“I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.” -Psalm 22:14–15
The profound imagery paints a picture of a man on door’s death, both physically and emotionally. He is “poured our like water,” or drained of all his physical energy. The deep immobilizing pain of racked joints adds to his miserable demise. His heart is like wax; that is, his heart is melted away. He is literally without coeur (heart), or dis-couraged. A potsherd is a piece of broken pottery, a fragment of clay harden by a kiln and depleted of all moisture. He is physically and emotional dehydrated to the point of death. His tongue so dry he cannot speak and his final death bed is a bed of dust.
The language is remarkably dramatic and intense. But so was the death of our Lord, Jesus Christ, for our sake. And that is what David seems to be prophesying. His own desperate and apparent demise is only a type of Christ’s real death, a shadow of the reality that took place for our sins and the sins of the world more than two millennia ago (1 John 2:2).