Psalms 2: God's Covenant and Jesus

With Easter fast approaching, this week's post will explore Psalm 22 as a source text for the gospels, particularly Jesus' Passion. Psalm 22 was not originally written with this intention; the themes and words or the text were adapted by later authors in order to build a story with historical resonances. The original purpose of Psalm 22 was as a spiritual text to describe an encounter with God. For more on the genres of Psalms, see last week's post: Psalms 1: Parallelism and Mixed Metaphors.

Psalm 22 is actually comprised of two parts: a prayer for divine aid (lament) in verses 1-21a, and a song of thanksgiving in verses 22-31. The psalm hinges on verse 21b, in which the Lord responds to the petitioner's lament:

^21a Save me from the mouth of the lion!
^21b From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.
²² I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters.

The transition in the psalm is abrupt, shifting the entire viewpoint of the poem in a mere verse. The rapid progression that can be seen above shows the two most important topics in the poem - petition and deliverance - as hinging on the action they both refer to - deliverance.

The opening words of the psalm, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" are among the most famous recorded in the bible, whether in Hebrew or Christian scriptures. These are similar to the words of Job, who questioned God's sense of justice as well as God's involvement (or lack thereof) in human affairs:

I cry to you and you do not answer me;
I stand, and you merely look at me.

In fact, the God of Job actually acts against his people, in contrast to the God of Psalms. Says Job:

You have turned cruel to me;
with the might of your hand you persecute me.
(Job 30.21-21)

These words reflect an understanding of the covenantal relationship between God and Israel: obedience to God's law results in protection for God's people. But as was revealed in Job, protection does not necessarily work out by a method or timescale that humans are able to understand. Humans like Job and the psalmist wonder why they are still oppressed, even when they perceive they have upheld their end of the covenantal relationship with God.

The covenantal framework through which the Israelites perceive justice is informed by historical events. Whether thee events are scientifically historical, historicized fiction, or fictionalized history does not matter, as all of these function within the understanding of truth of the biblical authors. Indeed, the psalmist may have been reading these events as literal, not understanding the other modes of truth at all. In any case, what we know to be true from the psalmist's perspective is that God historically upheld the terms of the covenant:

In you our ancestors trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried, and were saved;
in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.
(Psalms 22.45)

What now? asks the psalmist. Why do we no longer seem to be protected? This question is answered, however inadequately, in the thanksgiving portion of the psalm, which will be discussed later. First we turn to the nature of the torment that the psalmist suffers.

Anyone who reads both the gospels and Psalms will be able to identify the huge influence of Psalm 22 on the tale of Christ's crucifixion. Mark, the first gospel to be written, has Jesus utter before his death, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani." (Mark 15.34) This is in Aramaic, the language Jesus would have spoken. Matthew, the second gospel to be written, has Jesus utter a similar phrase in Hebrew, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani." (Matthew 27.46) [In another Psalms connection, Luke has Jesus say, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit," which appears in Psalm 31.5. (Luke 23.46)] Mark's and Matthew's phrases both translate to the first line of Psalm 22. The words suit the tone of those gospel stories well.

Another closely-related connection: In Mark and Matthew, God works signs to indicate that in fact Jesus was the son of God. Likewise, God reveals in the latter part of Psalm 22 that in fact he is present, and that the psalmist has not been abandoned after all. Actually, this should be stated in reverse. The idea of God revealing himself was taken up by the psalmist long before the gospel writers.

A more obvious example of Psalm 22's influence on the gospels is the scorn and mocking suffered by the psalmist:

All who see me mock at me;
they make mouths at me, they shake their heads;
"Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver -
let him rescue the one in whom he delights!"
(Psalms 22.7-8)

This theme appears throughout the four accounts of Jesus' passion, particularly in Matthew, who has the bandit taunt Jesus:

"He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, 'I am God's son.'"
(Matthew 27.43)

The psalmist, like Jesus, is thirsty, and downtrodden. His enemies take his property, a scene which John reads literally (John 19.24):

They divide my clothes among themselves,
and for my clothing they cast lots.
(Psalms 22.18)

But Psalm 22 was not written to describe Jesus' crucifixion; it was merely adapted much later for this purpose. The psalmist simply describes how he or people like him are oppressed, tormented verbally, and abused physically and/or psychologically. Unlike the story of Jesus, Psalm 22 has the protagonist delivered immediately.

The deliverance in in the manner of Job, and therefore may seem unsatisfying to modern readers. It happens in one verse, without explanation. For the psalmist, it would have needed no explanation. God's protection operates like a light switch: on or off. There is no dimmer by which he might dispense partial favor. Likewise, the psalmist operates on the light switch model of accepting God's protection. The change from cry of help to promise of praise is immediate. There is no doubt or hesitancy on the part of the psalmist - and why should there be? The covenantal model has demonstrated its effectiveness yet again!

When the psalmist discovers that Israel is under God's protection after all,  he promises to spread God's praise:

I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters;
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.
(Psalms 22.22)

All questions of God's devotion are furthermore forgotten:

For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted;
he did not hide his face from me,
but heard when I cried to him.
(Psalms 22.24)

The "forsaken" part is forgotten, its ejection left unexplained. This contributes to the sense we derived from Job that God's protection is constant; humans are simply unable to express it.

God's love, the psalmist declares, is universal in location, extensive in chronology. God rules over all nations, and his praises will be sung to generations yet unborn. Whether the first of these is true or not, the second has remained true for thousands of years:

Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord,
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
sying that he has done it.
(Psalms 22.30-31)