back from the presence of Saul the son of Kish. They were mighty men, helpers in the war… And of the Gadites there separated themselves to David to the stronghold in the wilderness, mighty men of valor, men of the army for war, who arranged shield and spears, whose faces were like the faces of lions, and who were swift as a gazelle on the mountains: 9 Ezer the chief, and Obadiah… These are they who crossed the Jordan in the first month, when it was full to all its banks, and they put to flight all the inhabitants of the valleys, both east and west. And some of Manasseh fell to David… When he went to Ziklag, there fell to him from Manasseh, Adnah, Jozabad, Jediael, Michael, Jozabad, Elihu, and Zeltai, chief of the thousands of Manasseh. And they helped David against the raiders, for they were all mighty men of valor, and they were leaders in the The army. ))
David's men were from the Israelites who joined him: from the tribe of Gad who were described as " mighty men of valor ." Then these and those were "a great army like the army of God ."
If this great army turned against David, for one reason or another, this would undoubtedly mean David's destruction.
And this is what actually happened, had God not saved them in His mercy.
If we go back a little, we find that Moses gave the children of Gad and the children of Manasseh land beyond the Jordan. They said to Moses, “ We will cross over before the Lord armed to the land of Canaan, but we will give the possession of our inheritance in the Jordan.” So Moses gave to the children of Gad and the children of Reuben and the half-tribe of Manasseh the son of Joseph the kingdom of Sihon king of the Amorites, and the kingdom of Og king of Bashan, with its cities, within the borders of the cities of the land round about . (Numbers 32:33)
When these men become angry, the description of the psalm above applies to them: “ The mighty men of Bashan open their mouths like a ravening and roaring lion .”
David’s ordeal came when he and his men were absent from Zilgag for a few days, during which the Amalekites were able to invade and destroy it. Then his people rebelled against him and said to stone him. 1 Samuel 30:1-6: “ And when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had invaded the Negev and Ziklag, and had struck Ziklag and burned it with fire, 2 and had taken the women who were in it captive. They killed no one, neither small nor great, but drove them away and went on their way. 3 And David and his men came into the city, and behold, it was burned with fire, and their wives, their sons, and their daughters were taken captive. 4 Then David and the people who were with him lifted up their voices and wept until they had no strength to weep. 5 And David’s two wives were taken captive, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite. 6 And David was greatly distressed, because the people were saying, ‘Stone him, for the soul of all the people was bitter, every man for his sons and his daughters.’ But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God .”
As is the custom of people - especially believers - to turn to God in times of distress, David had no refuge at that time except God Almighty, who accepted his prayer and gave him victory over The Amalekites were those whom David described as dividing the spoils and casting lots over them, like dogs that gather around a prey to devour it. Finally: “ David recovered all that the Amalekites had taken, and David rescued his wife, and nothing was lost to them ” (1 Samuel 30:18).
Psalm 22 records for us David’s ordeal from which he emerged victorious.
The scholars’ understanding of this psalm is represented by what Nineham (1963D.E. Nineham: SAINT MARK, Penguin) says
: ((If we take it as a whole, it is no more than the prayer of a righteous servant who suffers pain, but who trusts completely in God’s love for him, and his protection from evil, and he is assured of His protection, especially verses 19:26, and especially verses 24, 26, in which: (( For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, nor has he hidden his face from him, but hears when he cries to him.. )) There is some evidence that the opening of the psalm was interpreted by the ancient Jews in the light of the rest of its parts, and that it was known as a formula for a prayer that is assured of response for help in time of distress.
Moreover, the phrase: “They pierced my hands and my feet” in verse 16 of this psalm does not exist according to the original Hebrew, which is thus:
((כִּי סְבָבוּנִי, For dogs have encompassed me; a company of evil-doers have inclosed me; like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet. And
when we refer to the New King James Version, we find in the margin the following comment about the word (pierced) in the aforementioned verse:
Following some Hebrew manuscripts, Septuagint, Syriac, Vulgate; Masoretic Text reads Like a lion.
