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Messianic Prophecies

Psalms 69:14-20

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 69:14-20

Deliver me out of the mire, and don’t let me sink. Let me be delivered from those who hate me, and out of the deep waters. Don’t let the flood waters overwhelm me, neither let the deep swallow me up. Don’t let the pit shut its mouth on me. Answer me, Yahweh, for your loving kindness is good. According to the multitude of your tender mercies, turn to me. Don’t hide your face from your servant, for I am in distress. Answer me speedily! Draw near to my soul and redeem it. Ransom me because of my enemies. You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor. My adversaries are all before you. Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; for comforters, but I found none.

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For the zeal of your house consumes me. The reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.

When I wept and I fasted, that was to my reproach.

When I made sackcloth my clothing, I became a byword to them.

Those who sit in the gate talk about me. I am the song of the drunkards.

But as for me, my prayer is to you, Yahweh, in an acceptable time. God, in the abundance of your loving kindness, answer me in the truth of your salvation.

Deliver me out of the mire, and don’t let me sink. Let me be delivered from those who hate me, and out of the deep waters.

Don’t let the flood waters overwhelm me, neither let the deep swallow me up. Don’t let the pit shut its mouth on me.

Answer me, Yahweh, for your loving kindness is good. According to the multitude of your tender mercies, turn to me.

Don’t hide your face from your servant, for I am in distress. Answer me speedily!

Draw near to my soul and redeem it. Ransom me because of my enemies.

You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor. My adversaries are all before you.

Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; for comforters, but I found none.

They also gave me poison for my food. In my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink.

Let their table before them become a snare. May it become a retribution and a trap.

Let their eyes be darkened, so that they can’t see. Let their backs be continually bent.

Pour out your indignation on them. Let the fierceness of your anger overtake them.

Let their habitation be desolate. Let no one dwell in their tents.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

In the critical reading, Psalm 69:14-20 is the complaint section of an individual lament, whose function is to articulate the experience of suffering in vivid language. Critics note that every individual lament contains such a section, and that comparable accumulated distress imagery appears across Psalms 22, 38, 42-43, 88, and 102. On this view the passage describes what intense suffering feels like in general rather than predicting a specific scene, so applying it to Gethsemane converts a genre-defining feature into christological content. The connection is read as thematic resonance produced by shared genre, not prophecy.

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

In the fulfillment reading, the sustained distress imagery of Psalm 69:14-20 — overwhelming waters, isolation, and physical and emotional exhaustion — is taken to portray the totality of the Messiah's pre-crucifixion suffering, mapped onto Jesus' anguish in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-45). Advocates stress the density and intensity of the psalm's combined physical, social, and spiritual affliction as a portrait corresponding to Christ's experience. The progression from external circumstance to inner anguish is read as mirroring the Passion's movement from arrest toward crucifixion. On this reading the correspondence reflects prophetic design rather than mere literary borrowing.

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 26:36-45 Echo

    Matthew 26:36-45 contains no citation or verbal quotation of Psalm 69:14-20; only a general thematic resonance of suffering links them.