Strong Bulls of Bashan: Meaning in Psalm 22
Short answer: In Psalm 22:12-13 the speaker says, "Many bulls have surrounded me. Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me." Bashan was a fertile region east of the Jordan famous for rich pasture and powerful, well-fed cattle. By naming those bulls, the psalm paints enemies not as weak or random but as strong, prosperous, and closing in from every side. The next verse compares them to a roaring lion tearing its prey. The image is part of a lament that moves from abandonment to trust and finally to praise among the nations. It describes real suffering honestly, and the New Testament applies the psalm to Jesus on the cross, so the bulls of Bashan have long been read as a picture of hostile power arrayed against the innocent sufferer.
What Bashan Was and Why Its Bulls Mattered
Bashan was the northern region east of the Jordan, the territory of Og the king of Bashan, later assigned to the half-tribe of Manasseh. The Old Testament consistently treats it as prime grazing land. Deuteronomy 32:14 lists the choice products of the land, including butter, milk, and rams, and names the animals of Bashan among the best. Riches and fatness define the place in Israel's memory. When a psalmist wants to describe enemies who are strong, well-fed, and intimidating, he does not need to explain the reference. His audience knows exactly what Bashan means.
This matters because the image is not merely decorative. A bull in the ancient Near East was a symbol of raw strength and, in some settings, of pagan worship. Bashan's cattle were the prize breed. To say that strong bulls of Bashan have encircled the speaker is to say that the most formidable kind of opposition has closed in. The psalmist is not exaggerating for effect; he is reaching for the most vivid available picture of overwhelming hostile power. The picture lands because the geography and economy behind it were familiar to every Israelite who sang the psalm.
The word translated strong carries the sense of mighty or robust, animals in their full prime. These are not lean, starving beasts; they are the fattened, powerful animals that a wealthy region could produce. Their strength is the point. The sufferer is not surrounded by nuisance or inconvenience but by force. The psalm gives language to people who feel outmatched, who cannot match the power pressing in on them. Naming that power honestly is part of how Scripture teaches God's people to pray, rather than pretending that opposition is smaller than it is.
Notice also that the bulls encircle. Surrounding is a military image as much as a pastoral one. An encircled city has no way out; an encircled person has no gap in the ring. The psalm builds the pressure step by step: many bulls have surrounded me, and the strong ones of Bashan have encircled me. The repetition is deliberate. Hebrew poetry often says the same thing twice to intensify it. The effect is claustrophobic, and readers who have felt trapped by people more powerful than themselves recognize the feeling immediately.
The Roaring Lion in the Very Next Line
The verses that follow shift the metaphor without warning. The same enemies who are bulls become a lion, and the psalm describes a mouth opened wide to tear and roar. Two images of dangerous animals, one herd and one predator, are stacked together to convey menace from every direction. Bashan was also known for its forests and wild animals, so the shift is not jarring to an ancient ear. The point is cumulative: this is not one kind of threat but everything that hunts and tramples, closing in at once.
The lion image adds cruelty to strength. A herd of bulls can crush and trample, but a lion tears. The psalmist is describing enemies whose hostility is not merely powerful but predatory and personal. In the wider psalm the sufferer goes on to describe being poured out like water, bones out of joint, a heart like wax, strength dried up like a potsherd. The physical imagery is intense and specific. The animals at the start are the opening movement of a sustained portrait of agony, and they prepare the reader for how low the psalm will go before it turns.
Yet even in this darkness the psalm is addressed to God. The suffering is not described into the void; it is laid before the covenant God. That is the essential move of biblical lament. The psalm does not pretend the bulls are harmless or that the lion is asleep. It tells God the truth about the danger and then, in due course, resolves to praise. The structure of the psalm teaches something important: honest description of hostile power and genuine trust in God are not enemies. They belong together in the same prayer.
Readers should also notice how the psalm's movement from anguish to praise has shaped Christian worship for centuries. The words of abandonment at the start of the psalm are quoted in the Gospels at the crucifixion, and the psalm's closing note of praise among the nations is picked up in the letter to the Hebrews. A psalm that begins with encircling bulls ends with God's praise in the great assembly. The trajectory is the point. The imagery of being surrounded is real, but it is not the final word the psalm speaks.
Who the Bulls Represent in the Psalm
The psalm does not name the enemies. It gives us their shape rather than their identity: strong, many, encircling, predatory. Interpreters have suggested various settings, and faithful readers differ on the details. What is clear is that the speaker is a righteous sufferer opposed by people with more power than he has. The psalm is not a report of one private quarrel; it is liturgical poetry given to the whole congregation. That is why it can carry the pain of a David, a later Israelite, and ultimately the Messiah himself without contradiction.