When the New Revised Standard Version came out, the word pierced was dropped and the passage read:
For dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me. My hands and feet have shriveled 22:16
It is clear that the phrase "pierced my hands and feet", which is not found in the original Hebrew, even if accepted in this form, cannot be taken literally, that the hands and feet were pierced as in the case of the crucified one. It means nothing more than expressing the state that overwhelmed that servant, and as the priest William Marsh says in the correct way in interpreting the books of the Old Testament: "The psalmist describes the enemies as dogs because they growl and bite and have surrounded him on every side so as to leave him no way to escape. Thus they do not allow his hands to defend nor his feet to escape, for he is doomed to remain besieged wherever he is." Otherwise, how can he understand his saying: ((I am poured out like water - all my bones are out of joint - my heart is like wax - it has melted in the midst of my bowels)) and how can he understand God's saying in the Torah warning the children of Israel against disobeying the commandment: (( But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes... then your heaven that is above your head shall be bronze, and the earth that is under you iron. 24 And the Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; He will come down upon you from heaven until you perish .)) Deuteronomy 28:15-24.
The children of Israel disobeyed the commandments and statutes and were often cursed and harmed, but at no time did the sky above them turn to brass and the earth beneath them to iron, and never did dust and dirt kill them as the Torah states. The division of spoils by lot has been a tried and tested method throughout the ages and among different peoples and faiths - and Moses used it often with the children of Israel as stated in Numbers 26:52: "The land shall be divided by lot; according to the names of the tribes of their fathers they shall inherit. ... 56 According to the lot their inheritance shall be divided to many and to few."
And since women are considered clothing for men and vice versa as stated in the Holy Bible as in Genesis 2:23, 24, Leviticus 15:16-18, Corinthians 11:3, 15. In light of this, we can understand David’s words in this psalm: “They divide my garments, and for my clothing they cast lots.” This is because when the Amalekites invaded Ziklag in David’s absence, they took with them everything that belonged to David, including his military clothing, his men, and his possessions. Among what they took were David’s belongings and his two wives. It is natural for the Amalekites to divide what belonged to David by lot. So when David cried out in this psalm, he was speaking about an event that actually happened when the Amalekites divided his belongings.
Before David recovered what the Amalekites had plundered, he found them “spread over the face of the whole earth, eating and drinking and dancing because of all the great spoil that they had taken from the land of Philistia and from the land of Judah” (1 Samuel 30:16).
In conclusion,
this psalm, with its details, relates to specific events that happened to David in his life and represented an ordeal from which he emerged unscathed and did not taste death. (From the book Christ in the Sources of Christian Doctrines - modified - Wahba Library, 14 Al-Gomhoria Street - Abdeen - Egypt)
To know the Jewish interpretation of this psalm, you, dear reader, can visit the following Jewish website:
http://www.jewsforjudaism.org
Question: Both Matthew (27:46) and Mark (15:34) use Psalms 22:2: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” as the last words spoken by Jesus from the cross. Why should Jesus have thought himself as separated from God at the very moment when, according to Christian theology, he was fulfilling God's plan?
Answer: It is certainly questionable why the Jesus of Christian theology should have expressed this sentiment. Luke and John omit this cry in their crucifixion accounts, and instead, imply that Jesus himself was in complete control of the event. According to Luke, the final cry of Jesus was: “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46), words taken from Psalms 31:46. John also views the crucifixion not as an abandonment by God, but as the conclusion of Jesus' divine mission, in which he peacefully surrenders his soul to God: “He bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (John 19:30).
Some Christian commentators explain Jesus' feeling of abandonment, as recorded by Matthew and Mark, by claiming that he had in mind, not only the despairing words of verse 2, but also the trusting words with which this psalm ends. But this is conjecture on their part. What matters is that Jesus made use only of the opening words of the psalm, expressing despair, and failed to continue with the concluding words of the psalm, which are expressive of hope and trust in God.
