Sep 26
14
Ps 22:16. “For dogs have compassed me.”
Here he marks the more ignoble crowd, who, while less strong than their brutal leaders, were not less ferocious, for there they were howling and barking like unclean and hungry dogs! Hunters frequently surround their game with a circle, and gradually encompass them with an ever-narrowing ring of dogs and men.
Such a picture is before us. In the centre stands, not a panting stag, but a bleeding, fainting man, and around him are the enraged and unpitying wretches who have hounded him to his doom.
Here we have the “hind of the morning” of whom the psalm so plaintively sings, hunted by bloodhounds, all thirsting to devour him! The assembly of the wicked have inclosed me. Thus the Jewish people were unchurched, and that which called itself an assembly of the righteous is justly for its sins marked upon the forehead as an assembly of the wicked. This is not the only occasion when professed churches of God have become synagogues of Satan, and have persecuted the Holy and the Just One.
C.H.Spurgeon