Psalm 22 (KJV) - Bible Truth Library

• All through the life of Christ, He never calls God God. We never find Him do so in the gospels until the cross. It would not have been walking in the power of the relationship which was always unhindered. When on the cross, which was expiation, He does not say, “Father,” until all being over, He was commending His spirit to Him, but “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). All that was against us was there coming out against Him. The favor of God was hidden from Him. (“Psalm 69” by J.N. Darby)

• The word He uses with, and of God, is ever {in the gospels}, Father, and My Father; with His disciples, Son of man. In the psalm we are studying, we read, My God, My God. He is man with whom God deals in judgment, but man, even if forsaken, perfect in his own relationship with God in faith: He says, My God. (“Practical Reflections on the Psalms: Psalms 22-24” by J.N. Darby)

• First, His trust is perfect. He says not Jehovah; for the relationship was not then in exercise as it was with His Father in Gethsemane; but He says, “My God, my God.” Whatever the dreadful forsaking was, His perfect faith in God and devotedness to God, as the only one He owned, remains absolute and unshaken. He is perfect, absolutely perfect, as man, subjectively. (“Practical Reflections on the Psalms: Psalms 22-24” by J.N. Darby)

• The blessed Savior, He who had been cast upon Jehovah from the womb, whose hope Jehovah had been from His mother's breast, who had sought His will and glorified His name, had to declare before all, and in presence of the taunts and mockery of His adversaries, that God had forsaken Him. How deep this trial was morally, none but He could tell who passed through it. It was in the proportion of the love He enjoyed and lived in, and His faithfulness to it. We speak of trial and piety, not of expiation here. In all this, and through all this, the blessed Savior is perfect towards Jehovah. (“Practical Reflections on the Psalms: Psalms 22-24” by J.N. Darby)

• But it is of the last importance for us, not only to know that Christ has, by Himself, purged our sins, having drank the cup of wrath, but to know Christ as suffering personally under this forsaking of God—His own entrance as man into the sense, as regards Himself, of this forsaking—His own personal sorrow in it; because, though He were wholly alone in it, it leads us to that joy which He felt in entering, again and more than ever, into the full, unclouded light of His Father's countenance—consequent on, and according to, the value of redemption, and the full resting of the necessary delight of God in Him, and His acceptance, as having perfectly glorified Him, when sin had put all in confusion. (“Practical Reflections on the Psalms: Psalms 22-24” by J.N. Darby)

J. N. Darby Translation

To the chief Musician. Upon Aijeleth-Shaharb. A Psalm of David. My *God, my *God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou far from my salvation, from the words of my groaning?

JND Translation Notes

That is, "According to the hind of the morning." Aijeleth is feminine.