Psalm 22 Explained: The Cry of Desolation, Jesus on the Cross, and How to Pray in Suffering

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

When Jesus spoke these words from the cross (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34), he was not improvising. He was quoting — word for word, in the Aramaic his listeners would have recognized — the opening verse of Psalm 22. For any first-century Jewish person hearing those words, a cascade of association would have followed: they knew this psalm. They knew where it went. Jesus, in his dying breath, was locating his suffering inside a specific scriptural story, pointing toward both the depth of his desolation and the direction it was heading.

Psalm 22 is one of the most important psalms in the Psalter and one of the most directly messianic passages in the Hebrew Bible. Understanding it — its structure, its movement, its specific images — transforms how we read the crucifixion and how we pray in our own seasons of desolation.

The Shape of the Psalm

Psalm 22 has three distinct movements:

Verses 1-21: The Cry of Desolation The psalmist describes utter abandonment — by God and by all human community — and the physical suffering that accompanies it.

Verses 22-24: The Pivot Something shifts — not in the circumstances but in the orientation of the speaker. The cry of despair becomes a vow of praise.

Verses 25-31: The Universal Praise The praise expands from the individual to the community, from the community to the nations, from the nations to all generations, from all generations to cosmic scale. The abandoned individual becomes the center of worldwide worship.

This structure is not resolution — it's transformation. The suffering doesn't disappear; the perspective shifts. And the shift is extraordinary in what it covers.

Part 1: The Cry of Desolation (Verses 1-21)

The Opening: God's Silence

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest." (vv. 1-2)

The opening is an accusation as much as a prayer. The psalmist addresses God — twice, "My God, my God" — and immediately raises the question of abandonment. God is silent. The prayers go up; nothing comes back. Day and night, consistent prayer, and nothing.

What makes this theologically significant: the psalmist does not stop addressing God. The accusation is made to God. Even in the experience of abandonment, the psalmist remains in the posture of prayer — talking to the one who seems absent. This is the fundamental act of faith in desolation: not feeling that God is present, but continuing to address him anyway.

The Historical Memory (Verses 3-5)

"Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises. In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame." (vv. 3-5)

The psalmist holds the desolation against the history of God's faithfulness. "They cried out and were saved." The ancestors trusted and were not put to shame. But I am crying out and I am finding no answer. The contrast is explicit, and it's not a pious resolution — it's the honest tension between what history says and what I'm experiencing.

This is one of the psalm's most useful techniques for prayer in darkness: you don't have to pretend the darkness isn't happening. You can hold the history of God's faithfulness alongside the present experience of his absence without resolving the tension prematurely.

The Worm (Verses 6-8)

"But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: 'He trusts in the Lord,' they say, 'let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.'" (vv. 6-8)

"I am a worm and not a man" — language of complete dehumanization. Not just suffering but self-description as barely human. And the specific pain of social abandonment: the mocking of those who watch. "He trusts in the Lord — let the Lord rescue him." If God really cares about this person, where is God?

Matthew 27:39-44 records almost exactly this: passersby shaking their heads, mocking Jesus on the cross: "He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him."

The psalmist is not writing prophecy in the predictive sense — David is writing his own experience. But he is writing with an honesty that maps onto the crucifixion with uncanny precision because both describe the same basic human experience: the one who trusted God being publicly humiliated while God seems absent.

The Physical Suffering (Verses 14-18)

"I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me. My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death." (vv. 14-15)

"Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment." (vv. 16-18)

The physical description here is extraordinary: bones out of joint, heart like wax, mouth dried up, hands and feet pierced, clothing divided by lot. The New Testament records all of these at the crucifixion — the soldiers casting lots for Jesus's garments (John 19:24), the driving of nails through hands and feet, the physical dehydration ("I am thirsty," John 19:28). The specificity of this passage as a "preview" of crucifixion is remarkable.

The Plea (Verses 19-21)

"But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen." (vv. 19-21)

The cry shifts from complaint to petition. Don't be far. Come quickly. Rescue. The imperative mood — direct, desperate requests. And then: "You have heard me" — or in some translations, the MT has an enigmatic form suggesting the rescue has happened or will happen. The transition point.

