Week #2: "My God, My God": Jesus and Psalm 22

Blog Series Intention Recap

Why Prophecy Matters: Promise, Fulfillment, Hope

Bible prophecy often gets treated like a puzzle for decoding the news. This four-week Theology Thursday series steps back to ask why prophecy matters at all. We'll look at what prophecy is, how Psalm 22 pointed to the cross centuries ahead of time, what Christians mean by prophecy today, and how to read the promises God hasn't fulfilled yet.

Along the way, we'll keep seeing that the God who spoke through the prophets keeps His word, and that He kept it most clearly in Yeshua (Jesus).

Because God has faithfully fulfilled His Word in the past, we can trust what He has promised about the future.

This page is a post in the series “Why Prophecy Matters: Promise. Fulfillment. Hope.” Click here to see the rest of the posts.

Let’s jump into Week #2:

"My God, My God"...

At noon on the day Yeshua was crucified, darkness came over the land. It lasted three hours. Then, near the end, He spoke:

"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?' that is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" (Matthew 27:46, ESV)

Some of the people standing nearby misunderstood Him and thought He was calling for Elijah. Many readers today misunderstand Him differently. They hear only despair, as if Yeshua had lost His grip on God at the very end.

The people who knew their Scriptures would have recognized something else. Those are the opening words of Psalm 22, a psalm David wrote about a thousand years earlier.

Why it Matters:

• Yeshua's cry from the cross quotes the first line of Psalm 22, and the parallels with the crucifixion continue well beyond that line.

• David wrote the psalm out of his own suffering, but its words reach far beyond anything we know of David's life.

• The Gospels record the mocking, the shaking heads, the taunt about trusting God, the thirst, and the divided garments, all described in Psalm 22.

• The psalm turns at verse 21 from suffering to rescue, and it ends with worship spreading to Israel, the nations, and generations yet unborn.

• Yeshua's cry was real anguish, and it was also an act of trust. He still called God "my God."

• The cross was part of God's plan, announced long before Calvary.

Go Deeper:

When Yeshua cried out from the cross, He was quoting Scripture. His words send every reader back to a psalm that had described His suffering in remarkable detail long before it happened.

Psalm 22 also keeps going after the suffering. It moves from abandonment to rescue, and from one man's lament to worship among Israel and the nations. If we stop at the first line, we miss where the psalm is heading. We also miss one of Scripture's clearest demonstrations that the cross was part of God's plan from the beginning.

David's Psalm

Psalm 22 carries David's name in its heading. It reads like the prayer of a man at the end of his strength, surrounded by enemies and unable to sense God's help.

The New Testament also calls David a prophet. On the day of Pentecost, Peter explained that David was speaking about the Messiah:

"Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ" (Acts 2:30–31, ESV)

Peter was talking about a different psalm, but the principle helps us here. David wrote out of real experiences in his own life. Yet Psalm 22 reaches further than anything we know of David's life, and the New Testament reads it as a description of the suffering and victory of David's greater Son.

Mocked and Surrounded

After the opening cry, David describes public humiliation:

"But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; 'He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!'" (Psalm 22:6–8, ESV)

Now read Matthew's account of the crowd at the cross:

"And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads" (Matthew 27:39, ESV)

The chief priests, scribes, and elders joined in. Among their taunts was this one:

"He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him." (Matthew 27:43, ESV)

These were men who knew the Psalms well. They mocked Yeshua in words that closely echo Psalm 22:8, apparently without realizing they were fulfilling the psalm as they spoke.

Poured Out Like Water

David then describes his suffering in physical terms:

"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; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death." (Psalm 22:14–15, ESV)

David uses vivid physical language for his suffering: he is poured out like water, his strength is gone, his heart melts, and his mouth is dry. Against that background, John's record of Yeshua saying "I thirst" is especially striking (John 19:28, ESV). John connects that moment with the fulfillment of Scripture, although he does not name Psalm 22 specifically.

The next verse reads, "they have pierced my hands and feet" (Psalm 22:16, ESV). The Hebrew text of verse 16 has a well-known textual difficulty, reflected in the ESV footnote. For that reason, we shouldn't make the entire case for Psalm 22, and the crucifixion, depend on this one line. The surrounding parallels are already substantial.

Garments and Lots

Then comes one of the most specific details in the psalm:

"they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots." (Psalm 22:18, ESV)

All four Gospels mention the soldiers dividing Yeshua's clothes. John gives the fullest account. The soldiers split His garments four ways, but His tunic was seamless, so they didn't tear it and instead gambled for it. John then quotes the psalm directly: the soldiers did this "to fulfill the Scripture" (John 19:24, ESV).

