Psalm 22 (1928 BCP)
Psalm 22 (1928 BCP) is the psalm Deus, Deus meus, appointed in the Book of Common Prayer (1928) for Evening Prayer on the Fourth Day of the month. It moves from a sufferer's desolate appeal and public mockery to praise in the congregation and the LORD's kingship among the nations. In Christian prayer it is neither a denial of Israel's own voice nor merely a set of predictions: the Church hears that real prayer of affliction in the light of Christ's Passion, resurrection, and proclamation to his brethren.
Prayer Book Text
MY God, my God, look upon me; why hast thou forsaken me? * and art so far from my health, and from the words of my complaint? 2 O my God, I cry in the day-time, but thou hearest not; * and in the night season also I take no rest. 3 And thou continuest holy, * O thou Worship of Israel.
The Prayer Book preserves the direct address ``My God even while the petitioner experiences God's distance. The next line anchors that appeal in the LORD's holiness and in Israel's worship: lament is not unbelief, but speech to the God whom the sufferer still names and remembers.
4 Our fathers hoped in thee; * they trusted in thee, and thou didst deliver them. 5 They called upon thee, and were holpen; * they put their trust in thee, and were not confounded. 6 But as for me, I am a worm, and no man; * a very scorn of men, and the outcast of the people.
The argument is deliberately painful: the congregation's inherited testimony of deliverance makes the speaker's present humiliation sharper, not less real. Yet memory gives the lament a grammar of trust. The claim is not that every distress is immediately removed, but that the God addressed has acted faithfully for his people.
16 For many dogs are come about me, * and the council of the wicked layeth siege against me. 17 They pierced my hands and my feet: I may tell all my bones: * they stand staring and looking upon me. 18 They part my garments among them, * and cast lots upon my vesture.
This is the wording printed in the American Prayer Book, including its traditional rendering of verse 17. The Evangelists consciously place the Passion beside the psalm's language of derision and divided garments; the Church's Christological reading is thus a New-Testament reception of the psalm, not a warrant to disregard its lamenting speaker.
Passion and Proclamation
And they that passed by railed on him, wagging their heads, and saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him.
Matthew's language recalls Psalm 22:7–8; it does not leave Christian readers free to make the psalm only an abstract meditation on suffering. At the same time, the Gospel identifies the crucified Jesus as the one who prays Israel's Scriptures rather than treating the psalm as detachable religious rhetoric.
For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.
Hebrews quotes the psalm's turn to praise to explain Christ's solidarity with those he sanctifies. This makes the latter half of Psalm 22 essential to Christian use: the crucified one is not left in lament, but declares God's name in the assembly.
22 I will declare thy Name unto my brethren; * in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. 23 O praise the LORD, ye that fear him: * magnify him, all ye of the seed of Jacob; and fear him, all ye seed of Israel. 24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the low estate of the poor; * he hath not hid his face from him; but when he called unto him he heard him.
The psalm itself gives the ground of the change: God has heard the afflicted. The response is public and corporate—declaration among brethren and praise in the congregation—so the Prayer Book's Daily Office is a fitting setting for it.
Alexander Maclaren, a nineteenth-century Baptist minister and biblical expositor, reads the feast and worldwide praise in verses 25–27 as the climax of a psalm in which suffering gives way to life. His devotional interpretation should be distinguished from the psalm's historical setting, but it usefully observes the movement from affliction to a worshipping people.
In some way or other the singer of this psalm anticipates that his experiences shall be the nourishment and gladness of a wide circle; and if we observe that in the context that circle is supposed to include the whole world, and that one of the results of partaking of this sacrificial feast is ‘your heart shall live for ever,’ we may well say with the Ethiopian eunuch, ‘Of whom speaketh the Psalmist thus?’
Maclaren's inference is recognizably Christian, but Psalm 22 itself supplies the universal horizon: God's kingship brings the nations into worship. The 1928 text therefore resists a private reading of pain; answered prayer issues in praise, feeding, and proclamation.
27 All the ends of the world shall remember themselves, and be turned unto the LORD; * and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before him. 28 For the kingdom is the LORD'S, * and he is the Governor among the nations. 29 All such as be fat upon earth * have eaten, and worshipped.
Augustine's ancient Christian exposition reads the opening cry in the voice of the crucified Christ and explicitly connects the psalm's public praise to the Church. That is a theological reception within the catholic tradition, not a claim that the psalm's first hearers had the later church's vocabulary.
“I will declare Your Name to My brethren.” I will declare Your Name to the humble, and to My brethren that love one another as they are loved by Me. “In the midst of the Church will I praise You.” In the midst of the Church will I praise You, for in every one who preaches You, You praise Yourself.
Prayer Book Use
The 1928 BCP places Psalm 22 at Fourth Day Evening Prayer, immediately after Psalm 21. The monthly course thus gives ordinary worshippers a disciplined way to pray both the royal thanksgiving of the preceding psalm and the severe lament, deliverance, and worldwide praise of this one.
Fourth Day. Morning Prayer. Psalm 19. Caeli enarrant. Psalm 20. Exaudiat te Dominus. Evening Prayer. Psalm 21. Domine, in virtute tua. Psalm 22. Deus, Deus meus.
Prayed in that Office context, Psalm 22 trains candour before God, fidelity to inherited worship, compassion for the afflicted, and confidence that the LORD's reign reaches beyond the immediate crisis. Its final horizon is doxological: those not yet born will hear of God's righteousness.
See Also
- Book of Common Prayer (1928)
- The Psalter (1928 BCP)
- Daily Office (1928 BCP)
- Evening Prayer (1928 BCP)
- Psalm 21 (1928 BCP)
External Links
References
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 22:1–3, p. 356, "Psalm 22, 1928 BCP Psalter" (accessed 23 October 2026).
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 22:4–6, p. 356, "Psalm 22, 1928 BCP Psalter" (accessed 23 October 2026).
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 22:16–18, p. 357, "Psalm 22, 1928 BCP Psalter" (accessed 23 October 2026).
- ↑ The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version (London: Robert Barker, 1611), Matthew 27:39–43, "Matthew 27:39–43, KJV" (accessed 23 October 2026).
- ↑ The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version (London: Robert Barker, 1611), Hebrews 2:11–12, quoting Psalm 22:22, "Hebrews 2:11–12, KJV" (accessed 23 October 2026).
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 22:22–24, p. 357, "Psalm 22, 1928 BCP Psalter" (accessed 23 October 2026).
- ↑ Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms, “Feasting on the Sacrifice” (Psalm 22:26), London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1908, "Maclaren, ‘Feasting on the Sacrifice’" (accessed 23 October 2026).
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 22:27–29, p. 357, "Psalm 22, 1928 BCP Psalter" (accessed 23 October 2026).
- ↑ Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 22, §22 (Psalm 21:22 in the Septuagint numbering), translated in J. E. Tweed, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), "Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 22" (accessed 23 October 2026).
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), “The Order how the Psalter is appointed to be read,” p. vii, "1928 Book of Common Prayer, monthly Psalter course" (accessed 23 October 2026).