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Messianic Prophecies

Psalms 40:2-5

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 40:2-5

He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. He set my feet on a rock, and gave me a firm place to stand. He has put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God. Many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in Yahweh. Blessed is the man who makes Yahweh his trust, and doesn’t respect the proud, nor such as turn away to lies. Many, Yahweh, my God, are the wonderful works which you have done, and your thoughts which are toward us. They can’t be declared back to you. If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be counted.

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I waited patiently for Yahweh. He turned to me, and heard my cry.

He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. He set my feet on a rock, and gave me a firm place to stand.

He has put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God. Many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in Yahweh.

Blessed is the man who makes Yahweh his trust, and doesn’t respect the proud, nor such as turn away to lies.

Many, Yahweh, my God, are the wonderful works which you have done, and your thoughts which are toward us. They can’t be declared back to you. If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be counted.

Sacrifice and offering you didn’t desire. You have opened my ears. You have not required burnt offering and sin offering.

Then I said, “Behold, I have come. It is written about me in the book in the scroll.

I delight to do your will, my God. Yes, your law is within my heart.”

I have proclaimed glad news of righteousness in the great assembly. Behold, I will not seal my lips, Yahweh, you know.

I have not hidden your righteousness within my heart. I have declared your faithfulness and your salvation. I have not concealed your loving kindness and your truth from the great assembly.

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

The fulfillment reading understands Psalm 40's movement out of a deadly, miry pit up to firm footing and a new song of praise as prefiguring the resurrection joy of the disciples when they see the risen Lord (John 20:20). Proponents argue the psalm's progression, distress to deliverance to public testimony, mirrors the Passion-resurrection-proclamation sequence with structural precision. They contend that rescue from the pit of death anticipates Christ's rising in a way ordinary deliverances cannot fully satisfy. On this view the psalmist's near-death rescue foreshadows the ultimate deliverance from death itself.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

The critical reading holds that Psalm 40:2-5 is a thanksgiving psalm whose pit-and-mire imagery is standard metaphor for mortal danger, not literal death, with parallels in Psalm 69, Psalm 88, and Lamentations 3. On this view the joy of the rescued speaker is simply the genre's defining function, celebrating deliverance, shared by Psalm 30:11, 116:8-9, and 118:21. Critics argue that treating this generic deliverance-to-joy arc as a resurrection prediction would make the entire thanksgiving corpus christological. They note the specific resurrection content belongs to John's 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.

  • John 20:20 Not cited by the New Testament

    John 20:20 does not quote or cite Psalm 40; the NT quotation of this psalm (Hebrews 10:5-7) draws on vv. 6-8, a different portion than the vv. 2-5 cited here.