Are we to believe that Jesus, who is supposed to be God's equal, and His only begotten son, fell into deep depression and anguish because God refused to help him in his hour of need? Wasn't his death essential for the reason Jesus supposedly became incarnate? Why should he offer prayers to be saved from a fate that he is knowingly supposed to endure in order to redeem mankind from the power of sin? How could Jesus have entertained the thought that God forsook him? If Jesus is whose Christianity claims him to be then he knew that by his death mankind was given the only means of attaining salvation. If, as the Gospels assume, Jesus knew and predicted long in advance the events surrounding his death, and if these events were neither a surprise nor a defeat, but a working out of a divinely designed plan, what sense does it make for Jesus to complain: "My god, my God, why have You forsaken me?"
Earlier, in Gethsemane, Jesus is alleged to have prayed that God should spare him from having to undergo his bitter fate. However, Jesus added that not his will, but God's will, should be done (Matthew 26:36-45, Mark 14:32-41, Luke 22:41-44). Why did Jesus give vent to feelings of despair and failure while supposedly knowing that he was really acting out a preordained cosmic plan? It is said that he knew what was to happen: “From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day" (Matthew 16:21; Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22); and “After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said: ‘I am thirsty’” (John 19:28).
On the one hand, did Jesus have foreknowledge of events as the evangelists claim? On the other hand, in those last agonizing minutes on the cross, did he truly feel personally abandoned, his mission coming to grief as recorded by Matthew and Mark? If Jesus did feel abandoned, he could not be the Messiah that the New Testament authors believed him to be. If he were the Messiah, as envisioned by the New Testament, he would have known that the crucifixion was essential to his mission. Yet, if he knew this, he knew he wasn't abandoned, but was working out the divine plan. In that case, his words of despair were deceiving, something unbefitting the true Messiah.
Question: Why do the respective Jewish and Christian renderings of Psalms 22:17 (16 in some versions) differ in the translation of the Hebrew word ka-'ari?
Answer: Christians see in this verse an opportunity to make the claim that the psalmist foretold the piercing of Jesus' hands and feet as part of the crucifixion process. They maintain that the Hebrew word ka-'ari in verse 17 (16 in some versions) should be translated as "pierce." They render this verse as: “They pierced my hands and my feet.” This follows the Septuagint version, used by the early Christians, whose error is repeated by the Vulgate and the Syriac. However, it should be noted that the Septuagint underwent textual revisions by Christian copyists in the early centuries of the Common Era; it is not known if the rendering "pierced" is one of those revisions.
In any case, this rendering contains two fallacies. First, assuming that the root of this Hebrew word is krh, "to dig," then the function of the 'aleph in the word ka- 'ari is inexplicable since it is not part of the root. Karah consists only of the Hebrew letters kaph, resh, and he, whereas the word in the Hebrew text, ka-'ari, consists of kaph, 'aleph, resh, and yod. Second, the verb krh, “to dig,” does not have the meaning “to pierce.” Karah generally refers to the digging of the soil, and is never applied in the Scriptures to the piercing of the flesh (cf. Genesis 26:25; Exodus 21:33; Numbers 21:18; Jeremiah 18:20, 22; Psalms 7 :16, 57:7). There are a number of words that are used in Hebrew for piercing the body: rats'a, "to pierce," "to bore with an awl" (Exodus 21:6); dakar, "to pierce" (Zechariah 12:10, Isaiah 13:15); nakar, “to pierce,” “to bore,” “to perforate” (2 Kings 18:21). This last word is used in a very significant sense in the last verse cited: “It [the reed] will go into his hand and pierce it.” Any of these words would be far better suited for use in this passage than one that is generally used to denote digging the soil.
