Daniel Lee
Biblical intertextuality, the ancient version of a hyperlink between two passages in Scripture, has been a deep and abiding fascination of mine for the last few years. As such, I have worked to study its intricacies and functions within the biblical canon and to learn how this functioning can and should affect our reading of Scripture.
In the following few articles, I seek to demonstrate these findings using a test case, that of Psalm 22 and the Gospel according to Matthew’s account of the crucifixion. Few examples of biblical intertextuality are as widely recognized or as highly fraught with theological, historical, and even political relevance. In this first installment, I present an analysis of Psalm 22, allowing it to establish our understanding of its own words. In a following article, I will examine the way the Matthean crucifixion narrative quotes, alludes to, echoes, and thematically replicates the content of this psalm in its presentation of the crucifixion of Christ. In the third and final piece, I will present some thoughts on the proper way to understand biblical intertextuality.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps 22:1). Psalm 22’s opening words are full of emotion, pain, and relational weight. They express the deep despair to which the psalm gives voice and contrast so wonderfully with its abrupt closing words celebrating that God “did it” (v. 31). God accomplished what the psalmist hoped for, despite all appearances to the contrary. Through waves of deep emotional turmoil, potential trust, bitterness, anguish, and plea, this psalm carries its readers from the midst of enemies into the faithful congregation, celebrating the deliverance of the psalmist. Psalm 22 fully expresses the depths of human emotion, pain, and feelings of abandonment by one who suffers deeply while in the midst of community.
Prayer for Help (vv. 1–18)
Alternating Complaints and Remembrances (vv. 1–10)
In the opening line of the psalm, the psalmist dives deep into the despair that will occupy the majority of this passage. Without wasting any time, the psalmist employs the first, second, and third person to “describe how I feel, what they have done, and what you (God) have done or not done,”1 and it is this last point that is the most agonizing. The opening call raises a question to God. This is an accusatory question that simultaneously can be viewed as an expression of faith—identifying personally with God while also expectantly requesting God’s action and a justification for current inaction. God is still the psalmist’s God despite the circumstances, but the circumstances are indeed brutal.
In the psalms, the phrase “my God” is typically an expression of trust or confidence in the deliverance of God oriented toward praise,2 so the statements “my God, my God” and the concept of abandonment do not fit easily together in close juxtaposition.3 The repetition of the appeal to God is fraught with deep emotion,4 and the rhetorical question why? expresses the intense feeling of alienation from God while simultaneously being less about desiring explanation and more about requesting or demanding action from God.3
The groaning—or, more literally, “roaring”—of the psalmist is not a weak groan or whine but “the raspy scream of one in deep distress.”5 All of this reflects the fact that the psalmist is not talking about the illusion of abandonment by God, but real abandonment rooted in the lack of God’s action on behalf of the psalmist.6 This can be seen clearly in the double entendre of verse 2. In the Hebrew, the closing phrase of verse 2 literally reads, “no stillness for me,” communicating with double meaning that the psalmist can neither rest (because the pain is ever present) nor stop crying out (because God has not intervened). The psalmist is not experiencing any stillness, and so the psalmist will not be still.7
At the opening of the third verse, the psalmist turns to the remembrance of historical deliverance. This flow of words seems out of place in the context of the psalm’s opening, both in content and in form. The form of this remembrance lacks the parallelism and rhythmic language characteristic of the first two lines,8 and at first glance it seems to express a level of trust in tension with the opening words.
It seems most natural to read these lines as an expression of bitter remembering on the part of the psalmist. In these words, “God’s lofty position compounds the distance from the one crying out. God is sitting or enthroned on Israel’s praises. Does that mean there is no room for cries of abandonment? Or is this a title of honor offered as a sincere act of praise?”9 As the psalm stands, these questions are left open-ended. It is true that these words would normally—in a psalm of praise, for example—seem to express great honor, trust, and glory to God, remembering God’s mighty acts. However, in the context of Psalm 22 these words of remembrance and praise can be read as filled with bitterness and accusation. They express the sentiment that, if God is and was so great, why is the psalmist still in this situation?
