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Messianic Prophecies

Psalms 38:12

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 38:12

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

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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.”

For I am ready to fall. My pain is continually before me.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

The critical reading holds that scheming, snare-laying enemies are the default antagonist of the individual-lament genre, with the same vocabulary in Psalm 35:7, 56:5-6, 64:2-6, and 140:5. On this view 'my enemies plot against me' is among the most generic descriptions possible, so any historically persecuted figure could claim the psalm as fulfilled. Critics argue the specific plots in the gospels supply all the concrete detail, while the psalm contributes only conventional adversary language. Mapping the convention onto Mark 14:1 and Matthew 22:15 therefore reflects selection backward from the NT, not prediction forward.

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

The fulfillment reading takes Psalm 38:12's depiction of enemies laying snares and plotting ruin as anticipating the coordinated schemes against Jesus, the chief priests seeking a covert arrest (Mark 14:1) and the Pharisees devising entrapping questions (Matthew 22:15). Proponents argue that the many-sided plotting against Jesus, blending religious, political, and covert-arrest strategies, matches the psalm's portrait of systematic scheming with a precision beyond generic language. They see the psalmist's persecution by hostile authorities as prophetically patterned on Christ's. On this reading Jesus is the righteous sufferer the lament ultimately depicts.

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.

  • Mark 14:1 Not cited by the New Testament

    Neither Mark 14:1 nor Matthew 22:15 quotes, cites, or verbally alludes to Psalm 38:12; the link is a thematic pairing not marked by any NT citation of this verse.

  • Mt. 22:15 Not cited by the New Testament

    Neither Mark 14:1 nor Matthew 22:15 quotes, cites, or verbally alludes to Psalm 38:12; the link is a thematic pairing not marked by any NT citation of this verse.