My God, Why?
Yet You brought me forth from the womb; You made me secure at my mother’s breast. Psalm 22:9 · Berean Standard Bible
Yet God brought the psalmist safely from birth through infancy, holding him secure and cared for during his most vulnerable time.
Another pivot: the psalmist remembers that God was faithful to him in the past. He existed because God brought him into being and protected him when he was completely helpless. That's historical fact he can't deny.
The psalmist, anchoring himself in his own personal history with God.
This reminds us that faith includes remembering how God has already proven faithful in your own life, not just in Israel's history.
Counterbalancing the mockers' challenge, the psalmist appeals to his infancy—God brought him forth from the womb and sustained him at his mother's breast, establishing an original divine care.
This retrospective appeal introduces what scholars identify as the *confidence section*—a structural pivot where remembrance of original divine care supplies grounds for renewed trust. The verbs *brought forth* (גָּחַל, gachal) and *made me secure* (בִטְחַנִי, bitchani) employ the same root (*btch*) as 'trust,' creating a wordplay that suggests security in infancy was itself a form of divine trust-worthiness. The *mother's breast* (שְׁדֵי־אִמִּי, shdei-immi) grounds covenant relationship in the most primal human experience of dependence and nourishment—a rhetorical move that personalizes theology through bodily memory.
The psalmist, now turning from present abandonment to founding moment of divine relationship.
This appeal to infancy—to the moment before consciousness, before moral achievement, before any reciprocal obligation—establishes that divine care is fundamentally gift rather than wage. In Christian theology, this becomes the basis for understanding grace as prior to human merit, a truth that reformers like Luther emphasized against scholastic notions of merit.
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.
10From birth I was cast upon You; from my mother’s womb You have been my God.
11Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.
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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