Part 2: The Pivot (Verses 22-24)

"I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel! For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help." (vv. 22-24)

The turn is abrupt. We don't get an explanation of what changed — the circumstances may or may not have changed. What we get is a declaration: God has not despised the suffering. He has not hidden his face. He listened.

The assertion isn't that the suffering was painless or brief or deserved — it's that God was present in it, even when he seemed absent. The cry of desolation was heard, not ignored.

For Jesus on the cross, this is the pivot of the resurrection: he cried "forsaken" and he was not ultimately forsaken. The Father did not despise the suffering of the afflicted one. He heard.

Part 3: The Cosmic Expansion (Verses 25-31)

The final section of Psalm 22 does something extraordinary: it moves from the individual's suffering to universal praise, from present to future, from one generation to all generations.

"All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him... they will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it." (vv. 27, 31)

The one who opened as a worm, abandoned, pierced, mocked, becomes the center of worldwide worship. The suffering of one person becomes the occasion for the ends of the earth to turn to the Lord. "He has done it" — the final word of the psalm — is the declaration that catches up everything that preceded it.

The New Testament reads this psalm as a complete portrait of Christ: the desolation on the cross, the resurrection as the turn, the church as the beginning of the universal praise that will eventually encompass all the nations and all generations.

How to Pray Psalm 22 in Suffering

Psalm 22 gives us a complete model for praying in dark seasons — not a quick prayer of complaint followed by quick resolution, but the full arc from desolation to praise that takes time to traverse.

Start with honest accusation. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Permission to ask the hardest question directly to God. You don't have to protect God from the question. Jesus asked it.

Hold the historical memory alongside the present experience. "They trusted and you delivered them." "I am not being delivered right now." Both are true. Hold them both without forcing resolution.

Describe the specific suffering. Don't abstract it. Psalm 22 is specific — worm, bones out of joint, poured out like water, surrounded by dogs. Name the specific suffering you're carrying.

Make the specific request. Don't be vague. "Deliver me from the sword." What are you asking for? Say it.

Trust the turn even when you can't feel it. The pivot of verse 22 doesn't happen because the suffering ends — it happens because the perspective shifts to what is true about God even in the suffering. You can make this move before your circumstances change.

Let the praise be as large as the suffering. The ending of Psalm 22 is cosmic. The same scale that holds the desolation holds the praise.

A Prayer from Psalm 22

My God, my God — where are you? I have cried out by day and by night and I don't hear an answer. The suffering is specific: ___. The abandonment is real: ___.

And yet — the ancestors trusted and were not put to shame. You have not despised the suffering of the afflicted one. You have not hidden your face.

I make the move that this psalm makes: from "why have you forsaken me?" to "I will declare your name." Not because the suffering has ended — it hasn't — but because the truth about You outlasts the experience of Your absence.

You have done it. Whatever it is — whatever the cross accomplished, whatever You are doing now — You have done it. Let me trust that even here. Amen.

Testimonio includes a full Psalm 22 guided meditation in the "Psalms for Dark Seasons" series. Download the app.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Jesus feel forsaken by God, or was this just a quotation? The Gospel accounts are clear that Jesus genuinely cried out these words, and the cry carried real weight. The mystery of the cross includes the mystery of the Son experiencing, in some profound way, the judgment that sin deserves — the separation from God that is its consequence. How exactly this relates to the eternal relationship within the Trinity is one of the deepest questions in Christian theology. But the cry was real, not performative.

What is the "worm and not a man" language about? "Worm" in this context is an image of complete dehumanization — a creature below the dignity of a human being. It captures the experience of being treated as less than human by those around you, and perhaps also the internal experience of suffering that reduces the self. The image is extreme — which is part of the psalm's honesty about the depth of the desolation.

How does Psalm 22 end on hope without the circumstances changing? The turn in verse 22 is not because the suffering has ended or been explained. It's a volitional turn — the psalmist chooses to orient toward what is true about God rather than staying fixed on what is being experienced. This is not denial; the preceding verses have been unflinching about the darkness. It's the decision to also hold what is true — "he has not despised the suffering of the afflicted one" — alongside the experience of desolation. This is the core of lament prayer: honesty about the darkness and orientation toward the God who is present in it.