Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

(Heb.: 22:13-14)Looking back upon his relationship to God, which has existed from the earliest times, the sufferer has become somewhat more calm, and is ready, in Psa 22:13, to describe his outward and inner life, and thus to unburden his heart. Here he calls his enemies פּרים, bullocks, and in fact אבּירי בּשׁן (cf. Psa 50:13 with Deu 32:14), strong ones of Bashan, the land rich in luxuriant oak forests and fat pastures (בשׁן = buthne, which in the Beduin dialect means rich, stoneless meadow-land, vid., Job S. 509f.; tr. ii. pp. 399f.) north of Jabbok extending as far as to the borders of Hermon, the land of Og and afterwards of Manasseh (Num 30:1). They are so called on account of their robustness and vigour, which, being acquired and used in opposition to God is brutish rather than human (cf. Amo 4:1). Figures like these drawn from the animal world and applied in an ethical sense are explained by the fact, that the ancients measured the instincts of animals according to the moral rules of human nature; but more deeply by the fact, that according to the indisputable conception of Scripture, since man was made to fall by Satan through the agency of an animal, the animal and Satan are the two dominant powers in Adamic humanity. כּתּר is a climactic synonym of סבב. On Psa 22:14 compare the echoes in Jeremiah, Lam 2:16; Lam 3:46. Finally, the foes are all comprehended under the figure of a lion, which, as soon as he sights his prey, begins to roar, Amo 3:4. The Hebrew טרף, discerpere, according to its root, belongs to חרף, carpere. They are instar leonis dilaniaturi et rugientis.