Psalm 22:16 - Stared Upon

General Overview

Psalm 22 belongs to a category of more than 3 dozen psalms known as “Psalms of Lament”. This type of psalm has 5 elements: addressing God, complaining, asking for help, making a vow of trust, making praises (which often includes demanding that others do so as well). Another important element is that the protagonist doesn’t die, but glorifies God for having heard and being a protector.

I describe more about this and the superscription that many Christian translations leave out (at this link that explains why “piercing” is an ideological force).

The Claim and the Verse

The claim that Jesus was stared at can be found in Luke 23:35 (I will cite the KJV), where it states that Jesus was still alive for a short time after being crucified on the cross, and before he can have a conversation with two other men who were hanging on either side of him we read:

“And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved others; let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God.”

Notice that, like so many other supposed “fulfilled prophecies”, there’s nothing in the text itself to call this a fulfillment, and so calling it a “prophecy” appears to be a much later forced interpretation. There is a lack of agreement among the classical Christian commentators about those who derided, since it could have been just the Jewish leadership (the Sanhedrin) or the Jews as a whole.

Here’s the verse from Psalm 22:17 that is cited (or 22:18 in the Jewish version, since the superscription isn’t counted as a separate verse within Christian texts):

“I will count all of my bones; they look at me with disdain.”

The expression “I will count my bones” is unclear and there is no universal agreement among classical Jewish commentators as to it’s meaning. One such example is that “Bones” could refer to the protagonist being emaciated and being mocked for that. Others claim that the enemies made his bones become disjointed and was looking at them in his agony (see Ibn Ezra and the Radak).

The Hebrew expression that I translated as “with disdain” implies that the people seeing this are elated at what they are seeing, which is his suffering that is going to be replaced with joy in a couple of later verses as he praises God as the One who will save him from his condition. There’s a similar use of “look at him” in Ezekiel 25:17.

Now, it’s important that we compare the verse from Psalms within its context as opposed to that from Luke.

And unlike the verse from Luke, we see that:

·        The people mocking are not Jews but enemies of the Jews.

·        There are no leaders mentioned.

·        “I will count my bones” has no counterpart in Luke.

·        The protagonist isn’t being killed.

·        The protagonist sees himself surviving this, typical of lamentation songs.

Verdict

Given that Luke never calls “looking at him” the fulfillment of a prophecy, and that it doesn’t address the verse in Psalms in its entirety, and that the people doing the looking are the enemies of the Jews rather than Jews, and because the other four points that I have already mentioned, one cannot call Luke 23:35 a fulfillment of Psalm 22:16/17 without forcing it into an impossible fit.

Yes, Psalm 22:17 has the protagonist being made fun of for having suffered at the hands of the enemy, but how the protagonist in Psalms is suffering and who is doing the seeing and mocking, is completely different than what we see in Luke 23:35.

And here is the meme used: