Psalm 22:12-14

Continuing in Psalm 22 - Thoughts by Spurgeon on the suffering of our Saviour - My thoughts in parentheses - Written Spring 1999

12 Many bulls have compassed me:; strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. "The priests, elders, scribes, Pharisees, rulers, and captains bellowed round the cross like wild cattle...full of strength and fury; they stamped and foamed around the innocent One, and longed to gore him to death with their cruelties. Conceive of the Lord Jesus as a helpless, unarmed, naked man, cast into the midst of a herd of infuriated wild bulls. They were brutal as bulls, many, and strong, and the Rejected One was all alone, and bound naked to the
tree."

( Many "bulls" have compassed me about, too...in a way. I have suffered at the hands of many physicians, etc.)

13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. - "Like hungry cannibals they opened their blasphemous mouths as if they were about to swallow the man whom they abhorred. They could not vomit forth their anger fast enough through the ordinary aperture of their mouths, and therefore set the doors of their lips wide open like those who gape. Like roaring lions they howled out their fury, and longed to tear the Saviour in pieces, as wild beasts raven over their prey. Our Lord's faith must have passed through a
most severe conflict while he found himself abandoned to the tender mercies of the wicked, but he came off victorious by prayer..."

(Yes, this is how I felt when I saw this new doctor. She gaped upon me with her mouth when I said, "I don't know which doctor to trust anymore. How do I know who is telling me the truth?" She says I was overdosing on progesterone and that this is what has made me so
chemically sensitive, etc.)

14 I am poured out like water. - "Turning from his enemies, our Lord describes his own personal condition in language which should bring the tears into every loving eye. "I am poured out like water." He was utterly spent, like water poured upon the earth; his heart failed him, and had no more firmness in it than running water, and his whole being was made a sacrifice, like a libation poured out before the Lord. He had long been a fountain of tears; in Gethsemane his heart welled over in sweat, and on the cross he gushed forth with blood; he poured out his strength and spirit, so that he was reduced to the most feeble and exhausted state.

All my bones are out of joint: - "Is it not most probably that the fastenings of the hands and feet, and the jar occasioned by fixing the cross in the earth, may have dislocated the bones of the Crucified One? If this is not intended, we must refer the expression to that extreme weakness which would occasion relaxation of the muscles and a general sense of parting asunder throughout the whole system.

My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. - "Excessive debility and intense pain made his inmost life to feel like wax melted in the heat... The fire of Almighty wrath would have consumed our souls for ever in hell; it was no light work to bear as a substitute the heat of an anger so justly terrible."

(It is true...Jesus, You know my pain and more....oh so much more...)