Roman soldiers had no interest in fulfilling Hebrew psalms. They were dividing a dead man's belongings. God had already written what they would do.

The Turn at Verse 21

If Psalm 22 ended at verse 18, it would be one of the darkest passages in the Bible. It doesn't end there.

The sufferer keeps praying: "But you, O LORD, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid!" (Psalm 22:19, ESV). Then, in the middle of verse 21, the psalm turns:

"Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!" (Psalm 22:21, ESV)

The prayer has been answered. And from this point on, the psalm sounds completely different:

"I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you: You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!" (Psalm 22:22–23, ESV)

The man surrounded by mockers now stands among his brothers, leading worship. The book of Hebrews puts verse 22 in Yeshua's own mouth, after His suffering, as He calls those He has saved His brothers (Hebrews 2:11–12).

Then the psalm explains what happened:

"For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him." (Psalm 22:24, ESV)

The same psalm that begins with "why have you forsaken me?" declares that God heard the cry. This author also thinks this proves the Father did not turn his face away from Yeshua.

From One Man to the Ends of the Earth

The final verses widen far beyond one sufferer. Worship begins in Israel, and it doesn't stop there:

"All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations." (Psalm 22:27–28, ESV)

God promised Abraham that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him. Psalm 22 shows that promise reaching the nations through the suffering and rescue of this one Person. It also points ahead to the day when all will see God's rule over the nations.

The psalm closes by looking down the generations:

"Posterity shall serve him; it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation; they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it." (Psalm 22:30–31, ESV)

The psalm ends, "he has done it." We shouldn't treat that as a direct prediction of Yeshua's "It is finished" (John 19:30, ESV), but the similarity is fitting: Psalm 22 ends with God's work accomplished and proclaimed to generations still to come.

What Was Yeshua Saying?

So what did Yeshua want us to hear when He cried out the opening words of Psalm 22?

First, the anguish was real. We shouldn't soften the cry into a Bible quotation Yeshua recited calmly. On the cross, He bore our sin and endured the judgment our sin deserved. Paul writes, "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21, ESV). We should let Yeshua's cry carry its full weight without trying to explain more than Scripture tells us.

Second, the cry was an act of trust. Even in the darkness, Yeshua said, "My God." Psalm 22 is the prayer of someone who keeps talking to God when God feels far away. His last words from the cross, as Luke records them, were a prayer of confidence: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!" (Luke 23:46, ESV).

Third, His words direct us to Psalm 22. Whether everyone standing at the cross recognized the connection or not, Matthew's readers can hardly miss it. Once we turn to the psalm, the parallels continue far beyond its opening line, to a sufferer who is heard, rescued, and surrounded by worship.

How Does This Help Me Understand Psalm 22?

Psalm 22 is David's lament, and the New Testament shows it to be God's prophetic word about the suffering and victory of the Messiah. Its lament anticipated the crucifixion a thousand years ahead of time, down to the taunts of the crowd and the soldiers casting lots. Its second half announced what the cross would lead to: a rescued Sufferer, a people gathered as His brothers, and worship spreading to the ends of the earth.

That means the cross was part of God's plan all along. Scripture pointed to the suffering and victory of the Messiah long before Calvary.

And it brings us back to the big idea of this series: Because God has faithfully fulfilled His Word in the past, we can trust what He has promised about the future. Many of the details in Psalm 22's opening lament found striking fulfillment in a single afternoon outside Jerusalem. Its closing vision continues outward, as people from the nations turn to the Lord, while pointing toward the day when His kingship over the nations will be fully displayed.

Trusting God in the Dark

Read Psalm 22 all the way through. Read it slowly this week, alongside Matthew 27 and John 19. Notice how the Gospel writers draw on it, and then keep reading past verse 21 into the worship at the end.

Bring your laments to God. Psalm 22 gives us permission to be honest with God when He feels far away. Yeshua prayed this psalm in His darkest hour. When you pray in the dark, you can still say "my God," and He still hears (Psalm 22:24).

Let the cross settle your questions about God's plan. The worst thing that ever happened, the crucifixion of the sinless Son of God, was written into God's plan a thousand years ahead of time and turned into the means of our salvation. If God was accomplishing His purpose even at Calvary, then darkness is not evidence that His purposes have failed.

Join the worship Psalm 22 promised. If you belong to Yeshua, you are part of the answer to verse 27, one of the families of the nations who have turned to the Lord. And don't miss the psalm's movement: it calls the offspring of Jacob and Israel to worship, then widens its vision to all the families of the nations. God's plan for the nations does not require us to erase Israel from the story.