But thou art he that took me out of the womb; thou didst make me trust, upon my mother's breasts.
On the cross, His enemies threw His own trust in God back at Him as a joke. He answered by looking back to the day He was born, and two questions follow: what does it mean that God "made" Him trust, and why speak of infancy at such a moment?
These words come straight after He tells God what the crowd said and did to Him.
Though the perfect Sufferer saw the power of man and Satan, He took the cup straight from the hand of God... He felt their "scorn," the shaking of the head, and the mockery of saying, "He trusted in Jehovah that He would deliver Him; let Him deliver Him, since He delighted in Him."... But He told God what men said and did, and added, "You are He who took Me out of the womb: You made Me hope when I was on My mother's breasts."
(Older translations read "made Me hope" where the ESV has "made me trust.")
One writer finds three things here: confidence in God, dependence on God, and subjection to God. Each one goes back to the very start of His life.
The One whom men despised, and God forsook, was the only fully righteous Man. From the moment He came into this world, perfect confidence in God marked Him, for He could say, "You made Me trust, upon My mother's breasts." He was also perfectly dependent, for He could add, "I was cast upon You from the womb." And He was perfect in His subjection, for He says, "You are My God." Yet He is the only One whose confidence in God, dependence on God and subjection to God were perfect from the beginning of His life on earth to the end. And He is the One found in deepest trouble with "none to help."
The Gospels tell us almost nothing about His infancy. This verse looks back to it, and finds trust already there.
The New Testament says very little about the childhood and hidden life of Jesus... Here, as He is about to lay down His holy life, His holy mind looks back over it. He goes back to its beginning, when He was a baby on His mother's breasts. He trusted in God. There was never another baby like that... In the small, helpless state of infancy, He was cast upon God. What pleasure that must have given God. Babies are not very old when they begin to show signs of self-will. A temper will display itself in the tiniest child. Never did it show itself in the Lord Jesus.
Many people have leaned on God at some point in life. The claim made here is of a different order.
He was as absolutely dependent upon God as He was obedient to Him... He never for one moment abandoned the attitude of entire dependence upon the living God... He breathed the very atmosphere of dependence from Bethlehem to Calvary. He was the only Man who ever lived a life of uninterrupted dependence upon God, from first to last. Others have depended partially, He did it perfectly. Others have occasionally or even mainly looked to God; He never looked anywhere else. He drew everything from God, not some things or most things.
That dependence showed itself as a refusal to act on His own will. One writer connects it to the child pictured in Revelation, born to rule yet marked by total reliance:
The Man Child seems to speak of His utter dependence upon God... As the Man Child He never moved from the place of dependence upon God; He did not exercise an independent will. His life was one unbroken obedience.
The verse names two acts of God: He took Him from the womb, and He made Him trust.
The care which watched over Him was unceasing from the womb to the grave. His Spirit had said so long before in the prophets: "I was cast upon You from the womb. You are My God from My mother's belly." "You made Me hope [or, You kept Me in safety] when I was on My mother's breasts." It was tireless throughout... It watched over Him that very night when the angel warned Joseph to flee into Egypt.
Recalling a lifetime of God's care does not end the sorrow. It becomes the ground of a fresh appeal.
Christ speaks of the people's mockery of His trust in God as His unfailing Helper, but He knows that from the womb He had been chosen and preserved by God. And He still calls upon God not to be far from Him in His trouble, but to help Him, for there is none else.
- Mocked — the crowd threw His trust back at Him as proof it had failed; He answered by tracing that trust to God.
- Took — God took Him from the womb. From the womb He was chosen and kept safe.
- Made — God made Him trust. That trust was there before He was old enough to choose it.
- Unbroken — others have trusted God at times; He looked nowhere else, from Bethlehem to Calvary. God's care over Him never stopped either.
- Alone — the one Man whose confidence, dependence and subjection were perfect is the one left in deepest trouble with none to help.
I was cast upon thee from the womb; thou art my God from my mother's belly.
Psalm 22 is the psalm of the cross, and here the Sufferer looks back past His childhood to the hour of His birth. Two questions follow: who can speak of God like this from infancy, and why does such a life end with no one to help?
The Sufferer looks back and names three things that were true of Him from birth. Older translations render the line as "I was cast upon you from the womb" — the wording these writers quote.
Righteous men may indeed have suffered martyrdom, but never before had a righteous man been forsaken by God… Yet the One whom men despised, and God forsook, was the only completely righteous Man. From the moment He came into this world He showed perfect confidence in God. He could say, "You made me trust, upon my mother's breasts." Further, He was perfectly dependent, for He could add, "I was cast upon you from the womb," and perfect in His subjection, for He says, "You are my God." And yet this is the one Man whose confidence in God, dependence upon God, and subjection to God was perfect from the beginning to the end of His life on earth. He is found in deepest trouble with "none to help."
Being cast on God was a settled attitude, not a single act at birth.
He was as absolutely dependent upon God as He was obedient to Him. He could say, "Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge" (Ps. 16). And again, "I was cast upon you from the womb" (Ps. 22). He never for one moment let go of complete dependence upon the living God… He breathed the very atmosphere of dependence from Bethlehem to Calvary. He was the only Man who ever lived a life of uninterrupted dependence upon God, from first to last. Others have depended partially, He did it perfectly. Others have looked to God now and then, or even most of the time; He never looked anywhere else. He found all His springs, not some of them or most of them, in God.
That same dependence shaped what He was set apart for.
He was subject to His God and went His pathway trusting in Him and in devotion to Him. This was His attitude right from the beginning: "I was cast upon you from the womb; you are my God from my mother's womb" (Ps. 22:10).
Here the Sufferer points back to how He came into the world. That birth carries an argument about how the story must end.
But in verses 9 and 10 the Lord Jesus appeals to the fact of His own birth by the intervention of God — we know, a virgin birth. When God had so intervened in man's affairs to prepare a body for His Son, could this whole matter have ended by death and oblivion? Certainly not! He says, "From my mother's womb You have been my God." Could this change now that He is crucified?
He is forsaken, yet He still says "my God." The claim of verse 10 is that this address was not new on the cross.
So while He suffered for sin, our Lord confessed that His God had forsaken Him. Yet He still called Him "My God." This relationship of Jesus went back to His earliest infancy. In this very Psalm, He declares, "You are my God from my mother's womb" (v. 10). From the manger in Bethlehem right onwards, He, the perfect and blessed Man, recognised God as the One whom He obeyed and on whom He depended. But here it was a time of darkness at noon, and the difference was beyond measure. His God, in whom He trusted, had forsaken Him! And why?
The Sufferer's claim on God rests on His whole life, not on this moment alone. And no hour of need was ever greater.
He had been the dependent One from the very start, and He never turned aside from that attitude. So more than anyone He had the title to divine support, now that all others had forsaken Him. This was the hour of trouble when most He needed the sunshine of the face of God.
- Cast — "On you was I cast from my birth": confidence, dependence and subjection, perfect from the start.
- Constant — He breathed the atmosphere of dependence from Bethlehem to Calvary. Others depended in part; He depended perfectly.
- Claim — God Himself acted to bring about this birth, so this life could not end in death and oblivion.
- Contradiction — the one Man with full title to God's support is the one Man left with none to help.
- Continuity — "my God" was His word in the manger and still His word in the darkness. The bond held even when the help did not come.