Psalms 22
Psalms 22 — Commentary and Meaning
The short answer
Psalm 22 opens with one of the most piercing lines in scripture: "why have you forsaken me?" The speaker is not doubting that God exists—he is protesting that God has gone silent. For the first two-thirds of the psalm, the prayer moves back and forth between agony and memory: enemies circle like bulls and dogs, strength dries up "like a potsherd," and yet the psalmist keeps recalling that God has been faithful before, to the ancestors and to him personally.
One of those memories is startlingly intimate. In verse 9, the psalmist says God drew him "out of the womb" and kept him safe at his mother's breast. God is pictured as a midwife—the one who was there at the very first breath, whose whole work is bringing life through danger. Even in a psalm about feeling abandoned, the speaker's oldest memory of God is of hands committed to life. That image does not erase the anguish; it holds the anguish and the trust together in the same prayer.
Then, at verse 22, everything turns. The psalmist vows, "I will declare your name," and the psalm ends in sweeping praise—the poor eat and are satisfied, the nations turn to God, and even generations not yet born hear the news. The lament does not explain the silence in between; it simply testifies that the silence was not the end.
Christian readers hear this psalm twice. It is first the raw prayer of a single sufferer. It then became the church's primary lens on the cross: Jesus prays its opening line from the crucifixion, and the Gospel passion accounts draw on this psalm more than any other Old Testament text. Read both ways, Psalm 22 moves from abandonment to something like birth—without pretending the dark middle never happened.
What scholars say
Creach answers why this particular psalm became the church's lens on the crucifixion, tracing how heavily the Gospel passion accounts draw on it and why its genre—an individual's prayer for help—fit that story. Claassens then turns to the psalm's own imagery, showing how the picture of God as Midwife offers new language when trauma leaves ordinary speech inadequate, an image that reverses death with a commitment to life.
“P salm 22, perhaps more than any other psalm, serves as a link to the story of Jesus’ passion, the core of the Gospels. Of the thirteen references to the Old Testament in the passion stories, eight come from the book of Psalms, and five of those are from Psalm 22. All three psalms that provide material for the passion (Psalms 22; 31; 69) are laments spoken by an individual (or “prayers for help by an individual”). The Gospel writers seem to have identified this as an appropriate genre for the crucifixion account. The church in turn has read these laments in light of Jesus’ suffering and death.”
“First, the metaphor of God as Midwife in Psalm 22 and Psalm 71 fulfills an important role in the psalmist’s understanding of who God is in times when nothing makes sense. Trauma causes people to experience dissonance, to question their place in the world and their relationship with the Divine. At such times, when the language system proves to be limited or inadequate, it may be necessary to find new kinds of speech. Especially in Psalm 22, we shall see how the metaphor of God as Midwife reverses death and denotes an unflinching commitment to life. As in the images of God as Mourner or Wailing Woman and God as Mother, the image of God as Midwife provides an incentive to broaden and transform our overall understanding of God in the direction of hope and new life.”
What it means for you
Psalm 22 gives you permission to pray honestly. If your prayers have ever felt like they were hitting the ceiling, this psalm says: bring that feeling to God directly, out loud, without cleaning it up first. Protest and trust can live in the same prayer.
It also offers a practice for the silence: remember. The psalmist rehearses what God has done—for past generations, and for him since birth. When God feels absent now, recalling specific moments of faithfulness then is not denial; it is how lament keeps breathing. And the psalm's ending suggests that your worst chapter may one day become your testimony.
Psalms 22 in context
Psalm 22 sits in Book I of the Psalter, a stretch dominated by prayers of David in distress. It follows Psalms 20–21, which celebrate God delivering the king, and comes just before the serene trust of Psalm 23—a striking sequence from abandonment to green pastures. The psalm itself falls into two movements: an extended lament with alternating complaint and remembered trust (verses 1–21), then a sudden pivot to public praise that widens out to the nations and future generations (verses 22–31). The midwife image of verse 9 anchors the first movement's memory of God's care.