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Messianic Prophecies

Psalms 38:11

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 38:11

My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague. My kinsmen stand far away.

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I am in pain and bowed down greatly. I go mourning all day long.

For my waist is filled with burning. There is no soundness in my flesh.

I am faint and severely bruised. I have groaned by reason of the anguish of my heart.

Lord, all my desire is before you. My groaning is not hidden from you.

My heart throbs. My strength fails me. As for the light of my eyes, it has also left me.

My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague. My kinsmen stand far away.

They also who seek after my life lay snares. Those who seek my hurt speak mischievous things, and meditate deceits all day long.

But I, as a deaf man, don’t hear. I am as a mute man who doesn’t open his mouth.

Yes, I am as a man who doesn’t hear, in whose mouth are no reproofs.

For I hope in you, Yahweh. You will answer, Lord my God.

For I said, “Don’t let them gloat over me, or exalt themselves over me when my foot slips.”

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

The messianic-fulfillment reading holds that Psalm 38:11's portrait of friends and companions withdrawing from the afflicted sufferer is realized when Jesus' acquaintances and the Galilean women watch the crucifixion from a distance (Luke 23:49). On this reading the recurrence of the isolation motif across Psalm 22, Psalm 31:11, and Psalm 38:11 forms a converging, cumulative pattern in which independent psalm texts anticipate the same Passion scene. Proponents argue that the density of correspondence between lament imagery and the crucifixion points to intentional design rather than coincidence. They read Jesus as the righteous sufferer these laments ultimately describe.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

The critical reading holds that the abandonment of the sufferer by friends is a stock convention of the individual-lament genre, recurring across many psalms because it names a universal human experience. On this view, pairing Psalm 38:11 with Luke 23:49 restates a Passion detail already linked to Psalm 31:11 and the Psalm 22 block, so a single NT moment is counted as multiple distinct prophecies drawn from different psalms. Critics note that a motif is not more predictive for recurring in more psalms, since ubiquity marks a literary formula rather than a specific forecast. On this reading the specificity lies in the gospel narrative, not 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.

  • Luke 23:49 Echo

    Luke 23:49 narrates bystanders standing at a distance without quoting or citing the psalm; commentators note only a verbal resonance with the LXX isolation language of Ps 38:11 / 88:8.