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Messianic Prophecies

Psalms 35:11

This passage comes from the wider catalog — a broader, more lightly curated list than the core set. Both readings are shown as peers; GEBible takes no side.

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Psalms 35:11

Unrighteous witnesses rise up. They ask me about things that I don’t know about.

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Let their way be dark and slippery, Yahweh’s angel pursuing them.

For without cause they have hidden their net in a pit for me. Without cause they have dug a pit for my soul.

Let destruction come on him unawares. Let his net that he has hidden catch himself. Let him fall into that destruction.

My soul shall be joyful in Yahweh. It shall rejoice in his salvation.

All my bones shall say, “Yahweh, who is like you, who delivers the poor from him who is too strong for him; yes, the poor and the needy from him who robs him?”

Unrighteous witnesses rise up. They ask me about things that I don’t know about.

They reward me evil for good, to the bereaving of my soul.

But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth. I afflicted my soul with fasting. My prayer returned into my own bosom.

I behaved myself as though it had been my friend or my brother. I bowed down mourning, as one who mourns his mother.

But in my adversity, they rejoiced, and gathered themselves together. The attackers gathered themselves together against me, and I didn’t know it. They tore at me, and didn’t cease.

Like the profane mockers in feasts, they gnashed their teeth at me.

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

The messianic-fulfillment reading connects Psalm 35:11's complaint of malicious witnesses to the search for false testimony against Jesus before the Sanhedrin (Matthew 26:59). Proponents hold that the righteous-sufferer tradition of the Psalms finds a defining instance in Jesus' trial. They point to the correspondence between witnesses questioning the speaker about things he does not know and the conflicting, non-agreeing testimony reported at Jesus' trial (Mark 14:56, 59). On this reading the psalm's portrait of judicial persecution of an innocent contributes to the broader prophetic picture of the condemned innocent one.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

The critical reading holds that false testimony is a stock lament motif and a recurring social-legal concern across the Hebrew Bible, appearing in Deuteronomic law, prophetic texts, and wisdom literature, and describing a type of injustice rather than a specific future trial. It observes that Matthew 26:59 does not quote Psalm 35:11, so the link is thematic rather than a citation. Critics note that false witnesses at trials are among the most common forms of injustice, making the correspondence unremarkable. On this view the specificity belongs to the Gospel account, not to the psalm.

How the New Testament uses this passage

Each entry names how the New Testament author draws on the passage — a direct quotation, an allusion, an echo, or a typological reading. An echo or an allusion is not the same as a prediction; the label says which is which.

  • Matthew 26:59 Echo

    Matthew 26:59 describes the council seeking false testimony but neither quotes nor cites Psalm 35:11; the shared false-witness language is an unmarked thematic echo.