Strong Bulls of Bashan Have Hedged Me In

Psalm 22 is a prophetic psalm concerning the suffering and death of our Savior, YAHSHUA. Verse twelve is of great significance for us to understand the meaning of the phrase “Strong bulls of Bashan have hedged Me in.” It requires us to know a piece of history of its past and why this prophecy included the mountain of Bashan in YAHSHUA’S trials. Mount Herman, a well-known mount, is identified with Mount Bashan, for it forms the northern border of the region of Bashan, a geographical reality found in Psalm 68:15-17: “Is Mount Bashan the high mountain of summits, Mount Bashan [east of the Jordan] the mount of God? Why do you look with grudging and envy, you many-peaked mountains, at the mountain which God has desired for His dwelling place? Yes, the Lord will dwell in it forever.”

Psalm 22 is a prophetic description of the sufferings of our Savior to take place many years later. You see, the atonement of mankind was in YAHWEH’S mind from the foundation of the world. The Old Testament pictures this event in various passages of its prophetic pages. Genesis 3:15: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her Offspring (Seed YAHSHUA); He will bruise and tread your head underfoot, and you will lie in wait and bruise His heel;” Psalm 22; Isaiah 52:14-15; Isaiah 53. In Psalm 22:12-13 the psalmist uses the bulls of Bashan as YAHSHUA’S foes coming to attack Him: He says, “Many bulls have surrounded me; strong bulls of Bashan have hedged me in. Against me they opened their mouths wide, like a ravening and roaring lion.” Prophecy from Moses concerning the tribe of Dan connects to the word of the Psalm 22:12-13. He said of Dan: “Dan is a lion’s whelp that leaps forth from Bashan” (Deut. 33:22). The Psalmist uses the term “a ravening and roaring lion.” Before the death of Jacob, he said this of Dan: “Dan shall be a serpent by the way, a horned snake in the path that bite at the horse’s heels, so that his rider falls backward…” (Gen. 49:17). That’s what Dan became and will become in the frame of time. In the book of Judges chapter 18, we read the idolatrous acts of Dan’s tribe’s idolatry. Separated from God through their rebellious and unfaithful ways, this tribe is excluded from the 144 thousand to be chosen and sealed for their protection in the tribulation time, as they become God’s messengers of the Gospel.

History tells us through the book of Enock that the mountain of Bashan and mount Hermon were places for spiritual evil, in particular the Watches- fallen angels. These mountains constituted the places where the giants chose to dwell and there they engaged with women. “There were giants on the earth in those days – and also afterward- when the sons of God lived with the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown” (Gen. 6:4).