Psalm 22:9-10 meaning

Jesus the Messiah was also chosen by God from before His birth to be His Servant. The psalmist’s account of his own predetermined rejection mirrors how the Messiah would be rejected by the people. 

The Immediate Meaning of David’s Psalm 22:9-10

After considering how the people despise him and the ways his enemies slander and delegitimize him as a prospective king, David, the psalmist, returns his thoughts to God.

Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb;
You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts.
Upon You I was cast from birth;
You have been my God from my mother’s womb (v 9-10).

With these words, David reminds himself of who he is in the LORD. He seems to be combating the lies and slanders of his enemies with truth. Instead of despairing of what his enemies say about him, David seeks refuge in who God says he is. 

The people regard him as “a worm and not a man” (Psalm 22:6), but God created David the psalmist in His own image. It was God who brought David forth from the womb. This sentiment is similar to the one expressed in Psalm 139:

“For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother’s womb.
I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
(Psalm 139:13-14a)

Because God is the One who created the psalmist, God’s opinion of him matters more than all the people—who did not create him. David’s reference—from the womb can also be a figure of speech signifying before his beginning. 

Tuning out the rejection and slanders, David praises God for what He has done. 

He specifically praises God in personal terms. The expression—You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts—captures the thought that there was never a time when David can recall not knowing about God. From his very infancy, when he nursed upon his mother’s breasts, before David could even speak or have conscious memory, God was with him.

The expression—Upon You I was cast from birth—indicates that the psalmist was predestined by God to be with Him from his first breath, his very start, his beginning. 

The Hebrew word that is translated as cast in this verse is the word: שָׁלַךְ (H7993). It is pronounced “shaw-lak” and it means to be “thrown out” or “thrown away” or more roughly, “exiled.” It can also mean “adventured.” David seems to be saying that it was foreordained that he would be rejected, thrown away, cast out by the people and that the Person he was predestined from birth to be cast upon was the LORD. In other words, this humiliation and painful rejection was part of God’s plan. It was a divinely appointed adventure and exile for David’s life. 

Even though it is extremely painful to be rejected and cast away by people, there is no better Person or place to be cast to than God. God is good. He is our protector and defender. “God is our refuge and strength” (Psalm 46:1) and is an ever-present help in our troubles.

If Psalm 22 refers to David’s time of captivity and exile among the Philistines (1 Samuel 21:10-15), then he is choosing to adopt a perspective of his circumstances with remarkable faith. Note how he does not say that he was cast upon, thrown out, or exiled to the Philistines, but rather David says he was cast upon and exiled to God.

David concludes this thought by reiterating it: You have been my God from my mother’s womb.

Even before he was born, God chose David to be His servant. When the prophet Samuel rebuked King Saul for his foolishness and pride, and told him that he would lose his kingdom, the prophet said: 

“The LORD has sought out for Himself a man after His own heart, and the Lord has appointed him as ruler over His people.”
(1 Samuel 13:14)

David, the psalmist, was this man whom Samuel spoke of—the man after the LORD’s heart, whose God has been his God before he was born, from his mother’s womb. 

You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts.
Upon You I was cast from birth;
You have been my God from my mother’s womb (v 9-10).

Psalm 22:9-10 as a Messianic Prophecy

This passage is also prophetic of Jesus, the Messiah. 

Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb
You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts.
Upon You I was cast from birth;
You have been my God from my mother’s womb (vs 9-10).

Jesus was God born into the world as a human (John 1:1, 14). His mother was Mary, who was a virgin betrothed to an upright man, named Joseph (Matthew 1:18-19). Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb, by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18, 1:20, Luke 1:35). 

Isaiah prophesied of the Messiah (Jesus), that:

“The LORD called Me from the womb;
From the body of My mother He named Me.”
(Isaiah 49:1b)

From the miraculous circumstances of His birth and the prophecies of Isaiah, it is apparent how Psalm 22:9-10 may be said of Jesus more than any other person that: You (God) are He who brought me forth from the womb…and that: You have been my God from my mother’s womb.

As a very young child Jesus learned to trust God. He probably learned how to trust God through the influence of His father and mother—who themselves trusted God when they learned that Mary was miraculously pregnant and going to bear the Messiah. They continued to trust God through Jesus’s early years, during their escape from murderous King Herod and their exile to Egypt (Matthew 2:13-23). During these wonderful and frightful events, God made the infant Jesus learn to trust as He nursed upon His mother’s breasts. 

As a twelve-year-old boy, He was listening and asking questions in the temple of Jerusalem amidst the religious teachers with amazing insight (Luke 2:42-47). When His parents asked Him where He had been, He asked them, “Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” This event and His respectful answer demonstrated how Jesus had learned to trust God and was very close to the LORD. Luke affirms this when he wrote: 

“And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”
(Luke 2:52)

Finally, like David the psalmist, so too could Jesus say to the LORD: Upon You I was cast from birth. As the Messiah and Son of God, Jesus was born with a special purpose to redeem Israel through His suffering. 

As explained earlier, the Hebrew word that is translated as cast (שָׁלַךְ—“shaw-lak”—H7993) means to be “thrown away” and “cast out”, and it can also mean “adventured.” Both senses are true of Jesus.

Jesus the Messiah, was cast from birth—designated and adventured—for God’s mission from before the foundations of time (1 Peter 1:20, Revelation 13:8). He was the LORD’s hidden and select arrow for this special purpose (Isaiah 49:2). Jesus was born to save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). 

And Jesus was born to die (John 3:16). His mission to be rejected by His people, suffer, and die on a cross constantly loomed like a troubling shadow before Him (John 12:18). But Jesus ran the race of his adventure with gusto—“for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2b).

Jesus the Messiah was cast from birth—to be thrown away and rejected—by the people He came to save (John 1:10-11). Jesus, the Messiah was cast away and rejected by the people when He stood on trial before Pilate. When the Roman governor offered the people the choice to either release Jesus or the notorious prisoner called “Barabbas” (Matthew 27:16-17), the people asked for him to release Barabbas and to crucify Jesus (Matthew 27:21-23).

Echoing David’s rejection in Psalm 22, Isaiah predicted that the Messiah would be cast away by His people:

“He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.”
(Isaiah 53:3)

The Messiah’s rejection by the people was prefigured in the life of David and Psalm 22, one-thousand years before Jesus was born and was prophesied about by Isaiah seven-hundred years before He was brought forth from His mother’s womb.