Some read the bulls as hostile rulers or nations, which fits the political weight of Bashan as a conquered kingdom and the later use of bulls for proud, oppressive powers, as in Psalm 68:30 and Jeremiah 50:27. Others read them more generally as any coalition of the powerful against the weak. Both readings are consistent with the text. The psalm leaves the identity open, and that openness is part of its usefulness. It can be prayed by anyone surrounded by strength they cannot match, whether that strength wears a crown, a uniform, or the face of a mob.
The New Testament does not leave the psalm unclaimed. Jesus quotes its opening words from the cross, and the gospel writers describe the crucifixion in language that echoes it: the mocking, the pierced hands and feet, the dividing of garments. The early church read the whole psalm as a messianic lament. If that reading is right, the strong bulls of Bashan are not only ancient enemies of an ancient sufferer but a picture of all the hostile power that gathered against the innocent Son of God at the cross.
That does not mean every detail must be assigned to a specific historical person or group. It means the psalm gives the church a vocabulary for the cross and, by extension, for the suffering of Christ's people. When believers are surrounded by strength and malice they cannot overcome, they are not praying something foreign to Scripture. They are praying a psalm that the Lord himself prayed, in words first shaped by the image of dangerous animals closing in on every side.
Bashan's Reputation Turns into a Warning Elsewhere
Bashan is not always a compliment in the prophets. Amos 4:1 addresses the wealthy women of Samaria as cows of Bashan who oppress the poor and demand drinks from their husbands. The same region that supplied fat cattle becomes a nickname for comfortable, self-indulgent people who use their strength against the vulnerable. The image cuts both ways. Bashan's abundance can describe enemies who threaten the righteous, or it can expose the prosperous who have become the threat. The prophets use the region's reputation as a moral mirror.
Ezekiel 39:18 speaks of a sacrificial feast of the mighty, of rams, lambs, goats, and bulls, all of them fatlings of Bashan. There the fatness is not praise but judgment; the powerful who exalted themselves are brought low. Jeremiah 50:27 commands that all her bulls be killed and go down to the slaughter, announcing the day of Babylon's visitation. Deuteronomy 32:14 uses the same herds positively, as evidence of God's generosity to his people. The word Bashan shifts meaning with context, and careful readers should track that shift instead of assuming one fixed idea.
This range should make us cautious about flattening the image into a single slogan. In Psalm 22 the bulls are the threat pressing on the sufferer. In Amos the cows of Bashan are the oppressors themselves. In Ezekiel and Jeremiah the fat bulls are the proud who will be judged. In Deuteronomy they are a gift. The common thread is strength and plenty, and the question the prophets keep pressing is what you do with strength and plenty when you have them.
For the reader of Psalm 22, that broader biblical background deepens the stakes. The enemies are not merely numerous; they are the kind of power that Scripture consistently warns will be held accountable. God is not indifferent to bulls that trample. The psalm's confidence, developed later in its closing praise, rests on the conviction that the God who hears the afflicted will finally deal with the strong who oppress. The image of Bashan's bulls belongs inside that larger biblical pattern of justice.
What the Image Teaches About Prayer in Crisis
One practical gift of this psalm is its honesty. The speaker does not minimize the danger or spiritualize it into something vague. He names the animals, counts the encirclement, and describes the tearing mouth. Christians sometimes feel pressure to sound calm when they are terrified, as if strong feeling were a lack of faith. Psalm 22 gives permission to say plainly that you are surrounded. Faith does not require pretending the bulls are not there. It requires bringing them before God, which is exactly what the psalm does.
Another gift is the psalm's refusal to stay in the pit. It moves through petition to testimony, from howling to praise, from the individual sufferer to the great assembly and the ends of the earth. The Encircled one becomes the declaring one. That movement is not a denial of pain; it is pain carried all the way through to trust. For anyone using this psalm in prayer, the model suggests we should not rush to the resolution, but we should not stop short of it either.
The psalm also teaches perspective about power. Bashan's bulls are impressive, but they are creatures. They are not God. The psalm's hope is not that the sufferer will become a stronger bull but that the LORD will act. In a world where strength often seems decisive, that is a bracing claim. The God of Israel is not intimidated by herds or empires. The psalm's later promise that the kingdom belongs to the LORD places every encircling power under his authority, however thick the ring may look from inside it.
Finally, the psalm gives a pattern for praying with others. It is written for the congregation, sung in the assembly, and echoed in the New Testament in the context of gathered worship. Someone reading it alone can pray it, but its natural home is the church's common prayer. When one member is surrounded, the whole body can take up the words. The strong bulls of Bashan were never meant to be faced only in private.
