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Messianic Prophecies

Psalms 38:12-13

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 38:12-13

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.

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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.

For I will declare my iniquity. I will be sorry for my sin.

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

The fulfillment reading understands the sufferer's chosen silence in Psalm 38 (the deaf-and-mute verses) as anticipating Jesus' refusal to answer the charges at his trial (Matthew 27:12-14). Proponents point to the convergence of this psalm with Isaiah 53:7, the servant silent before his shearers, as complementary prophetic trajectories from different genres pointing to one event. They argue Jesus' sustained silence through multiple interrogations was a deliberate enactment of the scriptural pattern of the non-resisting righteous sufferer. On this view the trial silence fulfills an attested OT pattern rather than a single isolated text.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

The critical reading holds that the psalmist's silence is a personal strategy of non-engagement within a specific crisis, not a forecast of a future trial. It notes that the stronger candidate text for trial silence is Isaiah 53:7, which is counted as a separate prophecy of its own, so a single NT detail is matched to multiple OT passages that mention silence or muteness. Critics read this as a backward-from-NT method: one event, several mined sources, each counted as a distinct fulfilled prophecy. They add that the psalm frames withdrawal into silence as a response to slander, a common lament posture.

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 27:12-14 Not cited by the New Testament

    Matthew 27:12-14 narrates Jesus' silence but does not quote or cite Psalm 38; any silence-motif linkage in the NT tradition attaches to Isaiah 53:7, not this psalm.