EXPOSITION
THERE is no psalm which has raised so much controversy as this. Admitted to be Messianic by the early Hebrew commentators, it is by some understood wholly of David; by others, applied to the Israelite people, or to the pious part of it; by others again, regarded as an ideal representation of the sufferings of the righteous man, and the effects of them; and by one or two eccentric critics, explained as referring to Hezekiah or Jeremiah. Against the view that David means to describe in the psalm his own dangers, sufferings, and deliverance, it is reasonably urged that David was at no time in the circumstances here described—he was never without a helper (Psalms 22:11); never "despised of the people" (Psalms 22:6); never stripped of his clothes (Psalms 22:17); never in the state of exhaustion, weakness, and emaciation that are spoken of (Psalms 22:14-17); never pierced either in his hands or feet (Psalms 22:16); never made a gazing-stock (Psalms 22:17); never insulted by having his garments parted among his persecutors, or lots east upon his vesture (Psalms 22:18). The suppositions that the nation is meant, or the pious part of it, or an ideal righteous man, are negatived by the impossibility of applying to them the second portion of the psalm (Psalms 22:22-31), and the consideration that abstractions of the kind suggested belong to the later and not the earlier phases of a nation's poetry. The only explanation which remains is that traditional in the Christiau Church, that David, full of the Holy Ghost, was moved to speak in the Person of Christ, and to describe, not his own sufferings and perils and deliverance, but those of his great Antitype, the Messiah, which were revealed to him in vision or otherwise, and which he was directed to put on record. The close correspondence between the psalm and the incidents of the Passion is striking, and is admitted on all hands, even by Hupfeld, and it is a correspondence brought about by the enemies of the teaching of Christ, the Jews and the Romans. References indicative of the prophetic and Messianic character of the psalm are frequent in the New Testament. Note especially the following: Matthew 27:35, Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34; John 19:24; Hebrews 2:12.
The psalm is composed, manifestly, of two portions—the complaint and prayer of a sufferer (Psalms 22:1-21), and a song of rejoicing after deliverance (Psalms 22:22-31). According to some critics, the first of these two portions is also itself divided into two parts—each consisting of two strophes (Psalms 22:1-10 and Psalms 22:12-21), which are linked together by a single ejaculatory verse (Psalms 22:11). A further analysis divides each of the three strophes of ten verses into two strophes of five; but there is certainly no,such division in the second strophe of ten, since Psalms 22:16-17 are most closely connected together.
The composition of the psalm by David, though not universally admitted, has in its favour a large majority of the critics. The imagery is Davidical; the sudden transition at Psalms 22:22 is Davidical; the whole psalm "abounds in expressions which occur frequently, or exclusively, in psalms generally admitted to have been composed by David" ('Speaker's Commentary'). David's authorship is moreover distinctly asserted in the title, and confirmed by the "enigmatic superscription," which is a Davidical fancy.