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Messianic Prophecies

Psalms 55:15

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 55:15

Let death come suddenly on them. Let them go down alive into Sheol. For wickedness is among them, in their dwelling.

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Day and night they prowl around on its walls. Malice and abuse are also within her.

Destructive forces are within her. Threats and lies don’t depart from her streets.

For it was not an enemy who insulted me, then I could have endured it. Neither was it he who hated me who raised himself up against me, then I would have hidden myself from him.

But it was you, a man like me, my companion, and my familiar friend.

We took sweet fellowship together. We walked in God’s house with company.

Let death come suddenly on them. Let them go down alive into Sheol. For wickedness is among them, in their dwelling.

As for me, I will call on God. Yahweh will save me.

Evening, morning, and at noon, I will cry out in distress. He will hear my voice.

He has redeemed my soul in peace from the battle that was against me, although there are many who oppose me.

God, who is enthroned forever, will hear and answer them. They never change, who don’t fear God.

He raises his hands against his friends. He has violated his covenant.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

On the critical reading, Psalm 55:15 is an imprecation — a curse-wish calling for the betrayer's downfall — and imprecations petition for divine vengeance rather than forecast a specific future event. Read in its lament setting, the verse voices the psalmist's own grievance against a faithless companion, not a prediction of one individual's manner of death. Critics further note that the two NT reports of Judas's death diverge on who bought the field, the manner of death, and the sequence, so the passages offered as fulfillment do not agree on the underlying event. And since no NT writer cites Psalm 55 for Judas, the connection is supplied by later interpreters, not by the text itself.

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

On the fulfillment reading, Psalm 55 — a lament over betrayal by a trusted companion — supplies a template that the messianic tradition sees answered in Judas, the intimate betrayer who came to a violent and unrepentant end. Proponents hold that the psalm's curse on the treacherous friend is realized in Judas's fate regardless of which death-details each account stresses, and that the Matthew and Acts reports can be harmonized as a hanging followed by a fall. Notably, defenders concede that no NT text actually quotes Psalm 55 in connection with Judas; Peter's speech in Acts 1 cites Psalm 69 and Psalm 109 instead. The case therefore rests on a thematic correspondence between the psalm's betrayer and Judas rather than on an apostolic citation.

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 27:3-5 Not cited by the New Testament

    No NT text quotes or verbally alludes to Psalm 55 regarding Judas; Acts 1 cites Psalm 69:25 and 109:8, so the Psalm 55 link is purely thematic.

  • Acts 1:16-19 Not cited by the New Testament

    No NT text quotes or verbally alludes to Psalm 55 regarding Judas; Acts 1 cites Psalm 69:25 and 109:8, so the Psalm 55 link is purely thematic.