Mazmur 22:1

Psalm 22 ¹ 

For the music director; according to the tune “Morning Doe;” ²  a psalm of David.

22:1 My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? ³ 

I groan in prayer, but help seems far away. ⁴ 

Mazmur 18:28

18:28 Indeed, ⁵  you are my lamp, Lord. ⁶ 

My God ⁷  illuminates the darkness around me. ⁸ 

Mazmur 30:2

30:2 O Lord my God,

I cried out to you and you healed me. ⁹ 

Mazmur 89:26

89:26 He will call out to me,

‘You are my father, ¹⁰  my God, and the protector who delivers me.’ ¹¹ 

Mazmur 109:26

109:26 Help me, O Lord my God!

Because you are faithful to me, deliver me! ¹² 

Mazmur 71:12

71:12 O God, do not remain far away from me!

My God, hurry and help me! ¹³ 

Mazmur 94:22

94:22 But the Lord will protect me, ¹⁴ 

and my God will shelter me. ¹⁵ 

Mazmur 119:115

119:115 Turn away from me, you evil men,

so that I can observe ¹⁶  the commands of my God. ¹⁷ 

[22:1]  ¹ sn Psalm 22. The psalmist cries out to the Lord for deliverance from his dangerous enemies, who have surrounded him and threaten his life. Confident that the Lord will intervene, he then vows to thank the Lord publicly for his help and anticipates a time when all people will recognize the Lord’s greatness and worship him.

[22:1]  ² tn Heb “according to the doe of the dawn.” Apparently this refers to a particular musical tune or style.

[22:1]  ³ sn From the psalmist’s perspective it seems that God has abandoned him, for he fails to answer his cry for help (vv. 1b-2).

[22:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “far from my deliverance [are] the words of my groaning.” The Hebrew noun שְׁאָגָה (shÿ’agah) and its related verb שָׁאַג (sha’ag) are sometimes used of a lion’s roar, but they can also describe human groaning (see Job 3:24 and Pss 32:3 and 38:8.

[18:28]  ⁵ tn Or “for.” The translation assumes that כִּי (ki)is asseverative here.

[18:28]  ⁶ tn Ps 18:28 reads literally, “you light my lamp, Lord.” 2 Sam 22:29 has, “you are my lamp, Lord.” The Ps 18 reading may preserve two variants, נֵרִי (neriy, “my lamp”) and אוֹרִי (’oriy, “my light”), cf. Ps 27:1. The verb תָּאִיר (ta’ir, “you light”) in Ps 18:28 would, in this case, be a corruption of the latter. See F. M. Cross and D. N. Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry (SBLDS), 150, n. 64. The metaphor, which likens the Lord to a lamp or light, pictures him as the psalmist’s source of life. For other examples of “lamp” used in this way, see Job 18:6; 21:17; Prov 13:9; 20:20; 24:20. For other examples of “light” as a symbol for life, see Job 3:20; 33:30; Ps 56:13.

[18:28]  ⁷ tn 2 Sam 22:29 repeats the name “Lord.”

[18:28]  ⁸ tn Heb “my darkness.”

[30:2]  ⁹ sn You healed me. Apparently the psalmist was plagued by a serious illness that threatened his life. See Ps 41.

[89:26]  ¹⁰ sn You are my father. The Davidic king was viewed as God’s “son” (see 2 Sam 7:14; Ps 2:7). The idiom reflects ancient Near Eastern adoption language associated with covenants of grant, by which a lord would reward a faithful subject by elevating him to special status, referred to as “sonship.” Like a son, the faithful subject received an “inheritance,” viewed as an unconditional, eternal gift. Such gifts usually took the form of land and/or an enduring dynasty. See M. Weinfeld, “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East,” JAOS 90 (1970): 184-203, for general discussion and some striking extra-biblical parallels.

[89:26]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the rocky summit of my deliverance.”

[109:26]  ¹² tn Heb “deliver me according to your faithfulness.”

[71:12]  ¹³ tn Heb “hurry to my help.”

[94:22]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and the Lord has become my elevated place.” The prefixed verbal form with vav (ו) consecutive is used in a rhetorical sense, describing an anticipated development as if it were already reality.

[94:22]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and my God [has become] a rocky summit of my safety.”

[119:115]  ¹⁶ tn The cohortative verbal form with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates purpose/result after the preceding imperative.

[119:115]  ¹⁷ tn The psalmist has already declared that he observes God’s commands despite persecution, so here the idea must be “so that I might observe the commands of my God unhindered by threats.”