IN this psalm we are permitted to draw near and listen to the breathings of the heart of our blessed Lord as He took the sinner’s place and bore our judgment or the cross. The psalm begins with His cry of agony, “My God, My God, why host Thou forsaken Me?” The Hebrew ending of the last verse might readily be translated, “It is finished.” Made sin for us, our Saviour cries, “I am a worm, and no man.” The word rendered “worm” is tola, minute creatures which were gathered in quantities and crushed in order to produce the scarlet dye, which speaks of worldly glory. On the cross the Lord Jesus was crushed in judgment that we who trust in Him might be robed in garments of glory to His eternal praise.
“I see Thee alone, brokenhearted,
Of comforters findest Thou none:
Yet Thine was the gladness of heaven,
The love and the glory Thine own.
The gall and the vinegar only,
The thirst of Thine agony stills:
Yet Thine were the streams and the fountains
Of Thine everlasting hills.”
―G. T. S.