Bible Strands
Psalms 22:12
Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist speaks in a moment of acute distress, positioned between a plea for God’s nearness and a description of attackers opening their jaws like lions.
The words — The text highlights פָרִים (parim), literally bulls, alongside the verbs סְבָבוּ/נִי (seva.vu/ni) and כִּתְּרוּ/נִי (kitte.ru/ni), which mean they have surrounded and encircled me.
The thread — Bashan’s bulls reappear in Psalms 68:30 as a metaphor for a herd of nations, while Amos 4:1 references the women of Bashan to identify those who oppress the poor.
Why it lands — The verse requires the reader to measure the speaker’s desperation against the scale of the physical threat, grounding the plea for rescue in concrete, observable imagery.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
Cross-references
- Amos 4:1 Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy, who say to your husbands, “Bring us more to drink.”
- Acts 4:27 In fact, this is the very city where Herod and Pontius Pilate conspired with the Gentiles and the people of Israel against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed.
- Psalms 68:30 Rebuke the beast in the reeds, the herd of bulls among the calves of the nations, until it submits, bringing bars of silver. Scatter the nations who delight in war.
- Matthew 27:1 When morning came, all the chief priests and elders of the people conspired against Jesus to put Him to death.
- Deuteronomy 32:14 with curds from the herd and milk from the flock, with the fat of lambs, with rams from Bashan, and goats, with the choicest grains of wheat. From the juice of the finest grapes you drank the wine.
- Ezekiel 39:18 You will eat the flesh of the mighty and drink the blood of the princes of the earth as though they were rams, lambs, goats, and bulls—all the fattened animals of Bashan.
- Jeremiah 50:11 “Because you rejoice, because you sing in triumph—you who plunder My inheritance—because you frolic like a heifer treading grain and neigh like stallions,
- Isaiah 34:7 And the wild oxen will fall with them, the young bulls with the strong ones. Their land will be drenched with blood, and their soil will be soaked with fat.