📖 The Book of Psalms — Unit 6: Psalm 22, The Messianic Psalm

1. The Psalm of the Cross

Psalm 22 has been called "the Psalm of the Cross," and with good reason. Written by David roughly a thousand years before Jesus was born, it describes a scene of suffering so detailed and so specific that it reads less like the experience of an ancient king and more like an eyewitness account of Calvary. It opens with the very words our Lord cried from the cross, and it moves through pierced hands and feet, parched thirst, mocking onlookers, and gambling for the sufferer's clothing — and then, remarkably, it turns from agony to triumph and ends on a note of worldwide worship. This is one of the great Messianic psalms, a window opened a thousand years in advance onto the death and victory of Christ.

The Jewish people sang this psalm for centuries without fully understanding it. How could a song of such intimate suffering belong to David, who died in his bed an old man? The answer is that David, moved by the Spirit of God, was writing of someone greater than himself — the Son who would one day hang upon a Roman cross and carry the sins of the world.

2. Philip and the Ethiopian

In the book of Acts, an Ethiopian official is riding home in his chariot, reading aloud from the prophet Isaiah, when Philip is sent by the Spirit to join him. The man is puzzled: of whom does the prophet speak? Beginning at that very passage of Old Testament Scripture, Philip preached Jesus to him. Notice the lesson: the eunuch had only the Old Testament in his hands, yet that was enough, because the Old Testament is full of Christ. Philip took an ancient Hebrew text and from it preached the gospel. The same is true of Psalm 22. A person who has only the Old Testament has, in this single psalm, a portrait of the crucified and risen Savior clear enough to lead them to faith.

3. What It Means to Be "Fulfilled"

When we say a psalm like this is "fulfilled" in Christ, we should understand what the word can mean, for it works in more than one way. According to careful students of Scripture, a prophecy may be fulfilled in at least three senses. First, there is direct prediction: something is clearly foretold and then comes to pass, as when Isaiah predicted the destruction of Babylon long before it fell. Second, there is foreshadowing: an earlier thing is a picture or type of something greater, as the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament foreshadowed and were fulfilled in the one sacrifice of Christ. Third, there is parallel or double reference: language that describes one event but also, under the Spirit's hand, describes another. Psalm 22 carries this third quality powerfully — David spoke out of his own anguish, yet the words reach far beyond him to the cross.

4. The Cry of Loneliness

These are the first recorded words Jesus cried from the cross, quoting this psalm directly: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Of all the pains of the crucifixion, this was the deepest. The Father had been with the Son throughout His entire life — at His baptism, on the mountain, in the garden. Why abandon Him now, in the darkest hour? The answer is the heart of the gospel: in that moment the Son was bearing the sin of the world, and a holy God turned His face away from the sin His Son carried. Jesus endured the forsakenness we deserved so that we might never be forsaken. He was cut off from God so that we could be brought near.

5. The Suffering Described

The middle of the psalm reads like a medical description of death by crucifixion, written centuries before that form of execution was practiced. "I am poured out like water, and all My bones are out of joint" describes a body hanging by its own weight, joints pulled apart. "My heart is like wax; it has melted within Me" speaks of the failing heart. And then the most astonishing line of all: "They pierced My hands and My feet" — a precise picture of crucifixion set down by a man who had never seen one. David died of old age; his hands and feet were never pierced. He was describing Another. Around the cross the soldiers gambled for Jesus' garments, just as the psalm says, "They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots" (Psalm 22:18).

6. From Agony to Triumph

If the psalm ended at the suffering, it would be only a tragedy. But it does not end there. About halfway through, the tone turns. The sufferer who cried out in abandonment begins to declare the faithfulness of God, and by the close the psalm has become a great hymn of victory. It looks forward to a day when "all the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before You" (Psalm 22:27).

"That He has done this" — the Hebrew carries the sense of a finished work, and it is striking that one of the last words Jesus spoke from the cross was, "It is finished." The psalm that opened with the first cry of the cross closes with the last. From the deepest darkness, the work of salvation is accomplished, and the news of it goes out to a people not yet born — to us.

7. A Springboard for the Gospel

Because Psalm 22 is so vivid a portrait of Christ drawn entirely from the Hebrew Scriptures, it is one of the most useful passages in the Bible for sharing the gospel with someone who honors the Old Testament but does not yet know Jesus. Like Philip with the Ethiopian, a believer can begin right at this Scripture and preach Jesus. Imagine sitting with a Jewish friend who has only the Old Testament in his home. You need not argue; you need only open Psalm 22 together and read it slowly. Who is this sufferer, forsaken, with garments gambled away, whose anguish ends in worldwide worship? The text raises the question; the Spirit answers it. (One honest note of preparation: some Hebrew manuscripts of verse 16 read "like a lion" rather than "pierced" — a difference of a single Hebrew letter. Older manuscript evidence, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, favors "pierced," which is why nearly every translation reads that way — but a well-read Jewish friend may raise the question, and it is better to know the issue than to be caught off guard by it.)

8. The God Who Was Forsaken for Us

Psalm 22 is finally not about David's suffering or even chiefly about the mechanics of crucifixion. It is about love. It shows us a Savior who went into the darkness on purpose, who heard no answer to His cry so that we would never be met with silence, who was poured out like water so that we could be filled. The same psalm that records the lowest point of human history records its greatest turning point, for the death it describes became the doorway to life for all the families of the earth.

When you read this psalm, do not read it as a distant prophecy only. Read it as a personal gift. The forsaken One was forsaken for you. The pierced hands were pierced for you. And the finished work is finished for you. The proper response to Psalm 22 is the response the psalm itself calls for at its end: to remember, to turn to the LORD, and to worship Him among the great congregation of those who have been redeemed.

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