When we read or sing any of the Psalms, one of the things people most often fail to see is their theological and historical and redemptive connection to the Lord Jesus. There are three things about Jesus that people ought to recall before they begin to speak or sing the words of any Psalm. First, Jesus is the “scribe” who authored each of these inspired biblical texts. As the second person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus is the source of the truths and the words. He speaks to us through the work of the Holy Spirit who inspired the human authors, including David. Second, Jesus is the “subject” of each of these biblical Psalms. In some they, they all reveal something about Him, His character and work, and how His redemptive work benefits those who place their trust in Him. And third, Jesus is the “singer” in each of these Old Testament songs. During His earthly ministry, growing up in a Jewish home and educated (almost certainly) in a local synagogue where He learned to sing the Psalms, vocalizing each of them numerous times during His thirty-three years on earth. To sing a Psalm today, thinking about what it meant to Jesus as He sang it, opens up a huge new perspective to the mind and heart of a contemporary worshiper.
We find good justification for this perspective in Luke 24 where we have the account of Jesus having dinner with several disciples on the road to Emmaus on that first Easter Sunday evening. Though these early believers had been in Jerusalem that Passover weekend where they had seen and heard significant parts of the New Testament passion events, they were mystified by them, including early reports of Jesus’ resurrection. When Jesus encountered them on the road, they did not recognize Him at first (perhaps because of the transformation into His glorified resurrection body). But they were sufficiently intrigued by Him to enter into conversation with Him. Luke records that one of them, Cleopas, asked pointed questions that resulted in Jesus saying, “‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”
What a Bible lesson that must have been! Jesus surveyed the Old Testament and showed them how everything written there pointed to Himself. Whenever we read something in the Old Testament, if we don’t see its connection to Jesus, we need to read it again; we missed it! And that certainly includes the Psalms. As mentioned above, Jesus wrote them, they’re ultimately about Him, and He sang them. After all, what was Jesus’ favorite hymnal? It had to have been the biblical collection of 150 Psalms. Some of the Psalms are very obviously pointing to Him, like Psalm 1 (He is that blessed man “who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, walk in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers”), or Psalm 2 (“The LORD said to Me, ‘You are My Son; today I have begotten You’”), or Psalm 24 (He is the Lord of glory for whom the ancient doors are lifted up), or Psalm 23 (He is our Good Shepherd – John 10 – who “leads us in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake”), or Psalm 110 (so often quoted in the New Testament as David wrote that “the LORD says to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool’”).
But one of the most obvious instances in which Jesus is at the center of attention is David’s Psalm 22, whose words Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Known also as Jesus’ cry of dereliction, the fourth of the so-called “Seven Last Words from the Cross,” Jesus borrowed these words from this psalm of lament that David wrote at a time in his life when he felt like the Lord had abandoned him. David’s mood shifts back and forth between stanzas when he sensed that God was not answering him, and stanzas in which he reminded himself that God had repeatedly proven and promised faithful covenant love. On the cross, in His humanity, Jesus lived what David had experienced, losing a sense of God’s presence, and yet knowing that God was hearing His cry and would answer it.
Before we move too quickly to make the words of Psalm 22 our own words, at points in our life when we have lost a sense and assurance of God’s presence and plan, we need to first remember that these were the words of David and then of Jesus. It’s because the Father heard and answered Jesus that He will hear and answer those of us who are “in Jesus.” We only “feel” alone in our struggles; the Lord will never abandon us. But because Jesus bore our sins on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24), He was truly forsaken in a way that we will never be forsaken!
Recent years have seen a proliferation of Psalters in the English-speaking church world, collections of metrical setting of all 150 Psalms matched usually with familiar hymn tunes. These are being placed in church hymnal racks as increasing numbers of churches are adopting the historic (and biblical!) practice of singing Psalms (at least one each Sunday morning) in corporate worship. When we do that, we find that there will be more of God in our worship, and more of God in our hearts! The Psalms are filled with information about the greatness of our God who is so worthy of praise. And how wonderful when we can train ourselves to see Jesus at the center of all these inspired expressions of praise and longing and trust.
John Calvin referred to the Psalms as “an anatomy of the soul.” The entire range of human emotion is on full display throughout this ancient prose, and this is not a coincidence. We are shown what the right expression of human emotion looks like in a man after God’s own heart and in a Savior whose sufferings on the cross were unlike anything we will ever endure. The Psalms are a treasure trove of unwavering hope; divinely-inspired words of beauty amidst anguish, written for the benefit of the King’s sons and daughters in earthly exile, that they may endure faithfully until they are called home.
As one of the two psalms most frequently evoked in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ death (the other is Psalm 69), Psalm 22 is one of the most poignant prayers in the Psalms. Beset by a host of powerful enemies determined to bring him down to a disgraceful death, the psalmist feels abandoned by God, the God on whom he has relied since birth and who never failed his ancestors whenever they cried to him. Yet to God he lifts his anguished prayer, pleading his lifelong trust and desperate need. The prayer shifts suddenly to exuberant praise: God will save, and all generations will hear, and all humankind, the high and the humble, will take up the praise. The original occasion for this prayer is not known, but its circumstances unmistakenly foreshadow Christ’s suffering at Calvary.
