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Messianic Prophecies

Psalms 69:21

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 69:21

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

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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.

For they persecute him whom you have wounded. They tell of the sorrow of those whom you have hurt.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

In the critical reading, Psalm 69:21 supplies a scriptural template that shaped the Passion narratives, and the divergence among the accounts points to authors rendering the motif independently. Critics note that the Gospels describe the drink differently: Matthew reports a bitter, gall-laced drink offered before the crucifixion (27:34) as well as a later offer of a sour drink (27:48), Mark a myrrh-treated wine, and John a sour drink raised to him on a sponge. This variation is taken as evidence of dependence on the psalm rather than a fixed shared memory. Matthew's bitter additive is seen as influenced by the Greek (LXX) wording of the psalm, which differs from the Hebrew term. On this view the recurring question is whether the event matched the psalm or the detail was constructed from it, with the Gospel's systematic use of fulfillment quotations favoring construction.

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

In the fulfillment reading, Psalm 69:21's image of the sufferer offered bitter and sour drink is taken as one of the closest verbal correspondences to the crucifixion, reflected in the offering of drink at Golgotha (Matthew 27:34; John 19:29). Advocates argue the core detail — an afflicted innocent given a bitter or sour drink — is multiply attested and matches the psalm with notable specificity. Variations among the Gospels are explained as different perspectives on, or successive moments within, a complex event. On this reading Roman soldiers offering sour drink to a crucified man both fits ordinary practice and independently corresponds to 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.

  • Matthew 27:34 Allusion

    Matthew shapes the Golgotha drink narrative on Psalm 69:21 without a formula citation (John 19:28-29 makes the fulfillment explicit); Matthew's use is an unmarked allusion.