If the psalm is sung or recited multiple times in quick succession, then these verses may begin to strike as more legitimately hopeful in light of the ending of the psalm. But in the initial reading, these words come across as bitter reminders of God’s ability to save while God yet sits in the midst of the psalmist’s suffering. Reading this psalm back-to-back, however, may dynamically change the way one views the words of certain sections of the psalm. After all, “crying out in pain and expressing trust are not incompatible.”10
A more elusive part of this historical remembrance is the little acknowledged fact that the Hebrew vocabulary of this section subtly hints at the exodus narrative of deliverance.11 The psalmist alludes to the exodus narrative by using verbs significant to that narrative. The appeal is for God to rescue like he did in the exodus. It may look like the psalmist is ignoring the fact that the ancestors of the exodus narrative were under oppression for 400 years, much longer than the psalmist. They also had to wait in expectation on God to rescue them, just like the psalmist is currently having to wait. On the other hand, the lengthy time of oppression in the exodus story may actually parallel the lengthy sections of the psalm that detail the psalmist’s painful experience, further solidifying thematic connections and paralleling the psalmist’s circumstances with that of the Israelite ancestors. “The past deliverance [of the exodus] was as real as the present abandonment.”12 The delayed deliverance in both cases may be implied through these allusions. These references may be the psalmist’s way of begging God to remember oppression sooner rather than later, highlighting a simultaneous contrast and congruence between how God has treated the community historically and how God is treating the psalmist in the context of the psalm.
As the psalm moves forward, things take a sharp turn. Previously, the psalmist has identified himself with a community of the past, while in verses 6–8 his current community spurns him.13 This is the first of many times we see the separation of the psalmist from the current community, and it is in stark contrast to the deliverance given to the community of the past. The current community taunts the psalmist, and “what [God] did for the ancestors is exactly what the suppliant and the mockers agree [God] needs to do now,”14 though in markedly different ways. The psalmist knows his own innocence, but those surrounding the psalmist insist that God’s distance proves the psalmist’s guilt and God’s scorn.
After we hear the voice of the mockers, we return to the psalmist’s reflection on what God has done in the past, but now it moves from divine deliverance of corporate Israel to what God has done in the past for the psalmist personally.14 And yet this, too, may be a reference to the exodus narrative.
The theme of birthing and nurturing are front and center in this section of Psalm 22. The climactic resolution to the first major section of the book of Exodus is the crossing of the Red Sea, and the rabbis viewed this crossing as a symbolic new birth paralleling the actions of the midwives at the beginning of Exodus.15
This same idea is present in the psalm. “As a baby the suppliant did not merely leave the womb but burst out of it,” as God “acted as midwife, first pulling the child out, then immediately setting it at its mother’s breast with the instinctive trusting expectancy of finding milk there.”14 In the narrative of the exodus, the Israelites burst forth from the Red Sea singing and dancing and are then brought into the wilderness, tested in their trust of God’s provision of water to drink (Exod 15:22–27). Both the themes of trust and exodus are again present in this section of the psalm, still subtly, and in great tension with the distress of the psalmist’s current lived situation.
Description of Enemies and Distress (vv. 11–18)
The psalmist issues a second cry for help, continuing several of the themes already established in the psalm’s opening. The motif of the psalmist’s distance from God conjoined with isolation from a positively oriented community return in verse 11 in a striking far-near polarity,16 which characterizes much of the psalm. This polarity taps into cultic imagery typical of Leviticus,17 in which distance from God and distance from the community are presented as exilic condemnation. The plea of the psalmist is for God to be an עוֹזֵר—that is, a helper18—when no help is present from the community. The psalmist has been exiled both from God’s presence and from right standing with neighbors, despite personal righteousness. This is the defining feature of the harm the psalmist is enduring. The tension of desiring to live in God’s presence but being in a lowly state separated from community is the root of the tension in the psalm’s opening and continues to its resolution.
