John Calvin Commentary Psalms 22:6

"But I am a worm, and no man; A reproach of men, and despised of the people." — Psalms 22:6 (ASV)

But I am a worm, and not a man. David does not complain against God as if God had dealt harshly with him; but in lamenting his condition, he says, in order to more effectively induce God to show him mercy, that he is not considered even as a man.

This, it is true, seems at first sight to have a tendency to discourage, or rather to destroy faith; but it will appear more clearly from what follows that, far from this being the case, David declares how miserable his condition is, so that by this means he may encourage himself in the hope of obtaining relief.

He therefore argues that God must eventually stretch out His hand to save him—to save him, I say, who was so severely afflicted and on the brink of despair. If God has had compassion on all who have ever been afflicted, even if only to a moderate degree, how could He forsake His servant when plunged into the lowest abyss of all calamities?

Whenever, therefore, we are overwhelmed by a great weight of afflictions, we should rather find in this a reason to encourage our hope for deliverance than allow ourselves to fall into despair. If God so severely tested His most eminent servant David, and humbled him so far that he had no place even among the most despised of men, let us not resent it if, following his example, we are brought low. We ought, however, above all to remember the Son of God, in whom we know this was also fulfilled, as Isaiah had predicted:

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:3)

These words of the prophet provide us with a sufficient refutation of the frivolous subtlety of those who have philosophized upon the word worm, as if David here pointed out some singular mystery in the generation of Christ. His meaning, however, is simply that he had been humbled beneath all men and, as it were, cut off from the number of living beings. The fact that the Son of God allowed Himself to be reduced to such ignominy, indeed, even descended to hell, is so far from obscuring His celestial glory in any respect that it is, rather, a bright mirror from which His unparalleled grace towards us is reflected.