Strange animals - 7 April 2009 |
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Psalm 22 is full of animals.
Most obviously, there are the bulls, lions and dogs of vv. 12-21, arranged chiastically, with the added twist that the (domestic, though a little scary) bulls of v. 12 have turned into wild (and therefore utterly terrifying) oxen by v. 21.
A – Bulls (12)
B - Lion (13)
C - Dogs (16)
C - Dog (20)
B - Lion (21)
A – Wild oxen (21)
These animals are described in similar terms to the mockers of vv. 6-8 (compare for example v. 7 with v. 13). Indeed, the animals are almost grotesquely personified: they ’stare and gloat’ (v. 17), and in v. 20 David pleads to be delivered from (literally) ‘the hand [Heb. 'yad'] of the dog’. Perhaps the violent aggression of the animals (vv. 12-21) is intended not as a description of something different from the sophisticated contempt of the mockers (vv. 6-8), but as another angle on the same experience.
Then there’s v. 6: ‘I am a worm and not a man’. Assailed by animals, David himself becomes almost dehumanised – a worm, a creature of death.
Finally, there’s another animal in the superscription: ‘The Doe of the Dawn’. In almost every biblical occurrence, the Doe is a symbol of life, vigour, freedom. For example:
He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the heights. (2 Sam 22:34)
Naphtali is a doe let loose that bears beautiful fawns. (Gen 49:21)
But there’s one exception. Jeremiah 14:5 says that in the severest of famine ‘even the doe in the field forsakes her newborn fawn because there is no grass.’ The occcurrence here of ‘doe’ and ‘foresake’ in such close proximity is striking, for the same two words appear right at the start of Psalm 22. Perhaps Jeremiah 14:5 finds an ominous echo in Psalm 22. Perhaps the doe, so often representing life and freedom, is in Psalm 22 twisted into a symbol of abandonment.
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Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Bible, Minister's Blog