The psalm opens with a cry Jesus made his own on the cross. Matthew and Mark preserve the words in Aramaic (Matthew 27:46), as though no one wanted to lose anything in translation. Almost nothing in David's own life explains what the psalm goes on to describe: 14"I am poured out like water." It sounds like an execution, written centuries before Rome made crucifixion familiar.
The cry is honest anguish. 2"I cry by day, but you do not answer." Yet in the very next breath: 3"you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel." Faith states what is true of God while experience says otherwise, ahead of any feeling that might catch up.
Then come the mockers: 8"He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him." The crowd reasons that heaven's silence proves guilt, the oldest logic applied to suffering. At the cross the chief priests say almost the same words (Matthew 27:43), reciting a script written a thousand years earlier without knowing it. The sufferer answers the mockers in the verses that follow by pointing to his whole life, to a God who has held him since the womb. Silence has not erased that history, and he cannot pretend it away.
The images crowd in. 12"Strong bulls of Bashan surround me." 16"Dogs encompass me," and 16"they have pierced my hands and feet." 18"They divide my garments among them." John records the soldiers doing exactly this and says it happened "to fulfill the Scripture" (John 19:24).
At verse 21 the psalm turns without warning. The plea is still being spoken when rescue arrives: 21"You have rescued me." Then comes the promise: 22"I will tell of your name to my brothers." Hebrews puts this line in the mouth of Christ, the risen Son declaring the Father's name to the brothers his suffering purchased (Hebrews 2:12). The reason follows: God 24"has not hidden his face from him, but has heard." Forsakenness was felt and never final. The psalm never explains the silence. It moves through it, and on the far side it says, plainly, that he heard.
From there the psalm keeps widening. One man's agony becomes praise in the congregation, then praise reaching 27"all the ends of the earth," and finally a people 31"yet unborn." The last line, 31"that he has done it," sits close to Jesus' own last word from the cross, "It is finished" (John 19:30), and more than one reader has heard the echo at the foot of the cross.
This psalm gives every sufferer permission to pray both halves honestly. The cry is allowed, and so is the praise, because the one who prayed this psalm first walked all the way through to the other side and did not stay silent when he got there. If you are in the first half today, pray it as written. The second half was written for those who could not yet see it.
Prayer
Father, we have felt more of the early verses of this psalm than the later ones, days when our cries meet only silence. Thank you that you have not despised the afflicted, even when it felt as if you had. Thank you for a Son who prayed this psalm's anguish and lived to declare your name on the other side. Whatever we carry today, let us trust that you have heard. In Jesus' name, amen.