In this episode, we are continuing the series pairing psalms—two at a time, read back to back, each pair moving from dark toward light. This time we’ve got Psalm 22 and Psalm 23.
When Jesus quoted the first line Psalm 22 from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He wasn’t just reciting that line only but many scholars understand this as an example of metalepsis, in which the gospel writers are quoting one smaller bit of an Old Testament passage but it should be understood that the entire whole is being referenced. In this case, Psalm 22. That paints a slightly different picture of what it means that Jesus said this from the cross.
In quoting Psalm 22, he wasn’t announcing that God had left him. He was praying the entirety of a psalm he knew by heart. He was using the psalm in the way God’s people have always used the psalms: reciting their poetry in prayer to take heart and to cling to what is true beyond circumstances. Psalm 22 is not a psalm about abandonment, but it is a psalm about suffering. The rendition tries to walk that line. It asks: Why this ridicule? It is more than I can stand. It admits: I may have only one last trust left in me. Yet, it insists: You are here. Higher, holy, throned nonetheless, and there was never a moment when you were somewhere else.
Psalm 23 is both alike and different. Both unfold in the middle of danger, but here the Shepherd walks beside his people. The first begins with a cry of abandonment; the second answers it with the comfort of God’s presence. Even in the midst of danger, one asks, “Where are you?” while the other says, “You are right here.”
Psalm 23 takes place in the valley of the shadow. There are predators on the hills. The flock is menaced but the shepherd is at hand. He has not removed the danger but interposes himself between us and it. The rendition says it this way: Even when I wander at the violet hour. When wolf fears steal in to take a share and howl in the hills. When I meet the shadow falling between the way I wanted and the way I went — I will fear no evil. You are with me.
What these two psalms share is not rescue, but accompaniment. God does not clear the valley of every danger, nor swoop in before we suffer our crosses. He enters them. He walks with us. He hangs alongside us. That is what the cross means. And that is what both of these psalms, read together, are trying to say.
