Tehillim 22 | “O God, My God – Why Have You Forsaken Me?”

Psalm 22 opens with a harsh accusation: “O God, my God – why have You forsaken me? So far from my salvation are the words that I roar” (22:2). The poet asks God why He does not respond to his repeated cries. Not only that, the poet expands his complaint toward God. Our ancestors cried out to You and were indeed saved: “To You they cried out and were saved; in You they trusted and were not let down” (22:6). But I — “I am a worm, not human” (22:7). In extremely painful descriptions, the poet pours his deep distress into his words. Note the intense and vivid imagery: “I dissolve like water, all my limbs falling to pieces, my heart melting like wax within me. My strength is dried up like clay shards; my tongue sticks to my palate; You lay me down in the dust of death” (verses 15–16).

After this detailed depiction of his suffering, the poet returns to address God. But this time, his tone is no longer accusatory — it is prayerful. He no longer states that God is distant, but asks that God not be distant: “But You, Lord – do not be distant, O my help; rush to my aid.” In his prayer, the poet declares that when God saves him, he will praise God and proclaim the miracle to his brothers and before a great assembly: “I will tell of Your name to my kin; I will praise You in the midst of the assembly” (22:23). From this declaration, the atmosphere of the psalm shifts dramatically, and the poet simply begins to praise God, to call on others to praise Him, and ultimately to describe God's reign over the nations. What is the meaning of this sudden shift?

First, we should note that this is a common phenomenon in Psalms, one we have encountered before. From a place of prayer and distress, the poet sometimes becomes filled with confidence in God and from there turns to praise. Alternatively, the explanation may be the opposite: perhaps the psalm was written after the salvation, and it tells the full story — first the great distress, then the redemption. But in our psalm, this transition is especially sharp and extreme.

“Prayer is warranted and meaningful only when one realizes that all hope is gone, that there is no other friend besides God from whom one may expect assistance and comfort, when the soul feels its bleak despair, loneliness and helplessness. However, if one is not haunted by anxiety and brute fear, if one does not look upon his existence as a heap of debris, if his self- confidence and arrogance have not been undermined… then prayer is alien to him… That is why the Jewish idea of prayer differs from the mystical idea, insofar as we have emphasized the centrality of the petition, while the mystics have stressed the relevance of the hymn.”

What Rav Soloveitchik is saying is that a genuine encounter with God, and sincere prayer, are only possible when a person cracks through their arrogance and truly feels their own instability in the world and dependence on God. Perhaps this helps explain why it is precisely the deep crisis and the raw, painful confrontation with God at the beginning of the psalm that propel the poet’s mental and spiritual state into the hopeful, intimate conclusion of the psalm.