The enemies become ever more present and bestial, and help seems ever more distant. This bestial imagery alludes to the power and strength the enemies wield over the psalmist—not to be the help called for but to contribute to the psalmist’s downfall.19 It is easy to find these descriptions of human enemies as animalistic predators to be dehumanizing, and this can be a cause for ethical concerns. However,
Such animalistic descriptions should not be understood as attempting to dehumanize the enemy or diminish their responsibility for their actions. The imprecatory psalms can hardly be accused of failing to hold enemies accountable for their misuse of moral agency! The carnivorous comparisons rather stretch language to capture the inhumanity and inhumaneness of very human beings [toward other human beings.]20
These enemies seem to take pleasure in the slow and painful downfall of the psalmist, which they are at least participating in, if not actively instigating. They view themselves as inflicting this pain upon the psalmist righteously. The lack of God’s deliverance is proof that they are on the side of God and that the psalmist is indeed deserving of punishment. Just as the psalmist is roaring to God out of pain and desperation for a helper, so too are the enemies roaring over the psalmist in unjust and carnivorous triumph.21 The mouths of these enemies are open, ready to accuse and consume.22 The mouth has become a weapon for destruction, and yet it is the only resource the psalmist has to make a petition to God.
As these enemies roar, the psalmist begins to describe the all-too-real physicality of fear, “the way fear impacts not just the brain but the whole self.”19 The natural order of the body—bones as an image of strength and solidity and vigor,23 the mouth as wet and fluid—is starkly subverted. With bones displaced and fluid and mouth dry and stiff, nothing is as it should be in the psalmist’s body. The double meaning of the tongue sticking to the roof of the mouth can represent the state of extreme thirst—maybe a thirst for justice in addition to a literal thirst for water—but it can also represent the inability to speak, unlike those who mock the psalmist and open their mouths like lions. As the psalm progresses, God becomes, at least in part, an enemy as well, the one laying the psalmist in the dust, the opposite of the hoped-for help.24 “The psalm began with God distressingly absent and inactive; worse, it continues with God distressingly active in a death-bringing way.”25 By not delivering the psalmist, God has given a death sentence and thus is the one placing the psalmist in the grave.26
The imagery of dogs marks the transition to another section of bestial imagery. The psalmist is not even worthy enough to be food for bulls or lions anymore, for the reference to dogs implies lowly and disgusting scavenger animals.25 The psalmist is as good as dead, “for the ‘dogs’ would not come around otherwise,”27 and will be consumed by the unclean scavengers on the outskirts of the village. These dogs run in a pack, they are an assembly of evil ones: “The word [assembly] is significant here because it names the evil ones, not as distant, but as ones that share a cultic community.”28 The cultic community of the psalmist has turned on him, salivating over his unclean corpse, ready to devour. This current cultic assembly creates a stark contrast to the righteous congregation to which the psalmist is restored later in the psalm, but for now, this cultic pack of dogs goes so far as to take away the psalmist’s last possession—his clothing. They divide up the last of the psalmist’s property because the psalmist is as good as dead,29 not even waiting for the psalmist to actually die in order to profit from the downfall.
Transition Section (vv. 19–22)
In verse 19, the psalmist begins to issue another plea to God for help. We return yet again to the motifs of distance or nearness and the presence, or lack thereof, of a helper. The plea is expressed vaguely and not concretely, and a strong contrast is formed between the “but you” of God and the scavenging “they” of the oppressors.30 God is further distinguished from the enemies by the use of the term “my strength” (KJV, NIV, CSB).31 “My strength puns with the Heb[rew] word ‘ram,’ continuing the animal images”32 and starkly contrasting with the animal imagery of the scavenging dogs from earlier. The enemies are unclean beasts, while God is the cultically clean sacrificial ram, strengthening and coming to the rescue.
