1M Psalms 22:1, 16, 18 My God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far off in saving me, So far off in the words of my groaning?
16 Dogs are all about me; a pack of wicked guys has encircled me; they have pierced my hands and my feet.
18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my gesture.
This prophetic hymn was penned by the shepherd king David, one thousand years prior to the advent of Jesus. We don’t know the particulars of it. Was he going through some comparable situation as the attempt to assassinate him by King Saul? Or was he resting on the grass, watching his sheep, when the Spirit of God came upon him and he began to sing this song? We can only speculate.
What we do know is that a millennium later Jesus would be crucified to a Roman cross and would start quoting this psalm full of the details of that time. If God could inspire a shepherd to write the specifics of that terrible moment then God is sovereign over it. Jesus did not feel God’s presence but He had His Word in His heart that told Him that the Father knew exactly what was happening and what was about to happen.
God had abandoned Jesus because he had taken the world’s guilt onto himself. The Father has purer eyes than to see evil. (Habakkuk 1:13) Jesus understood the solution, but the psalm was spoken for you and me. The Jews called the Gentiles dogs. In the usual Hebrew way David said it again that is, “a band of evil men.” The situation was surrounded by the Roman gentile soldiers. Crucifixion, where the hands and feet were pierced, was invented just before Jesus was born. This prophetic phrase was indeed a glimpse of coming events.
Clothing was expensive in the first century. Most folks owned only one primary robe and a cloak during cold weather. Jesus’ garment was woven in one piece, making it even more valuable. The troops distributed among them the lesser articles of clothing, but determined not to share the robe, so as to preserve its value. Instead, they each wrote their names on a stone and dropped the stones into a jar, shaking the jar until a stone sprang out. The robe was given to the man whose name was on that stone. A man who did not realize he had just fulfilled the words of an old prophecy.
Consider this: If God knows the details of every trial His children face, we may trust Him to carry us through challenges and into a greater victory than we can fathom, just as He did with His only begotten Son. Trust in Him!
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