Psalms 22:6 Meaning: What It Means to Feel Like a Worm

The Hebrew word for worm here is tola'at, the same word used in Isaiah 41:14 where Israel is called a worm. It does not mean a soft garden worm. It refers to the scarlet worm, the kermes insect, crushed to produce dye. The point is not only smallness but utter defenselessness, something you step on without a second thought. David says he is “no man”, that is, he no longer receives the treatment a human being deserves. The words “reproach” and “despised” carry the force of public scorn. The people who see him mock and shake their heads. This language becomes the very vocabulary of the suffering servant in Isaiah: “He was despised, and we did not esteem him.” The psalmist is not exaggerating. He is describing a real experience of being cast out, and this honest naming of pain is the first step toward the deliverance he will soon cry out for.

Readers across the centuries have understood this verse in two ways that do not cancel each other. David certainly experienced persecution from Saul and others, and the language fits a man in desperate circumstances. At the same time, the early church saw the entire psalm as prophecy of Christ, because the details, the mocking, the pierced hands and feet, the gambling for garments, fit no one else so exactly. Wesley wrote that the description “doth not so truly agree to David as to Christ.” Calvin called David a type of Christ, one who suffered in ways that would be fulfilled in the Messiah. Both readings are faithful: the psalm is a real human lament and also a Spirit-breathed portrait of the One who would be rejected by his own.

Some readers think this verse is about feeling worthless inside, a problem of low self-esteem. In fact, David is describing an objective social reality: he is being publicly mocked and rejected, treated as less than human. The word “worm” here is not a psychological self-image but a picture of how others view him. The psalmist is not wallowing in self-pity; he is naming his suffering honestly before God, which is the beginning of his cry for deliverance.

This week you might feel that way. Maybe someone has dismissed you, laughed at you, or made you feel invisible. You could stuff the feeling down or pretend it does not hurt. David does not do that. He brings the raw truth to God. You can do the same. Tell God exactly how you feel. Use your own words. And remember: the One who was called a worm and no man for your sake knows exactly what that kind of rejection costs. He did not stay in the dust. Neither will you, but first you must say what is true.