The opening of this section is the first time the psalmist addresses God with the tetragrammaton, YHWH. Previously this name was only spoken by the antagonists, implying the relational closeness of the respective groups, an implication the psalmist no longer feels is justifiable. YHWH is the psalmist’s God, too, not just the God of the enemies. The verb “deliver” in verse 20 is taken directly from the mouth of the enemies in verse 8.33 Much like Job, the psalmist continues to stake a claim against the broader community’s wishes that he is justified in the complaint and properly oriented toward God in calling for deliverance.30
This claim protests the abuses suffered and petitions for God to intervene. The progression of the petition starts with deliverance from a sword, implying human action, then continues to bestial imagery introduced previously in the psalm, but now in reverse order of occurrence: first that of dogs, then lions, and finally ox, similar to the bulls that initiated the animalistic imagery.34 This reverse order seems to undo the threats of the past and ends with the tense switch from the imperative verbs that call for God to deliver the psalmist to a Qal perfect verb that suggests the psalmist has already been delivered by the time the last line of verse 21 is uttered.9 The abrupt contrast is confusing to read—jarring and unexpected—but seems to reflect the unexpected deliverance the psalmist experiences. It is as though all the previous enemies are falling away as the psalmist makes this cry, and he does not even realize it until the last enemy is gone.
Upon this realization, exuberant shouts resound and will not stop until the psalm ends. This transition is almost too quick for readers to grasp, as the psalmist is ushered out of the assembly of the enemies and into the congregation of the righteous worshiping community.35 Though it is possible that the congregation here is the same as the assembly of enemies before, reflecting a healing of community, the term switch in the Hebrew seems to imply otherwise (from עדה as the assembly to קהל as the congregation). In addition to the term switch, the congregation is labeled and described differently from the prior assembly of dogs. That earlier wicked assembly, who insisted that God would save the psalmist if the psalmist were indeed just, was ironically proved right in that respect—but wrong in their assertion about the psalmist’s lack of righteousness.
Hymn of Thanksgiving (vv. 23–31)
Though the final section of Psalm 22 may feel like a song of thanksgiving, its word selection is more closely associated with a hymn of praise, making this section feel a little out of place.33 It blends these two psalmic genres to meet this new situation in which the psalmist finds himself. The psalmist’s relationship with the broader community and with God is restored and he has been delivered, and that is a reason to praise and give thanks. Though some scholars doubt the reality of this deliverance, the switch in language and tone indicates that the psalmist has already been delivered concretely, and now he praises God in the midst of the congregation. Verse 24 “makes clear that the promise (v. 22) and the summons (v. 23) do actually relate to the particularity of what [God] has done for the suppliant.”36 God does not despise like others have despised.36 “These expressions are used because for a while it seemed that God has despised him and his affliction.”37 The deliverance of the psalmist from injustice and the restoration of the psalmist to the cultic community is complete.38
With this completion comes a reversal of the break between the psalmist and the community and a reorientation of all towards God.39 Now, all the earth turns toward God, not just the psalmist or the cultic community. “The psalm could have easily ended at v. 26 with the life of the afflicted one restored. The remaining verses remind us that even God’s act to the afflicted one has world-wide impact.”35 God’s justice towards the psalmist becomes the catalyst for the nations coming to worship. This section first crosses ethnic boundaries, as the Israelite and the Gentile worship God together, and then crosses social boundaries, as the rich and the poor worship God.40
Lastly, the psalmist’s deliverance will result in offspring, or future generations, that will continue to remember the deliverance of God. The chain of proclamation will go beyond the individual, the community, the nations, and the social classes, extending to everyone in the generations to come.41 The last line of the psalm ends abruptly,42 declaring the ultimate reversal of the opening line. The psalmist went from forsaken by God to the one for whom God “did it.”
Conclusion
As much as I have actively tried to shy away from Christologically reading this psalm, at the conclusion of this analysis it should be no surprise that Christological themes are present and embedded in the psalm itself. Thus, it is not shocking that early Christian communities recognized this psalm as in some way pointing toward Jesus and the crucifixion. Themes of undeserved suffering, isolation, injustice against the righteous at the hands of the community, the transformation of the nations’ relationship to God, and God’s own sacrificial identity all lay on the very surface of Psalm 22. They make this text ripe for intertextual interpretation in conversation with the Gospels’ accounts of the passion—a topic to be taken up in the next installment.
