Psalms 22:1-2

Psalm 22 ¹ 

For the music director; according to the tune “Morning Doe;” ²  a psalm of David.

22:1 My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? ³ 

I groan in prayer, but help seems far away. ⁴ 

22:2 My God, I cry out during the day,

but you do not answer,

and during the night my prayers do not let up. ⁵ 

Psalms 32:3

32:3 When I refused to confess my sin, ⁶ 

my whole body wasted away, ⁷ 

while I groaned in pain all day long.

Psalms 38:8

38:8 I am numb with pain and severely battered; ⁸ 

I groan loudly because of the anxiety I feel. ⁹ 

Isaiah 59:11

59:11 We all growl like bears,

we coo mournfully like doves;

we wait for deliverance, ¹⁰  but there is none,

for salvation, but it is far from us.

Lamentations 3:8

3:8 Also, when I cry out desperately ¹¹  for help, ¹² 

he has shut out my prayer. ¹³ 

[22:1]  ¹ sn Psalm 22. The psalmist cries out to the Lord for deliverance from his dangerous enemies, who have surrounded him and threaten his life. Confident that the Lord will intervene, he then vows to thank the Lord publicly for his help and anticipates a time when all people will recognize the Lord’s greatness and worship him.

[22:1]  ² tn Heb “according to the doe of the dawn.” Apparently this refers to a particular musical tune or style.

[22:1]  ³ sn From the psalmist’s perspective it seems that God has abandoned him, for he fails to answer his cry for help (vv. 1b-2).

[22:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “far from my deliverance [are] the words of my groaning.” The Hebrew noun שְׁאָגָה (shÿ’agah) and its related verb שָׁאַג (sha’ag) are sometimes used of a lion’s roar, but they can also describe human groaning (see Job 3:24 and Pss 32:3 and 38:8.

[22:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “there is no silence to me.”

[32:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “when I was silent.”

[32:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “my bones became brittle.” The psalmist pictures himself as aging and growing physically weak. Trying to cover up his sin brought severe physical consequences.

[38:8]  ⁸ tn Heb “I am numb and crushed to excess.”

[38:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “I roar because of the moaning of my heart.”

[59:11]  ¹⁰ tn See the note at v. 9.

[3:8]  ¹¹ tn Heb “I call and I cry out.” The verbs אֶזְעַק וַאֲשַׁוֵּעַ (’ez’aq va’asha’vvea’, “I call and I cry out”) form a verbal hendiadys: the second retains its full verbal sense, while the first functions adverbially: “I cry out desperately.”

[3:8]  ¹² tn The verb שׁוע (“to cry out”) usually refers to calling out to God for help or deliverance from a lamentable plight (e.g., Job 30:20; 36:13; 38:41; Pss 5:3; 18:7, 42; 22:25; 28:2; 30:3; 31:23; 88:14; 119:147; Isa 58:9; Lam 3:8; Jon 2:3; Hab 1:2).

[3:8]  ¹³ tn The verb שָׂתַם (satam) is a hapax legomenon (term that appears in the Hebrew scriptures only once) that means “to stop up” or “shut out.” It functions as an idiom here, meaning “he has shut his ears to my prayer” (BDB 979 s.v.).