My God, Why?
All who see me mock me; they sneer and shake their heads: Psalm 22:7 · Berean Standard Bible
Everyone who sees him mocks him openly—sneering and shaking their heads in derision.
Public humiliation is part of the suffering. He's not just sick or in pain in private; he's a spectacle, an object of contempt. The shaking of heads was a gesture of mockery and dismissal.
The psalmist, describing the crowd's response.
This detail shows how real people add to spiritual suffering through cruelty, anticipating the mockery Jesus endured during His crucifixion.
Those who witness the psalmist's suffering react not with compassion but with contempt—they mock, sneer, and shake their heads in derision.
The *seeing* (רוֹאֵיכָ, royecha) emphasizes public visibility—this humiliation occurs before witnesses, intensifying shame through social performance. *Mock* (יִלְעַג, yil'ag) and *sneer* (שְׂפָתַם, sefatam—literally 'with their lips') denote deliberate mockery, while *shaking heads* (נוֹנוּעוּ רֹאשׁ, nonu'u rosh) constitutes a gesture of contempt well-attested in biblical and extra-biblical sources. The *Midrash Tehillim* interprets these mockers as demonic forces or, alternatively, as representatives of human malice triggered by visible misfortune—the ancient world's tendency to read suffering as evidence of divine disfavor.
The psalmist, describing the public humiliation that compounds his physical anguish.
The evangelists explicitly identify this scene in the crucifixion accounts: Matthew 27:39-40 depicts the crowd wagging their heads at the crucified Christ, fulfilling this very gesture, suggesting that Christ's passion recapitulates this psalm's every particular—he becomes the worm, the object of universal contempt.
5They cried out to You and were set free; they trusted in You and were not disappointed.
6But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people.
7All who see me mock me; they sneer and shake their heads:
8“He trusts in the LORD, let the LORD deliver him; let the LORD rescue him, since He delights in him.”
9Yet You brought me forth from the womb; You made me secure at my mother’s breast.
Read all of Psalm 22 — Begins with a cry Jesus echoes on the cross. The anguish is real — but so is the turn toward praise that comes at the end.
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