How This Passage Points to Christ
The New Testament treats Psalm 22 as a psalm about Jesus. He quotes its first line from the cross, and the passion narratives echo its details. If that connection is correct, then the encircling bulls are part of a portrait of Christ's suffering that was written long before the event. The Gospels do not invent the imagery; they recognize it. The innocent sufferer surrounded by hostile power, his strength poured out, his garments divided, is the one Christians confess as Lord and Savior.
This reading does not cancel the psalm's use by ordinary sufferers; it grounds it. Because Christ prayed this psalm in his agony, those who suffer with him can pray it too, knowing he has gone before them. The ring of bulls did not have the last word at the cross. The psalm's own movement toward vindication and praise finds its yes in the resurrection. The one who was surrounded and torn is now the one in the midst of the assembly declaring God's name, as the psalm's closing lines promise.
There is also a sober warning in the wider biblical use of Bashan's bulls. Those who use strength to crush the weak are not outside God's notice. The prophets announce a day when the fatlings go down to slaughter and the proud are brought low. That is not a threat Christians should wield gloatingly; it is a reminder to examine our own use of power. The psalm's comfort for the oppressed is paired with Scripture's consistent concern that the strong answer for how they treated the weak.
So the image does two things at once. It comforts the surrounded with the knowledge that God sees and will act, and it warns the strong who imagine their strength is permanent. Both notes belong to the gospel. The crucified Messiah is both the sufferer who was surrounded and the Lord before whom every proud bull will bow. Reading Psalm 22:12-13 in that frame keeps the image from becoming either sentimental or merely angry. It becomes what the psalm intended: a truthful prayer that ends in praise.
Biblical fidelity check
What the passage establishes is limited and clear. Psalm 22:12-13 uses the strong bulls of Bashan as a poetic image of hostile power surrounding the speaker. The text does not identify the enemies by name, does not specify a historical occasion, and does not teach anything about animal sacrifice or about literal cattle. It is metaphor within a lament. Anything built on the image beyond the reality of encircling hostility and the speaker's distress is inference, not statement. Careful teaching should mark the difference between what the verse says and what readers have often added to it.
A common misreading treats the bulls of Bashan as a code for a specific named enemy, such as a particular demonic power or a modern nation, and then builds a whole framework on that identification. The psalm does not do this. It gives the shape of opposition, not a roster. Another misreading spiritualizes the image so completely that the real human cruelty behind the psalm disappears. The better reading holds both: real, strong, human hostility described through vivid animal imagery, laid before the God who judges the strong and vindicates the afflicted.
Other passages that speak to Psalm 22:12-13
The wider prophetic and legal background helps readers hear the psalm in Israel's own vocabulary. Amos pronounces judgment on the comfortable who crush the needy, a theme developed in Amos 1: Judgment on the Nations and Amos 2: Judgment on Moab, Judah, Israel. The same prophet exposes the privileged who mistake blessing for license in Amos 3: Judgment on Israel's Privilege, and Amos 4: God's Unheeded Discipline names the cows of Bashan directly. Read together with Psalm 22, these passages show that the biblical writers were consistent about strong power turned against the weak.
Frequently asked questions
What were the strong bulls of Bashan?
Bashan was a fertile region east of the Jordan known for rich pasture and powerful livestock. Its bulls became a byword for strength and abundance, as Deuteronomy 32:14 indicates when it lists the rams of Bashan among the land's finest produce. In Psalm 22 the image is figurative: the enemies encircling the sufferer are compared to those formidable animals. The point is their strength and number, not their species. The psalm uses a familiar picture of overwhelming force to describe hostile people closing in from every side, followed immediately by a lion image that intensifies the danger.
Does Psalm 22 predict the crucifixion?
The New Testament clearly connects the psalm with Jesus. He quotes its opening words from the cross, and the passion accounts echo its descriptions of mocking, pierced hands and feet, and divided garments. Many Christians therefore read the whole psalm as messianic. Others read it as a lament that the New Testament applies to Jesus without claiming it was exclusively predictive. Faithful readers differ on the details. What is not disputed is that the early church found in this psalm a true portrait of Christ's suffering and of the vindication that follows it in resurrection and praise.
Is Bashan always a negative image in the Bible?
No. Deuteronomy 32:14 uses the cattle of Bashan positively, as part of God's generous provision to Israel. The word becomes negative in contexts where strength and luxury turn into oppression, as in Amos 4:1, where wealthy women are called cows of Bashan because they crush the needy. Ezekiel 39:18 and Jeremiah 50:27 also picture proud, powerful bulls brought down in judgment. The consistent theme is not the region itself but what powerful people do with their strength. Bashan's reputation simply supplies the imagery.
