Psalm Chapter 22

Psalm 22: The Cry from the Furthest Dark

No psalm travels a greater distance than this one. It begins in the most total abandonment any human voice has ever uttered — my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? — and it ends with the news reaching peoples not yet born. Between those two points lies the entire geography of suffering: the mockery, the encircling enemies like bulls and lions, the body poured out like water, bones out of joint, heart melted to wax. The details are so specific, so physically vivid, that readers centuries later would recognize in them a scene they had not yet witnessed. And then — without warning, without explanation — the psalm turns. I will declare thy name unto my brethren. How did we get from the dust of death to the great congregation? The psalm never tells us. It simply enacts the mystery that the deepest cry of desolation and the widest reach of praise are somehow, impossibly, part of the same sentence. That he hath done this. Four words. The whole gospel in miniature.

00:00 My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me
00:30 A Worm and No Man
01:00 The Mockery and the Memory
01:30 Poured Out Like Water
02:00 They Pierced My Hands and My Feet
02:30 The Great Turn — I Will Declare Thy Name
03:00 All the Ends of the World Shall Remember