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Psalm 22:19-21 meaning
This passage prophetically describes things Jesus, the Messiah, may have petitioned of His Father as He agonized over the ordeal of the cross in Gethsemane until His death.
The Immediate Meaning of David’s Psalm 22:19-21
After describing his perils and sufferings in the previous few verses (Psalm 22:12-18), David, the psalmist, returns to petitioning God to help him.
But You, O LORD, be not far off;
O You my help, hasten to my assistance (v 19).
David’s petition in v 19 echoes the refrain of v 11.
“Be not far from me, for trouble is near;
For there is none to help.”
(Psalm 22:11)
Psalm 22:11 and 22:19 bookend the psalmist’s troubles described between them. These troubles include:
Both bookend verses (Psalm 22:11, 22:19) ask God to be not far from the psalmist during his troubles. And both petition the LORD to help him. Psalm 22:11 indirectly asks for the LORD’s help by mentioning that there is none to help the psalmist, whereas Psalm 22:19 explicitly calls the LORD—“my help” and urges Him to hasten (hurry or come quickly) to my assistance. After describing the psalmist’s troubles, the directness of Psalm 22:19 gives more urgency and desperation to David’s petition for the LORD to personally (O You) help and assist him.
David continues his personal petition for the LORD’s assistance by asking God to help him with four specific requests.
Deliver my soul from the sword,
My only life from the power of the dog.
Save me from the lion’s mouth;
From the horns of the wild oxen You answer me (v 20-21).
David’s first specific request in this passage is for the LORD to deliver my soul from the sword.
The psalmist pleads with God to rescue him from suffering violent death or execution. The sword represents either violent death and/or execution.
The expression my soul is a translation of the Hebrew word, נֶפֶשׁ (H5315—pronounced: “neh'-fesh”). “Nehfesh” is the equivalent of the Greek word—ψυχή (G5590—prounced: “psu-ché). Both words are typically translated as either soul or life. The Greek translation of the Old Testament, called, “the Septuagint,” uses “psuché” in the first line of its translation of “nehfesh” in Psalm 22:20. We get our English word “psyche” from the Greek word “psuché.”
Both “nefesh” and “psuché” are words that describe the core essence of a person—their heart, mind, conscious sense of self, etc. When a person is physically alive, their soul is mysteriously interconnected with their body. When a person dies, their soul leaves their body and is no longer able to physically interact and animate it. What David seems to be asking God is to prevent his enemies from separating his soul (“psuché”) from his body by the sword. In other words, to spare him from physical death.
David’s second specific request in this passage reinforces his first request. His second request is for the LORD to deliver my only life from the power of the dog.
Here David pleads with God to spare his only life from his Gentile enemies. The psalmist’s expression—my only life—seems to refer to that fact that as a man, David’s physical existence is mortal and that he only has one life to live in this world. Once his only life is over, by the sword or otherwise, it is over. Even though there is an afterlife for the soul (Job 19:26, Psalm 16:10, Isaiah 26:19, Daniel 12:2), without God’s miraculous intervention, there is no returning to this life. That is why David describes it as his only life.
The expression—the dog—is a reference to Gentile enemies. The power of the dog refers to the dangerous hazard they pose to David’s life. This could be an allusion to the time when David was held captive by the Gentile Philistines described in 1 Samuel 21:10-15.
David’s third specific request in this passage is for the LORD to save me from the lion’s mouth.
This is another specific petition for the LORD to spare David’s life from his enemies. The expression—the lion’s mouth—is a metaphor for violent death. A lion is a ferocious, wild animal that tears apart its victims and devours them with its mouth. As the psalmist poetically depicted his perils in Psalm 22:12-18, he described his enemies as “a ravening and a roaring lion” who “open wide their mouth at me” (Psalm 22:13).
David’s fourth specific request in this passage is for the LORD to save me from the horns of the wild oxen.
This, too, is another petition for the LORD to spare David’s life from violent death. Wild oxen can gore a person to death with their horns. Previously, the psalmist described his enemies as “strong bulls” who “have surrounded” and “encircled me” (Psalm 22:12).
Because of his predicament, David is very much aware that the only way his life will be spared from violent death at the hands of his enemies will be if the LORD will personally answer his prayers to save him.
David has faith that the LORD will answer him. His faith is seen in the final phrase of v 21: You answer me. The Hebraic tense of this verbal phrase is in the “perfect” type. According to blueletterbible.org, the perfect type “generally designates a completed action or situation that is viewed as a single event.”
David’s use of the perfect type in the phrase You answer me could be interpreted one of two ways. It could be an indicator of strong faith as suggested above. David is so certain that the LORD will answer him and save him from violent death, that he declares it before it has even happened. Or it could be that as David was writing this psalm after the fact, he is simply stating how the LORD answered all of his requests. David could also be inferring both of these interpretations as well.
These verses conclude the “Cry of Anguish” portion of Psalm 22. “The Cry of Anguish” is found in Psalm 22:1-21. The next section begins the “Song of Praise” portion of Psalm 22. “The Song of Praise” is contained in Psalm 22:22-31.
David’s confident expression of faith—You answer me—is the three-word transition between the horrible anguish and triumphant praise of Psalm 22.
But You, O LORD, be not far off;
O You my help, hasten to my assistance.
Deliver my soul from the sword,
My only life from the power of the dog.
Save me from the lion’s mouth;
From the horns of the wild oxen You answer me.
Psalm 22:19-21 as a Messianic Prophecy
Psalm 22:19-21 can be read as a prayer offered by Jesus, the Messiah, to God the Father as He faced the ominous prospect of death. It could also be that these are prayers Jesus prayed while He suffered the agonies of crucifixion.
