My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?
2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
    by night, but I find no rest.

3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
    you are the one Israel praises.
4 In you our ancestors put their trust;
    they trusted and you delivered them.
5 To you they cried out and were saved;
    in you they trusted and were not put to shame. NIVUK

Before we look any further into Psalm 22, I want to make an observation about the balance we find in the psalms (and in Scripture as a whole). Hard on the heels of two psalms which underline the power of prayer, and build faith-filled expectation of answers to prayer, here we find David wrestling with the issue of unanswered prayer. He knows God has answered prayer in the past, but where is he now?

Verses 1-11 read like this in ‘The Message’:

1-2 God, God . . . my God!
    Why did you dump me
    miles from nowhere?
Doubled up with pain, I call to God
    all the day long. No answer. Nothing.
I keep at it all night, tossing and turning.

3-5 And you! Are you indifferent, above it all,
    leaning back on the cushions of Israel’s praise?
We know you were there for our parents:
    they cried for your help and you gave it;
    they trusted and lived a good life.

6-8 And here I am, a nothing—an earthworm,
    something to step on, to squash.
Everyone pokes fun at me;
    they make faces at me, they shake their heads:
“Let’s see how God handles this one;
    since God likes him so much, let him help him!”

9-11 And to think you were midwife at my birth,
    setting me at my mother’s breasts!
When I left the womb you cradled me;
    since the moment of birth you’ve been my God.
Then you moved far away
    and trouble moved in next door.
I need a neighbour.

As we will go on to see, Psalm 22 is wondrously prophetic of Christ on the Cross. Derek Kidner has said ‘No Christian can read this psalm without being vividly confronted with the crucifixion.’ It is not a description of a sickness, but of an execution.

Nevertheless, the first layer of application seems to be something immediate in David’s circumstances. However, ‘If, as may be the case, some personal experience of suffering prompted the psalm, David multiplies it by infinity in order to plumb something of the suffering awaiting his Greater Son. Yet, at the same time, what arose from suffering, and then prophetically explored a unique suffering, can now reach down to our often desperate trials.’ Alec Motyer

I also find these words of Derek Tidball to be helpful. They come from his excellent book, ‘The Message of the Cross’: ‘If anyone fitted the description of a righteous man who struggled with the absence of God as he endured the sufferings others inflicted on him and which led him to his death, it was Jesus. The psalm was certainly written about others, but it was supremely written about him. It is a human composition and a divine inspiration…But it is true that the note of trust remained. The God who had apparently deserted Jesus was still his God. The cry of dereliction was a reaching out to God and a cry for help. It is a cry which, both for the psalmist and for Christ, was eventually answered, if in different ways.’