Analyzing Psalm 22: Be Not Far Off
Psalm 22: 19-21 - Don’t let your hardened heart keep you from God’s help.
”But You, O Lord, be not far off; O You my help, hasten to my assistance. Deliver my soul from the sword, My only life from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion’s mouth; From the horns of the wild oxen You answer me.“
Psalms 22:19-21 NASB1995
David once again pleads with the Lord to be his help, to hasten to his assistance. He is repeating the pleas from earlier in this Psalm. If the Lord is not far off, then David can face the difficulties that confront him because the Lord is right there. Here is what GotQuestions.org says about verse 19:
David seeks God’s help but receives no immediate answer. Again in Psalm 22:19, David prays, “But you, LORD, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me.” The Lord’s apparent delay in responding causes David to feel as if God is far off. Like so many other psalms, this one movingly expresses the familiar emotions people experience when they are alone and afflicted. We may know in our heads that God is near. We have felt His presence all of our lives, yet we pray, “Be not far from me, Lord,” because, right at that moment, God seems distant.
Jesus Himself joined with the multitude of believers on earth in their lonely affliction. He became one with us in our suffering. He, too, cried out to God, “Why have you forsaken me?” Therefore, we should not feel ashamed to plead with God, “Do not keep silence. O Lord, do not be far from me” (Psalm 35:22, NKJV). If God did not mind such pleas from David, Job, and His very own Son, then He will not mind when we are honest and vulnerable as we come to Him in our moments of deep need.
So what can block us from feeling near to God? I did some searching on this topic and found an excellent article at TeachingHumbleHearts. It’s a very long article, so I will summarize the key points and I recommend reading it in its entirety:
We don’t feel that God is near because we have a hardened heart. What are the symptoms of a hardened heart?
Feeling disconnected or alienated from God
An inability to empathize with others
Difficulty in pressing forward in spiritual maturity
Difficulty in understanding the meaning of God’s Word
A lack of hope and a constant state of anxiety
Restlessness
Why we hold on to hardened hearts:
Wrong teachings about God
Doubt and mistrust about God’s character
Confusion about salvation and God’s grace
Inbred defense mechanisms (the following bullets are quoted directly from the article):
Cover up, denial, self-deceit, suppression: “Everything is fine. I am doing all the right things as a Christian. (I won’t ask the Holy Spirit to show me if there is any sinful attitude in my heart).”
Mistrust: “I have been hurt by people and don’t trust others easily. I don’t truly believe I can trust God. (I will re-make God in the image of man, rather than see God for who He is.)”
Displacement: “This is causing me a lot of stress. (Instead of pouring my heart’s anxieties to God,) I will surf the internet / play online games / exercise / go to sleep / watch pornography etc.
Shutting down: “There is too much going on in my life right now. I need to escape and sleep this off (instead of crying out to God and waiting on His help and healing.)”
Pride, comparison: “I am doing fine, I am a better / nicer / wiser person than most people in this world. (Instead of comparing myself with Jesus and following Him, I use the patterns of the world as my guide.)”
Projection: “Yes, this is ungodly but I don’t think I have a choice. They made me do this. (I won’t model Jesus who denied Himself and the world’s pressures to follow God’s will.)”
Deceived by the lies about sin
Personal commandments and beliefs
Idol worship and spiritual blindness
WOW - I think this is something I will have to add to my prayers because I confess that I feel remote from God far more often than I should. I have a weird rational/scientific/left brain that rears its ugly self even now, when I am safely back in the sheepfold. It leads to many of the deceptive defense mechanisms. But even our Savior felt remote from His Father while on the Cross, so we can commiserate with Him.
The next verse asks the Lord to deliver the souls the Forsaken ones from the sword and their only lives from the power of the dog. These are powerful words and somewhat mysterious. A literal sword cannot destroy the soul but only the body, so this is possibly a more powerful metaphorical sword that can keep the soul from joining with God, like the swords of the angels blocking the entrance back into the Garden of Eden. The power of the dog is also referenced here and I like this explanation for these metaphors from Gotquestions.org:
A person’s enemies were identified as “dogs” in Scripture (Psalm 59:6). In Jeremiah 15:3, the Lord appointed four kinds of destroyers: “The sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, the vultures to devour, and the wild animals to finish up what is left.” The apostle Paul warned believers to watch out for false apostles, calling them dogs: “Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh” (Philippians 3:2). Those who were excluded from the kingdom of heaven were called dogs in Revelation 22:15: “Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”
In Psalm 22, David refers to his enemies as “bulls” or “wild oxen” (verses 12 and 21), “lions” (verses 13 and 21), and “dogs” (verses 16 and 20). These are metaphors and not literal animals. In verse 16, he reports, “Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet.”
The power of the dog speaks of the creature’s ability to surround its prey like a pack of wolves, to bite, tear, inflict wounds, do evil, and destroy. Both a sword and a dog can kill. When David prayed to God to deliver his soul “from the sword” and his “precious life from the power of the dog,” he feared losing his life in a cruel and violent manner.
The terminology power of the dog may also invoke the might of the Roman Empire in Psalm 22’s prophetic portrayal of Christ’s suffering and death. It was Roman soldiers who carried out the crucifixion of Christ, surrounding Jesus, stripping off His clothing, nailing Him to the cross, and even gambling for His clothing (Matthew 27:35; Mark 15:24; Luke 23:34; John 19:24; cf. Psalm 22:18). A dog was the Jewish derogatory term for the Gentiles (Matthew 7:6; 15:26; Revelation 22:15). The Romans, the Jewish High Council, and Satan himself rallied together to put Jesus to death.
The final verse of this passage continues the metaphors of the animals, asking the Lord to save the Forsaken from the mouth of the Lion and the horns of the wild oxen (in some translations, this appears to be like the single horn of a unicorn or a rhinoceros). David is about at the end of his rope, pleading for help over and over again.
Ah, but the tide turns in this Psalm as we will see in the remaining verses of Psalm 22 and in the next devotional, when the Forsaken ones now know they are not forsaken (Psalm 22:22-23).
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - Please help me to overcome those blocks and barriers that keep me from being in Your loving embrace. Please come to my aid as I fight this spiritual battle in this life. Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Got questions.org was accessed on 3/7/2024 to answer the questions about Psalm 22:19-21.