The correct interpretation of the verse must be based on the elliptical style of this particular psalm. The text should read, in effect: “Like a lion [they are gnawing at] my hands and my feet.” Ellipsis (the omission of words) is an apt rhetorical device for a composition in which suffering and agony is described. A person in agony does not usually express his feelings in complete round sentences. Such a person is capable of exclaiming only the most critical words of his thoughts and feelings. In this case: “Like a lion... my hands and my feet!” Likewise, in verse 1 we find broken phrases rather than whole sentences: “Far from helping me . . . the words of my roaring.”
Examining Psalm 22, we find that verses 17, 21, and 22 express parallel thoughts. In verse 17, the psalmist speaks of “dogs” and “a lion,” which are metaphoric representations of his enemies, and in verses 21 and 22 respectively, he beseeches the Almighty to save him “from a dog’s paw” and “from a lion's mouth." Thus, in verse 17, where he complains of the lion, the missing words are understood, and it is to be read: “Like a lion [they are gnawing at] my hands and my feet.” This is the most plausible interpretation of the text. Rashi's interpretation of the verse--"As if crushed by the mouth of a lion are my hands and my feet"--is similar in thought to the one we have offered though differently stated. While these interpretations fit with the diction of the entire psalm, the Christian translation--"They pierced my hands and my feet"--does not.
Grammatical proof of the correctness of the Masoretic text is seen by the use of the qamatz under the kaph in ka-'ari, which is the result of an assimilated definite article. Thus, the literal translation would be “Like the lion. . . .” While in English, a noun used in a general sense is recognized by having no article, either definite or indefinite, in Hebrew, as well as in many other languages, such nouns take the definite article. For example, "Work is good for man" in Hebrew would be "The work is good for man." (Cf. Amos 5:19 with the English translation.)
The metaphorical terminology used by the psalmist to express in physical terms his mental anguish is comparable to similar usage found in Jeremiah 23:9. There the prophet exclaims: “My heart within me is broken, all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine has overcome.”
As a result of a careful study of this verse, we see that the Christian claim that Psalms 22:17 (16 in some versions) foretells that Jesus' hands and feet would be pierced has no truth to it.
Question: Did the Roman soldiers divide up Jesus' clothing in fulfillment of Psalms 22:19 (18 in some versions)?
Answer: Psalms 22:19 (18 in some versions) reads: “They divide my clothes among them, and for my garment they cast lots.” A misunderstanding by the author of the Gospel of John influenced the way he applied this verse to his version of the division-of-the-clothing incident (John 19:24; cf. Matthew 27:35, Mark 15:24, Luke 23 :34).
The author of John misinterpreted the Hebrew parallelism as referring to two separate acts. In biblical poetry, which is based on parallel structure, the repetition of an idea does not indicate its duplication in reality (cf. Zechariah 9:9). Seeking to harmonize this crucifixion story with the psalm, John states that the soldiers divided Jesus' garments among themselves, but that they could not divide the inner garment, which was seamless, so they cast lots for it. "They therefore said to one another: 'Let us not tear it, but let us decide by lot whose it will be'" that the Scripture might be fulfilled: 'They divided my outer garment among themselves, and for my apparel they cast lots (John 19:24). Evidently, John created this legendary casting of lots to meet what he believed to be a messianic requirement of Psalm 22. In this way, the crucifixion tradition was rounded out to agree with what John thought was the prophetic message of this psalm.
But, what is the truth of the New Testament claims? If Jesus was scourged as part of the crucifixion process and then his clothes were once again placed on his wounded bloody body (Matthew 27:26, 31; Mark 15:15, 20, John 19:1) why would the soldiers want to divide up these blood soaked garments? Indeed, if the scourging continued along the route to the crucifixion, Jesus' clothing would be nothing but bloody rags of no value to the soldiers. For that matter, it is questionable if the soldiers would have placed a purple robe on the scourged body of Jesus. Purple dyed material was extremely expensive and reserved for royalty. It is probably for this reason that the story arose that he was wrapped in a purple robe, the color symbolic of royalty. The truth is that there is no truth to the New Testament claims
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