Context: Psalm 22 is a Davidic individual lament ("To the tune of 'The Doe of the Dawn.' A Psalm of David") whose structure enacts the rejection-then-exaltation arc within a single prayer: an extended complaint (vv. 1-21a) pivots abruptly at "You have answered me!" (v. 21b) into congregational praise (vv. 22-31). In its original setting, David — the anointed-yet-afflicted king of the 1 Samuel 16 – 2 Samuel 5 narratives — voices the experience of the righteous sufferer whose trust in the LORD becomes the very material of his enemies' mockery: "But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they sneer and shake their heads: 'He trusts in the LORD, let the LORD deliver him; let the LORD rescue him, since He delights in him'" (Psalm 22:6-8). The taunt is theologically barbed — it weaponizes the covenant promise of deliverance (cf. Psalm 22:4-5, "In You our fathers trusted... and You delivered them") against the one man for whom deliverance appears withheld. The lament alternates between complaint and remembered trust (vv. 3-5, 9-10), so that the sufferer's agony is precisely the agony of faith, not unbelief. When God answers (v. 21b), the sufferer does not retreat into private relief but turns his vindication into public proclamation: "I will proclaim Your name to my brothers; I will praise You in the assembly... For He has not despised or detested the torment of the afflicted. He has not hidden His face from him, but has attended to his cry for help" (22:22, 24). Within the Psalter's theology, this is psalmic meditation doing canonical work: David converts the narrative pattern of his own rejection-and-enthronement (and Joseph's and Moses's before him) into first-person prophetic prayer-language that later sufferers — and ultimately the Messiah — can inhabit.
Hebrew Key Terms:
OT-to-OT Development: Psalm 69 runs the identical arc in deepened form: the sufferer bears cherpah explicitly "for Your sake" ("For I have endured scorn for Your sake, and shame has covered my face... zeal for Your house has consumed me, and the insults of those who insult You have fallen on me," Psalm 69:7, 9), and the lament resolves into salvation and Zion's restoration ("let Your salvation protect me, O God... For God will save Zion," 69:29, 35) — the mockery-to-vindication movement now tied to covenant zeal. Isaiah 53:3 takes up the בָּזָה vocabulary of Psalm 22:6 for the Servant who is "despised (נִבְזֶה) and rejected by men," and the Servant's arc (humiliation → exaltation, Isaiah 52:13; 53:10-12) universalizes what the Royal Sufferer psalms voice in first person. Psalm 118:22 crystallizes the same pattern into proverbial form — "the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone" — the rejected-then-vindicated motif compressed into a single verbal prophecy. The psalmic meditation thus stands as the inheritance-channel between the rejection-exaltation narratives (Joseph, Moses, David) and the prophetic literature.
Connections:
Christological Connection: In its own context, Psalm 22:6-24 teaches that the covenant God does not finally despise the afflicted who trust him — "He has not despised or detested the torment of the afflicted... but has attended to his cry for help" (v. 24). The psalm's theology is exact: the sufferer is despised (בָּזָה) by men, but God does not despise (בָּזָה, the same root) his affliction. Mockery that weaponizes faith ("He trusts in the LORD, let the LORD deliver him," v. 8) is answered not by the sufferer's self-vindication but by God's act (v. 21b), and vindication issues in public praise that enlarges to "all the ends of the earth" (vv. 25-31). David here converts the rejection-exaltation narrative pattern of Stages 1-3 of this trajectory into prophetic first-person speech — prayer-language awaiting a speaker whose affliction and vindication would fill it completely.
The NT identifies that speaker. The citation chain placed on and around the crucified Christ is the densest of any OT chapter: Jesus prays verse 1 in the darkness ("Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?... My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Matthew 27:46); the mockers unwittingly perform verses 7-8 ("those who passed by heaped abuse on Him, shaking their heads... 'He trusts in God. Let God deliver Him now if He wants Him,'" Matthew 27:39, 43); the soldiers fulfill verse 18 ("They divided My garments among them, and cast lots for My clothing," John 19:24). Then — decisively — Hebrews 2:12 places verse 22 on the lips of the risen Christ: "I will proclaim Your name to My brothers; I will sing Your praises in the assembly." The NT thus claims both halves of the arc: the rejection (vv. 6-8, 18 at the cross) and the vindication-into-congregational-praise (v. 22 in the resurrection assembly). The escalation is manifest: David's mockery was real but survivable, his deliverance preservation from death; Christ's scorn carried him into death itself, and his answer was resurrection — so that the "assembly" of verse 22 becomes the church of the firstborn whom he is not ashamed to call brothers (Hebrews 2:11-12).
The already/not-yet staging follows the psalm's own widening horizon. Already: Christ has been heard and answered (cf. Hebrews 5:7), raised, and now leads the praise of the congregation — every gathering of the church is verse 22 in progress. Believers united to him inhabit the same arc: scorned with him now, assured that God does not despise their affliction (v. 24). Not yet: the psalm's final movement — "All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD. All the families of the nations will bow down before Him" (22:27) — awaits the consummation, when the vindication of the once-despised sufferer issues in universal homage (Philippians 2:10-11) and a people yet unborn hears "all that He has done" (22:31).
Connection Method(s): Longitudinal Theme (primary) — Psalm 22:6-24 is the psalmic-meditation stage of the canon-wide rejected-then-exalted motif: it inherits the narrative pattern (Joseph, Moses, David) and converts it into first-person prayer-theology that Psalm 69, Isaiah 53, and Psalm 118:22 develop further. The connection to Christ runs through the developing theme, not through a discrete type-antitype relation with David's person (per this trajectory's Fairbairn ruling and TT 041's demotion of personal typology for David). Also Promise-Fulfillment (secondary) — the psalm functions in the NT as prophetic speech, not merely pattern: its exact words are taken up verbatim at the cross (Matthew 27:39-46; John 19:24) and in the resurrection (Hebrews 2:12), with John 19:24 explicitly marking fulfillment ("This was to fulfill the Scripture"). Anti-default check: Typology is not claimed here — the rejection-exaltation features of David's experience are social/providential, not office-structural, and the NT cites the psalm's words as fulfilled speech rather than identifying David's mockery-event as a typos; Promise-Fulfillment and Longitudinal Theme describe the actual NT usage more accurately than a type-antitype scheme would.
Trajectory Table: 129 - Rejection Then Exaltation (Pattern of Suffering and Glory)