Daniel Lee is the Program Manager at Samford University’s Center for Worship and the Arts and holds a Master of Divinity from Wake Forest School of Divinity, where he concentrated in biblical studies and church history. A former youth pastor, Daniel is an aspiring Bible scholar hoping to contribute to the study of Scripture to bridge the gap between scholarship and religious practice.
Image: Psalm 22, St. Albans Psalter
- John Goldingay, Psalms (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 324.[↩]
- Pss 89:26; 18:2; 118:28; 68:24; 63:1; 140:6.[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 325.[↩][↩]
- Allen Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2011), 531.[↩]
- Beth Tanner, Nancy deClaisse-Walford, and Rolf Jacobson, The Book of Psalms (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2014), 193–94.[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 326.[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 327.[↩]
- Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019), 66.[↩]
- Tanner, deClaisse-Walford, and Jacobson, The Book of Psalms, 193.[↩][↩]
- Tanner, deClaisse-Walford, and Jacobson, The Book of Psalms, 194.[↩]
- Natsal in the hiphil, v. 8(HT 9); cf. Exod 3:8; 18:8–10. Batach, v. 4(5); cf. Exod 4:31; 14:31. Palat in v. 4(5) parallels yasa in Exod 14:30. Za’aq, v. 5(6); cf. Exod 2:23. See Goldingay, Psalms, 328–30. Goldingay further notes, “The reminder that YHWH is the holy one is a reminder that YHWH is the powerful, transcendent, divine God. It underlines the fact that YHWH has the power to deliver the suppliant but is not doing so” (328). The reference to God as holy may recall the Song of Moses in Exodus 15:11. Cf. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 1290.[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 327.[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 329.[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 330.[↩][↩][↩]
- This motif has been picked up by, e.g., Orit Avnery, “Pesach Is Literally the Story of a People’s Birth” Shalom Hartman Institute, March 28, 2019, https://www.hartman.org.il/pesach-is-literally-the-story-of-a-peoples-birth/; Rachel Marie Stone, “Delivered through the Waters,” The Christian Century, May 24, 2018, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/first-person/delivered-through-waters; Dov Lerea, “The Birthing of the Jewish People,” The Times of Israel, April 1, 2021, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-birthing-of-the-jewish-people/.[↩]
- Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 67.[↩]
- L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? (Downer Grove, IL: Apollos, 2015), 42.[↩]
- Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, 538 describes the term as “meaning one who can do for the person what that person cannot do for himself.”[↩]
- Tanner, deClaisse-Walford, and Jacobson, The Book of Psalms, 195.[↩][↩]
- Trevor Laurence, Cursing with God: The Imprecatory Psalms and the Ethics of Christian Prayer (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2022), 127.[↩]
- Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, 538.[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 331.[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 332.[↩]
- Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, 539 observes that the progressive imperfect tense “stresses that God was now doing this.”[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 333.[↩][↩]
- Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, 539.[↩]
- Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, 540.[↩]
- Tanner, deClaisse-Walford, and Jacobson, The Book of Psalms, 195.[↩]
- Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, 541.[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 334.[↩][↩]
- Some English translations opt to render this phrase as “my help.”[↩]
- Berlin and Brettler, The Jewish Study Bible, 1291.[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 335.[↩][↩]
- Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, 542.[↩]
- Tanner, deClaisse-Walford, and Jacobson, The Book of Psalms, 196.[↩][↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 336.[↩][↩]
- Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, 544.[↩]
- Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, 545: “The praise was to be delivered along with a peace offering (Lev. 7), a sacrifice that would actually become a communal meal. While the animal was roasting on the altar, the one who brought it would stand beside the altar and tell people what God has done. Then all the people would eat together.” This reflects a total reversal of the heart’s disposition from earlier.[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 337.[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 339.[↩]
- Goldingay, Psalms, 340.[↩]
- Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 70.[↩]