Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Waters Have Come Up to My Neck
Psalms 69:1-21
1 For the Chief Musician. To the tune of “Lilies.” By David. Save me, God, for the waters have come up to my neck! · WEB
A man drowning in trouble he did not cause is offered vinegar, and four lines of this psalm are quoted at the crucifixion.
Save me, God, for the waters have come up to my neck! I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold Psalms 69:1–2.
The most quoted psalm in the New Testament after the twenty-second, and the opening is a man going under. Mire with no foothold is the same pit as the fortieth psalm, and here nobody has yet pulled him out.
Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head Psalms 69:4.
Jesus quotes this clause and names it as written in their law, of himself John 15:25. And I have to restore what I didn't take away describes the specific injustice of being made to pay for something one did not do.
God, you know my foolishness. My sins aren't hidden from you Psalms 69:5.
The verse that keeps the psalm honest and complicates the messianic reading. The speaker admits sin, which is why the New Testament quotes this psalm selectively rather than wholesale. What David wrote out of his own experience contains lines that go beyond it, and the apostles take those lines; the collection preserves both layers without flattening either.
I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's children Psalms 69:8.
His own family. John records that even his brothers didn't believe in him John 7:5.
For the zeal of your house consumes me Psalms 69:9.
The disciples remembered this line when they watched Jesus clear the temple John 2:17. The verb means eaten up — a man used up by concern for something that is not his own.
The reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me Psalms 69:9. Paul quotes the second half of the same verse, of Christ, in an argument about bearing with the weak Romans 15:3.
Those who sit in the gate talk about me. I am the song of the drunkards Psalms 69:12.
Two audiences, the respectable and the disreputable, and he is the subject in both. The elders discuss him at the gate where cases are heard; in the taverns he is a song. There is nowhere in the town he is not being talked about.
I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; for comforters, but I found none Psalms 69:20.
The loneliest verse in the psalm. He is not complaining that people attacked him but that nobody came.
They also gave me poison for my food. In my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink Psalms 69:21.
All four Gospels record sour wine offered at the cross, and John says explicitly that Jesus, knowing all things were now finished, said I am thirsty so that the Scripture might be fulfilled John 19:28. The psalm supplies the line, written a thousand years before by a man describing his own mistreatment.
settled What this mark means