As one of the most Christ-centered Psalms, Psalm 22 deserves a prominent place in our congregations’ worship repertoire. It’s a long Psalm, so it won’t be unusual to find just portions of it included in hymnals and psalters today. In the 1990 “Trinity Hymnal,” verses 1-10 and 25 are included as four stanzas, in contrast to the 2018 “Trinity Psalter Hymnal” which offers the entire Psalm in eleven stanzas, taken from the RPCNA 1973 “The Book of Psalms for Singing.” Both use the marvelous KINGSFOLD tune, as harmonized by Ralph Vaughan Williams, as noted below. The 1994 “Trinity Psalter” has the entire Psalm divided into three stanzas (1-12, 13-22, and 23-31), recommending the tune HORSLEY.
Here are the lyrics as found in the “Trinity Psalter Hymnal” today. They are so clear in the text, they need no additional commentary from me.
Stanza 1
My God, my God, O why have You
forsaken me? O why
are You so far from saving me
and from my groaning cry?
By day and night, my God, I call;
Your answer still delays,
and yet You are the Holy One
who dwells in Israel’s praise.
Stanza 2
Our fathers put their trust in You;
from You salvation came.
They begged You and You set them free;
they were not put to shame.
But as for me, I am a worm
and not a man at all.
To men I am despised and base;
their scornings on me fall.
Stanza 3
All those who look at me will laugh
and cast reproach at me.
Their mouths they open wide; they wag
their heads in mockery:
“This man has trusted in the LORD;
let God redemption send.
Now let his God deliver him,
for he delights in him.”
Stanza 4
You took me from my mother’s womb
to safety at the breast.
Since birth, when I was cast on You,
You’ve been my God, my rest.
Be not far off, for grief is near,
and none to help is found;
for bulls of Bashan circle me,
strong bulls do me surround.
Stanza 5
Like lion jaws they open wide,
and roar to tear their prey.
My heart is wax, my bones unknit,
my life is poured away.
My strength is dried like shattered clay;
my tongue sticks to my jaws;
You bring me to the dust of death,
and there You lay me down.
Stanza 6
For see how dogs encircle me!
On every side there stands
a brotherhood of cruelty;
they pierce my feet and hands.
My bones are plain for me to count;
men see me and they stare.
My clothes among them they divide,
and gamble for their share.
Stanza 7
Now hurry, O my strength, to help!
Be not far off, O LORD!
But snatch my soul from raging dogs,
and spare me from the sword.
From lion’s mouth and oxen horns
O save me; hear my pray’r!
To all the church, my brethren dear,
Your name I will declare.
Stanza 8
Let those that fear the LORD sing praise!
To Him give glory now,
all Jacob’s seed, all Israel’s seed,
in awe before Him bow.
For He did not despise nor spurn
the grief of one oppressed,
nor did He shun his cry for help,
but heard and gave him rest.
Stanza 9
When I proclaim my praise of You,
then all the church will hear,
and I will pay my vows in full
where men hold Him in fear.
The weak and poor will eat their fill
and thus be satisfied.
Those seeking Him will praise the LORD.
So let your hearts abide.
Stanza 10
All ends of earth will turn to Him,
remembering the LORD,
all fam’lies of the earth shall come
and worship and adore.
Dominion to the Lord belongs;
He rules the nations well.
The proud of all the earth will bow
before Him where He dwells.
Stanza 11
All those whose souls descend to dust
will fall before His throne;
they cannot keep themselves alive,
they rest on Him alone.
A seed shall serve Him; future sons
will hear about the LORD.
His righteousness they will declare
to people yet unborn.
The recommended tune KINGSFOLD is thought by some scholars to date back to the Middle Ages. It is a folk tune set to a variety of texts in England and Ireland. The tune was published in “English Country Songs” (1893), an anthology compiled by Lucy E. Broadwood and J. A. Fuller Maitland. After having heard the tune in Kingsfold, Sussex, England (thus its name), Ralph Vaughan Williams introduced it as a hymn tune in “The English Hymnal” (1906) as a setting for Horatius Bonar’s “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say,” and is the tune for that hymn most often sing in the British Isles, in contract to the 1868 VOX DILECTI tune of John Bacchus Dykes that is more common in America. KINGSFOLD is also the tune used for the 1899 Christmas song by famous Presbyterian American hymnologist Louis Benson, “O Song a Song of Bethlehem.”
While not extremely familiar to many evangelicals today, KINGSFOLD is a wonderful tune. It is extremely easy to learn, since the melodic line does not have awkward intervals, and follows a mostly upward and downward scale pattern. It is shaped in classic rounded bar form (AABA), where the first, second, and fourth lines are virtually identical. It has a modal character and is both dignified and strong, and deserved to become more well known.
Here is a link to the singing of three of the stanzas.