Psalm 22 - KJV
1) My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
2) O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
3) But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
4) Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
5) They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
6) But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
7) All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
8) He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.
9) But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts.
10) I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly.
11) Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
12) Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
13) They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.
14) I 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.
15) My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
16) For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
17) I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.
18) They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
19) But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me.
20) Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.
21) Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.
22) I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.
23) Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.
24) For 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.
25) My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him.
26) The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.
27) All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.
28) For the kingdom is the LORD'S: and he is the governor among the nations.
29) All they that be 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.
30) A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.
31) They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.
This Psalm is one of the most popular Messianic Psalms, as it was not only quoted by Yeshua from the cross, verse 16 (verse 17 in the Tanakh) even refers to the Piercing of His Hands and His Feet. This particular Psalm is so Messianic that the Masoretes, who compiled the earliest known Tanakh, has evidently altered the Hebrew word for "pierced" original text to mask its true meaning. The Masoretes were groups of Jewish scribe-scholars who worked from around the end of the 5th through 10th centuries A.D., who preserved the oldest Hebrew Tanakh that we have to this day.
Needless to say, this is a very controversial subject which has caused fireced debate for years. Obviously, I was shocked to learn this, as I have always put a lot of trust in the work of the Jewish Scribes who have devoted their lives to preserving every single detail of G*d's Word. This shook me for a second but after coming to acceptance of it, I could see it as a result of the immoral Christian persecution against the Jewish People that had persisted for centuries. I get it and I understand that. It truly saddens me that they were treated this way and I would like to personally apologize to every Jewish person on earth for all the abhorrent actions that has been done to them, in the name of Jesus Christ. These actions go against the explicit instructions of Yeshua, who told us to "Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself". Despite of the cultural circumstances that could have motivated this change in the text, G*d's Word is sacred and it is never to be changed in the least way. I can only say that whoever is responsible for this diabolical alteration will be judged accordingly and I pray for them. It's no wonder why Jewish people ignore this Messianic reference and are not able to draw the obvious conclusion back to Yeshua; they've most likely never read it. I have a copy of The Hebrew Tanakh and checked it myself.
It has been argued that Early Christians changed this word to fit the narrative of Yeshua (Jesus) as the Messiah. This is a preposterous claim on more than one level. According to all of the research that I’ve done, most of the early church fathers didn’t even know Hebrew, let alone understand how to alter the text. The correct word is not only preserved in the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament), but also in The Dead Sea Scrolls. Both of these ancient texts are centuries older than the earliest known Masoretic Tanakh. I see no reason to waste any more effort on this, as The Torah tells us, "A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established." Here we have two ancient sources that agree what the word actually is and for me, the case if closed.
Just to give a little more context, so you don't have to go down this same rabbit hole; the correct Hebrew word is כארו (“pierced/dug”) - instead The Masoretes wrote it as כארי (“like a lion”) - which makes no literal sense. In the Greek Septuagint, the word is recorded as ὤρυξαν, and the best I can tell (as I struggle with Greek) this word means "torn/pierced", in the context it is being used in...regardless, it doesn't mean "lion", both texts in both languages agree that it's not even close. The Masoretes intentionally wrote a Yud ( י ), where there should have been a Vav ( ו ), and this really backs up my point that much more. Yeshua (Jesus) is often represented by the Hebrew letter Vav ( ו ), which literally means "nail" "to join". This is very fitting, as Yeshua was not only "Pierced" both in His Hands and Feet with Nails, he is also our gateway to The Father. His Sacrifice is what Joins us to Abba (Father) and Joins us into The Nation of Israel. It's extremely ironic when you think about it like this, but it's obviously that way by Divine Design. The Prophet Isaiah was told to "tell this people: ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” To this day, we can see that the veil has been pulled over their eyes and it will not be removed until their hearts are open to The Truth.
As much as I try to avoid controversy and like to promote unity whenever possible, this topic actually segues nicely into my next point, as the 22nd letter written in The Torah is a Vav ( ו ). The spiritual significance of the number 22 is huge as there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. HaShem spoke the universe into existence through the Divine Utterances of the 22 Hebrew Letters; the Hebrew Aleph Bet is truly The Building Blocks of Universe. The fact that the 22nd letter of The Torah is a Vav ( ו ), or Nail, is yet another reference directing us to take a closer look at Psalm 22.
While researching about this post, I found that the following major terms for Light, used in the original Hebrew and Greek, occur 264 times throughout the Holy Bible:
Ohr ( אור )
light
Strong's Hebrew 216
122 Occurrences
Ohr ( אוֹר )
to be or become light
Strong's Hebrew 215
40 Occurrences
M'Ohr ( מָאוֹר )
a luminary
Strong's Hebrew 3974
19 Occurrences
Ohrah ( אוֹרָה )
a light
Strong's Greek 5457
5 Occurrences
Phós ( φῶς, φωτός, τό )
light, a source of light, radiance
Strong's Greek 5457
73 Occurrences
Phóteinos ( φωτεινός, ή, όν )
bright, luminous, full of light
Strong's Greek 5460
5 Occurrences
264 divided by the Divine Governing Number of 12 equals 22. From this small revelation, we can see that 22 alludes to The Light. Speaking of which, 22 is also said to be the Number of Revelation. In Chapter 22 of John's Book of Revelation, Yeshua reveals himself as the Alpha Omega, which in Hebrew would be the Aleph Tav; thus comprising the entire 22 Hebrew Letters in the Aleph Bet (kind of like saying from A to Z). It is also significant to mention that there were 22 generations recorded from Adam to Jacob as well.