These lines read like something Jesus may have prayed for several hours in the darkness of Gethsemane, the night before He was murdered.
Recall, how on that night as He entered the garden, Jesus confided to Peter, James, and John how He was “deeply grieved, to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38b) and how they observed that He “began to be grieved and distressed” (Matthew 26:37).
In His agony, Jesus the Messiah possibly prayed variations of this portion of Psalm 22.
But You, O LORD, be not far off;
O You my help, hasten to my assistance (v 19).
By this point, Jesus already knew that all of His disciples would abandon Him (Matthew 26:31) and that one of them, Judas, was already in the process of betraying Him to His enemies (Matthew 26:21, 25). Once His disciples had failed Him, Jesus would only have the LORD left to help Him through the ordeal of the cross. Which is why Jesus may have prayed: O LORD, be not far off, and personally called upon God to be His help, and to hasten to His assistance.
Luke tells us that Jesus prayed in the garden so intensely that “His sweat became like drops of blood” (Luke 22:44). God did not spare Jesus from the agony of the cross, but the LORD did come to His assistance—when Jesus prayed, the LORD sent an angel from heaven to strengthen Him (Luke 22:43).
Deliver my soul from the sword,
My only life from the power of the dog (v 20).
David’s line: deliver my soul from the sword was a prayer to be spared from a violent death and/or execution. David’s expression from the power of the dog alludes to the fact that it was Gentiles who were endangering his life because dog was a term that Israel used to describe wicked or hostile Gentiles.
These particular petitions were reflected in Jesus’s prayer: “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me” (Luke 22:42). “The cup” was the cup of His suffering, most particularly incurring the wrath of bearing all the sins of the world (Colossians 2:14). This wrath would kill Him as He became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). Some of what Jesus was asking when He prayed this might have also been to be spared from a violent death and/or execution on a Roman (Gentile) cross.
God did deliver David from these things—David lived through his trial. But God delivered Jesus by having Him completely conquer death through being resurrected (1 Corinthians 15:54-55).
God did not immediately deliver His Son from violence and execution. The LORD would allow Pilate the Roman, governor of Judea, to sentence Jesus to death, and He allowed for his order to be carried out as Jesus was executed by Roman soldiers on the cross. God did not spare His Son from violent death or from the power of the dog but He delivered Him over for us all (Romans 8:32a). Then when Jesus resurrected, He was raised to a new life in a new body.
David’s expression—My only life—is a remarkable one that is rich with prophetic imagery.
The Hebrew word that is translated as My only is a form of יָחִיד (H3173). It is pronounced: “yaw-kheed.” This word means “unique,” “darling,” as in “only” son. “Yawkheed” is used to describe Abraham’s most precious son Isaac, when God intervened to prevent Abraham from sacrificing his only heir,
“I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only (“yawkheed”) son, from Me.”
(Genesis 22:12)
Accordingly, “yawkheed” aptly describes Jesus’s relationship to God the Father as His only begotten Son.
Even though the New Testament was written in Greek, if John 3:16 were to have been written in Hebrew, the expression “only begotten Son” would likely have been “ben yawkheed” (“ben” = son, “yawkheed” = my only). My only was the same term David used in Psalm 22:20, translated as My only as it applied to his life.
Understood with these sentiments in mind, Psalm 22:20 could faithfully be interpreted as a petition from Jesus asking His Father to save Him, His only begotten Son from being executed by Gentiles.
Save me from the lion’s mouth;
From the horns of the wild oxen You answer me (v 21).
Similarly to verse 20, these metaphorical lines of David could also reflect Jesus the Messiah’s prayer to be saved from a violent death.
The lion tears and devours victims with its sharp teeth inside its mouth. As demonstrated above, Jesus the Messiah prayed that he would be saved from being torn apart by His enemies.
Additionally, the Bible describes the devil as a prowling lion:
“Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
(1 Peter 5:8)
With this thought in mind, David’s petition—Save me from the lion’s mouth—from Jesus’s perspective could be a petition to God to not just be physically saved from violent death, but a petition to be spiritually saved from temptation and being devoured by the devil.
Moreover, when He was in Gethsemane, Jesus instructed His disciples to “keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation” (Matthew 26:41). Jesus did not sin through the ordeal of His unjust trial and cruel execution (Philippians 2:7-8). Thus in this aspect, His prayer was answered immediately, and He was saved from the lion’s (the devil’s) mouth.
David’s line—requesting to be saved from the horns of the wild oxen is similar to his requests to be delivered from the sword, the power of the dog, and the lion’s mouth. All of these metaphors are a petition to be saved from a violent and inglorious death in the hands of His enemies.
In one sense, Jesus was not physically saved from such a disgraceful and violent death. He was murdered on the cross.
But in another sense, Jesus was saved from violent death—in that He defeated death when God raised Him back to life again (1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 20-28), and the glory of His triumphant resurrection over death obliterates any shame of the cross (Hebrews 12:2).
David’s remark that ends this section—You answer me—reveals the confidence of Jesus, the Messiah, that His Father would save Him, vindicate Him, and redeem His sufferings as He endured the cross and its agonies.
These verses conclude the “Cry of Anguish” portion of Psalm 22. “The Cry of Anguish” is found in Psalm 22:1-21. The next section begins the “Song of Praise” portion of Psalm 22. “The Song of Praise” is contained in Psalm 22:22-31.
David’s (and later the Messiah’s) confident expression of faith—You answer me—is the transition between the horrible anguish and triumphant praise sections of Psalm 22.