Discovery BoxPsalms 22:1 
ContextFor the music director; according to the tune “Morning Doe;” 2 a psalm of David.
22:1 My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? 3
I groan in prayer, but help seems far away. 4
Psalms 63:1
ContextA psalm of David, written when he was in the Judean wilderness. 6
63:1 O God, you are my God! I long for you! 7
My soul thirsts 8 for you,
my flesh yearns for you,
in a dry and parched 9 land where there is no water.
1 sn Psalm 22. The psalmist cries out to the Lord for deliverance from his dangerous enemies, who have surrounded him and threaten his life. Confident that the Lord will intervene, he then vows to thank the Lord publicly for his help and anticipates a time when all people will recognize the Lord’s greatness and worship him.
2 tn Heb “according to the doe of the dawn.” Apparently this refers to a particular musical tune or style.
3 sn From the psalmist’s perspective it seems that God has abandoned him, for he fails to answer his cry for help (vv. 1b-2).
4 tn Heb “far from my deliverance [are] the words of my groaning.” The Hebrew noun שְׁאָגָה (shÿ’agah) and its related verb שָׁאַג (sha’ag) are sometimes used of a lion’s roar, but they can also describe human groaning (see Job 3:24 and Pss 32:3 and 38:8.
5 sn Psalm 63. The psalmist expresses his intense desire to be in God’s presence and confidently affirms that God will judge his enemies.
6 sn According to the psalm superscription David wrote the psalm while in the “wilderness of Judah.” Perhaps this refers to the period described in 1 Sam 23-24 or to the incident mentioned in 2 Sam 15:23.
7 tn Or “I will seek you.”
8 tn Or “I thirst.”
9 tn Heb “faint” or “weary.” This may picture the land as “faint” or “weary,” or it may allude to the effect this dry desert has on those who are forced to live in it.
