1[To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.] My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? far from helping me, the words of my roaring? 2O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. 3But thou holy, that inhabitest the praises of Israel. 4Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. 5They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. 6But I a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. 7All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, , 8He trusted on the LORD he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. 9But thou he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope upon my mother's breasts. 10I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou my God from my mother's belly. 11Be not far from me; for trouble near; for none to help. 12Many bulls have compassed me: strong of Bashan have beset me round. 13They gaped upon me their mouths, a ravening and a roaring lion. 14I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. 15My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. 16For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. 17I may tell all my bones: they look stare upon me. 18They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. 19But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me. 20Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog. 21Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. 22I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. 23Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. 24For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. 25My praise of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him. 26The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever. 27All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. 28For the kingdom the LORD'S: and he the governor among the nations. 29All fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul. 30A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. 31They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done .
Psalm 22 teaches you how to pray when God feels gone. It opens with a scream that stays personal. The first words are “My God, my God,” and the possessive keeps showing up even as the speaker asks why God has forsaken him and why help feels distant. He does not switch to a cold title, or talk about God in the third person, or drift into vague spirituality. He keeps aiming his complaint straight at the One he still calls his. That is the whole tension of the psalm: the experience is absence, but the prayer refuses to treat that absence as the last word. The form is a lament, which means the protest is already a kind of faith, because you only argue like this with someone you still believe is there to answer.
The psalm also shows how religious talk can sharpen the knife. The enemies do not just enjoy his pain, they interpret it. They watch him suffer and turn it into a verdict on his faith, like suffering proves you were never really heard. Their line, “He trusted on the Lord,” sounds like a pious summary, but it is thrown like a rock. It is a trap that feels convincing because it matches the kind of tidy religion people love: if you trust, you get delivered, so if you are not delivered, you must not have trusted. The psalm does not soften that logic, it puts it right in your face and lets you feel how isolating it is to be mocked with God’s own name. Later readers recognized the same move at the cross, where bystanders turned trust into a dare and deliverance into a public test.