Psalm 69, Part 2: Christ’s Mission Foretold

Paul, writing in Romans 11:9, attributes Psalm 69 to David: “And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompense unto them.” David and Paul both refer to hardened sinners who refuse to repent.

Prophetic phrases found in Psalm 69 are applicable to the life of Christ.

Jesus described His reception at the hands of Israel’s priests and rulers: “They hated me without a cause” (John 15:25). “In the language of [verses 8, 9, 20] . . . , Christ foretold, through David, the treatment that He was to receive from men.” “I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother’s children” (Psalm 69:8).

David wanted, above all things, to build a temple for God in Jerusalem.

He wanted the ark to be given a permanent resting place where all believers might come to worship in peace. By the time of Christ’s advent, the temple had ceased to be a place of quiet meditation and had become a bustling marketplace, filled with shouting merchants. Jesus wanted His Father’s house to once again be called a house of prayer and not a raucous marketplace. He subsequently drove out the merchants and money changers with righteous zeal, thereby incurring their wrath and hatred. John uses Psalm 69:9 to describe the cleansing of the temple by Christ and the ensuing hatred it generated toward Him (John 2:13–17).

Paul uses the same verse to describe Christ’s reception by Israel: “For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me” (Romans 15:3). Psalm 69:20, 21 describe Christ’s future agony in Gethsemane and on Calvary: “Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” “Go to dark Gethsemane, / Ye that feel the tempter’s power; / Your Redeemer’s conflict see; / Watch with Him one bitter hour.”