Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Psalm 22
For the worship leader. A song of David to the tune “Deer of the Dawn.”[a]
Jesus prayed this individual lament from the cross (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). Though it begins with a sense of abandonment, it ends on a triumphant note.
1 My God, my God, why have You turned Your back on me?
Your ears are deaf to my groans.
2 O my God, I cry all day and You are silent;
my tears in the night bring no relief.
3 Still, You are holy;
You make Your home on the praises of Israel.
4 Our mothers and fathers trusted in You;
they trusted, and You rescued them.
5 They cried out to You for help and were spared;
they trusted in You and were vindicated.
6 But I am a worm and not a human being,
a disgrace and an object of scorn.
7 Everyone who sees me laughs at me;
they whisper to one another I’m a loser; they sneer and mock me, saying,
8 “He relies on the Eternal; let the Eternal rescue him
and keep him safe because He is happy with him.”
9 But You are the One who granted me life;
You endowed me with trust as I nursed at my mother’s breast.
10 I was dedicated to You at birth;
You’ve been my God from my mother’s womb.
11 Stay close to me—
trouble is at my door;
no one else can help me.
12 I’m surrounded by many tormenters;
like strong bulls of Bashan,[b] they circle around me with their taunts.
13 They open their mouths wide at me
like ravenous, roaring lions.
14 My life is poured out like water,
and all my bones have slipped out of joint.
My heart melts like wax inside me.
15 My strength is gone, dried up like shards of pottery;
my dry tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
You lay me in the dust of death.
17 Job: My spirit has collapsed; my days have been blotted out;
the grave is prepared for me.
2 There are mockers all around me;
my eyes are fixed on their unwarranted opposition of me.
3 Show me a sign! Vouch for me, God!
Who is there to give me his hand, guaranteeing his pledge?
4 I think no one is there because You have closed up their minds,
made them unable to see or understand;
so You will honor none of them.
5 You have heard, “Whoever denounces his friends for land
will watch his children go blind.”
6 But God has turned me into a swear word for everyone;
I have become a symbol of human darkness;
I am the face on whom one spits.
7 All my afflictions cloud my vision;
the members of my body are wasting away;
I am a mere shadow of what it once was.
8 Those of moral fiber are appalled at this;
innocent men grow indignant at the wicked.
9 Even still, the righteous embrace their way of life;
those with clean hands go from strong to stronger.
10 By contrast, I look to you, my friends, and I say,
“Come ahead, all of you; try your words once more.”
I still won’t expect to find a wise man among you.
11 Even now my days have passed me by;
My plans lie broken at my feet;
the secret wishes of my heart grow cold.
12 And yet my friends say, this loss of hope is for good,
turning my dark night into what appears to them as day.
In the pitch darkness, these broken plans and secret wishes speak to me.
They say, “There is light nearby.”
13 If I hope only to live in the land of the dead,
if I prepare for myself a bed in the darkness,
14 If I speak to my burial pit, calling it “Father,”
and to the worms in the earth, calling them “Mother” and “Sister,”
15 Then where will I find my hope?
And who will see it?
16 Will hope go with me to the place of death?
Will hope accompany me into the ground?
For the first-century Jewish-Christian audience, Moses is the rescuer of Hebrew slaves out of bondage in Egypt—the receiver of God’s law and the covenant. They remember how he shepherded the children of Israel safely through the desert for 40 years and led them to the brink of the promised land. He was indeed a remarkable man. Yet what Jesus has accomplished for everyone—not just the Jews—is on a totally different level. Moses was indeed faithful to God and accomplished a great deal as God’s servant. Jesus, too, is faithful to God, but He has accomplished what Moses could not because He is God’s very own Son.
7 Listen now, to the voice of the Holy Spirit through what the psalmist wrote:
Today, if you listen to His voice,
8 Don’t harden your hearts the way they did
in the bitter uprising at Meribah
9 Where your ancestors tested Me
though they had seen My marvelous power.
10 For the 40 years they traveled on
to the land that I had promised them,
That generation broke My heart.
Grieving and angry, I said, “Their hearts are unfaithful;
they don’t know what I want from them.”
11 That is why I swore in anger
they would never enter salvation’s rest.[a]
12 Brothers and sisters, pay close attention so you won’t develop an evil and unbelieving heart that causes you to abandon the living God. 13 Encourage each other every day—for as long as we can still say “today”—so none of you let the deceitfulness of sin harden your hearts. 14 For we have become partners with the Anointed One—if we can just hold on to our confidence until the end.
15 Look at the lines from the psalm again:
Today, if you listen to His voice,
Don’t harden your hearts the way they did
in the bitter uprising at Meribah.
16 Now who, exactly, was God talking to then? Who heard and rebelled? Wasn’t it all of those whom Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And who made God angry for an entire generation? Wasn’t it those who sinned against Him, those whose bodies are still buried in the wilderness, the site of that uprising? 18 It was those disobedient ones who God swore would never enter into salvation’s rest. 19 And we can see that they couldn’t enter because they did not believe.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.