In Jewish Metaphysics, there are said to be 32 Paths of Spiritual Wisdom. These are the 22 Hebrew Letters + The Ten Sefirot (Tree of Life). In the visual representation of The Ten Sefirot, or Tree of Life, there are 22 paths between the 10 Sefirot; each represented by a different Hebrew Letter.
There are 10 "Let There Be" statements in Genesis 1:1 - as well as The Ten Commandments and The Ten Plagues in The Book of Exodus. 32 is the Numerical Value of Lev ( לב ) "Heart" - The First and Last Letters of Torah spell Lev ( לב ) "Heart" - which is showing us that The Torah is Indeed the Heart of The Holy Bible. We can observe these sacred truths scientifically as are also the The Human Skull is made up of 22 Bones and there are 32 Teeth in The Human Mouth.
Now we will examine the first verse of Psalm 22 in greater detail.
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?” - Psalms 22:1
Mark 15:34 states the following:
“And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Matthew 27:46 pretty much gives us the same account:
“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
This can be a difficult verse for a lot of Christians to understand. I’ve even seen some people go so far as to say this verse indicates that Yeshua wasn’t who the Bible says that he was because He had been forsook on the cross and left to die. This interpretation is a total misunderstanding of scripture. First off, we need to understand that when Yeshua was on the cross and cried this phrase, he was literally referring to the first verse of Psalm 22, thus letting the crowd know who He actually was. Back then, there were no chapters or verse numbers in scripture, so if you would have told someone to refer to Psalm 22:1, they would have no idea what that meant. It stands to reason that a common method to reference a particular part of scripture would be done by saying the first few words of it. We can observe that it was done this way throughout the New Testament. It’s also interesting to note that what we read as the ninth hour is what we know these days as 3:00 P.M. - this is why we hear of reference to “the witching hour”, as 3:00 A.M. which directly opposes the sacred time of day that Yeshua died on the cross.
I’ve also seen some people questioning the phrase “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”, in Mark and “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”, in Matthew. We need to understand that this quote is a transliteration, coming from a translation. A transliteration is a representation of the characters of a different dialect that are spelled out in our language. A couple examples of Hebrew transliterations would be “Hallelujah” and “Amen”. These words are spelled as how they actually sound in the original Hebrew language. A translation of “Hallelujah” ( הללו יה ) is Praise YAH or Praise The LORD; and a translation of “Amen” ( אמן ) is “Truly” or “So Let It Be”. Their is Divine Power in the Hebrew Language and I believe that's why these two words, in particular, have been preserved and transliterated in most every language.
Now that we’ve established what the difference is between a translation and a transliteration, this will hopefuly shed some more light on this quote and why we see some minor differences in these two accounts given to us in Mark and Matthew. This phrase is a transliteration of what Yeshua actually said that was originally transliterated into Greek and then transliterated into English, from the Greek text. Obviously, this is confusing and knowing that this is the case, the fact that the text is pretty close to the original language is remarkable. It is debated whether Yeshua spoke this phrase in Hebrew or Aramiac (even the Strong’s translations are unclear, as both languages are cited. For the sake of this post, for obvious reasons, I’m going with Hebrew. Below is my best transliteration Psalm 22:1 in the original Hebrew. Of course, both gospels give us the translation of this phrase which is “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Eli or Elee ( אֵלִ֣י )
My God
Eli or Elee ( אֵלִ֣י )
My God
LahMah ( לָמָ֣ה )
Why
AzavThani ( עֲזַבְתָּ֑נִי )
have You forsaken Me?
So, from the Hebrew transliteration above, we can see that this is very close to the quotes that we have been given in the gospels.
Hopefully this will give you a better understanding of the deeper significance of Psalm 22 and just how important it is. It was uttered from the cross to the Jewish people who persecuted Yeshua, so that they would go read it and know just who Yeshua was. They obviously missed the point entirely, as even the gospels record that someone in the crowd heard this and said “Behold, He is calling Elijah” and “Let us see if Elijah comes to take Him down”, so they continued to taught and belittle Our Most Beloved Savior and The Only Begotten Son of G*d, as He suffered. Knowing this, we can see that He was giving them a significant scriptural reference that would reveal his true identity as their long awaited Jewish Messiah; who the Jewish People are still desperately waiting for to this day, although several Rabbinic writings agree that The Messiah is a couple thousand years overdue.
In conclusion, please understand that what Yeshua did for the world on that cross was the most selfless act of humanity ever known to man. He truly was perfect in every way and free of all sin. Our faith in Yeshua (Jesus) gives us all Salvation (which is the literal meaning of His Name) and is the Most Precious Gift that HaShem ever gave to us. Yeshua was The Word Made Flesh and his human nature gave him the freedom of choice, just like us; so it was His Choice to die for Our Sin. Just as Isaiah said, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” His blood washes away our sins. He was The Passover Lamb and His Ultimate Sacrifice saves us all from death and Our Faith in Him gives us The Promise of Eternal Life. This is what John The Baptist meant when he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Mankind truly doesn’t understand the magnitude of just what He did for us on that cross. If we put Our Faith in Him, our physical death is freedom from this world. This is why the early martyrs never feared death, but rather embraced it, as they knew they were just passing through a gateway into His Kingdom. May Our Faith in Him give us all the ability to view it this way when our time comes. Fear of death is simply lack of faith.
חסד ושלום עליכם והרבה אהבה וברכות
May Grace and Peace Be Upon You and Much Love and Blessings!
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