Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 22.12-21: You have rescued me

Psalm 22.12-21a

Many bulls encircle me,
    strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
¹³ they open wide their mouths at me,
    like a ravening and roaring lion.

¹⁴ I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
    it is melted within my breast;
¹⁵ my mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
    you lay me in the dust of death.

¹⁶ For dogs are all around me;
    a company of evildoers encircles me.
My hands and feet have shrivelled[1];
¹⁷ I can count all my bones. 

They stare and gloat over me; 

18 they divide my clothes among them,[2]

    and for my clothing they cast lots.

¹⁹ But you, O Lord, do not be far away!
    O my help, come quickly to my aid!
²⁰ Deliver my soul from the sword,
    my life from the power of the dog!
²¹     Save me from the mouth of the lion!

from the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.

Good Friday. A still day. Sunshine, warmth, quietness: it is almost harsh, this beauty of emerging spring, for it emphasises the dissonance of the day. We are told, in the afternoon briefing from 10 Downing Street, that nearly 1,000 UK hospital patients have been recorded as losing their life to Covid-19 in the last 24 hours – between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. So, tens of thousands of desolate people grieve today, unimaginably stricken by a silent virus. 

The poet priest Albert Ratcliffe, in his poem The Entombment[3], gives us insight into the kind of mourning sweeping over so many people in this cruel month of April: ‘Grief is that void into which all sense is hurled,’ he wrote, as he described the sorrow of Jesus’ shocking death and the laying of his body in a tomb hewn out of rock. One can’t make sense of grief. For the death of a beloved leaves a void. As so many discover, it is a black hole which soaks up all sense or recognisable landmarks which were once so familiar when life was settled or normal.

This is the day we remember Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus, in whom joy and beauty and creation meet with desolation, ugly rejection and destruction. 

The second phase of Psalm 22 takes the poet deeper into the imagination of a death of considerable suffering.

Evil surrounds the psalmist. Malign forces like terrifying and strong bulls (vs12) and hostile dogs (vs16 and 20) encircle the victim. The language of his suffering, brought about by a ‘perversion of justice’ (as Isaiah 53.8 prophesies or describes), is so very vivid. He is ‘poured out like water’, his bones are ‘out of joint’ (dislocated), his heart has ‘melted like wax’, his mouth is dried up, his tongue sticks to his jaw, he is so emaciated he can count his bones, and his hands and feet have either ‘shrivelled’ (NRSVA) or been ‘pierced’ (NIV). What’s more, those who surround him, stare and gloat and steal his clothes.

Then, suddenly, this agonised and fearful person, on the edges of death and humanity, finds a new voice of petitionary prayer. After hurling all sense into the void of his situation – describing the pain, shock and reality of his suffering – the psalmist begins to give voice to the possibility of an alternative reality: divine rescue.

In verses 19-21, the poet decides that God does not need to be far away at all; that God can come quickly to help; that God can deliver his soul from the very jaws of death. And in vs21, suddenly, a corner has been turned. In the first line of the verse, the psalmist says ‘save me from the mouth of the lion!’ Then in the second line of the verse there appears to be a new realisation: ‘From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me!’

Somehow, God has given this tortured soul an answer. ‘The answer comes, not beyond the suffering, however, but precisely in the midst of and even from the suffering! God is somehow present in the depth and even amidst death,’ writes the bible commentator J Clinton McCann.[4]

These are not glib words: they are the fundamental foundation of the theology of the Psalms. This is a theology steered by clear-eyed realism and unwavering hope. The psalm quoted by Jesus in his agony on the cross nourished him with faith even in his desolation. In those six hours, between nine in the morning and three in the afternoon,  when he was fixed immovable before mockers, scoffers and shaken friends and family, Jesus reached deep into his faith tradition and found Psalm 22 gave voice to his suffering and his hope.

Tomorrow, Holy Saturday, a day of yet more stillness and unbearable news of this evil virus’s encirclement of so many, we will find further hope in the final verses of this psalm. Then, as we long both for Easter, and the comfort of the psalm which follows it, we will be greeted by the companionship of a Good Shepherd promised by the much loved Psalm 23. That shepherd inspires realism and hope: ‘Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil…’  

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[1] The meaning of the Hebrew at this point is unclear; some translations (such as the NIV) have interpreted the word as ‘pierced’.  

[2] The narration of the crucifixion in each gospel is unanimous in one particular detail – that the soldiers drew lots for Jesus’ seamless tunic: see Matthew 27.35; Mark 15.24; Luke 23.34; John 19.24;

[3] Quoted by Bishop Ann Hollingsworth in a Good Friday meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZUd_KJCfOc&feature=youtu.be

[4] New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary; © Abingdon, Nashville, p764