The Lamb of God 10 min read Lesson 7 of 12

A psalm of David that describes a crucifixion, Zechariah’s pierced one and struck shepherd, and the anointed one Daniel said would be cut off

Pierced

Isaiah is not the only prophet the New Testament reads at the cross. A psalm a thousand years old speaks of pierced hands and feet and clothes divided by lot; Zechariah speaks of a day when Jerusalem will look on one they have pierced and mourn as for an only son, and of a fountain opened for sin; Daniel counts weeks to an anointed one who will be cut off and have nothing. The Gospels quote the first two over the body. The third is the most argued passage this series touches.

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Lesson 7 of 12 · The prophets

Three more prophecies stand behind the cross, and the New Testament reads all three there. Psalm 22 begins with the cry Jesus cried and goes on to describe a sufferer surrounded by enemies, his hands and feet pierced, his bones on show, his garments divided and gambled for; then it turns, and ends with all the ends of the earth remembering and turning to Yahweh because, its last words say, he has done it. Zechariah speaks for God of a day when Jerusalem will look on me whom they have pierced and mourn as for an only son, of a fountain opened for sin and uncleanness, and of a sword awake against God’s own shepherd; Jesus quoted the shepherd line of himself on the last night, and John quotes the piercing over the spear. Daniel’s seventy weeks end with an anointed one cut off, having nothing, and readers have counted those weeks to Antiochus, to Christ, and to the end of the age; this series marks that passage as contested rather than settle it. What the three share is a verb. The one who comes will be pierced, and the piercing will be looked at.

The psalm

Psalm 22 is headed as David’s, and its first line is the one word from the cross that Mark and Matthew record.

For dogs have surrounded me. A company of evildoers have enclosed me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I can count all of my bones. They look and stare at me. They divide my garments among them. They cast lots for my clothing. — Psalm 22:16–18 · WEB

Read the comment on My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

Dogs have surrounded me; a company of evildoers have enclosed me; they have pierced my hands and feet. I can count all of my bones; they look and stare at me. They divide my garments among them; they cast lots for my clothing. Nothing in David’s life answers to this, and the psalm was in Israel’s songbook for a thousand years before an execution matched it line by line. One line carries a textual question a reader should know. The Hebrew text the synagogue reads has "like a lion" where this reader’s text has "they have pierced"; the difference is a single letter, the Greek Old Testament and a scroll from the Dead Sea read "pierced," and the translations divide. The rest of the psalm does not depend on it. The bones on show, the staring, the garments divided by lot: all four Gospels record the soldiers doing the last, and John says they did it so that the psalm would be fulfilled.

דָּקַר dâqar H1856

a primitive root; to stab; by analogy, to starve; figuratively, to revile; pierce, strike (thrust) through, wound.

To pierce, to thrust through, to stab — the verb of a spear or a sword going into a body, used of Saul asking his armor-bearer to run him through, of Phinehas’s spear at Peor, and of the one Zechariah says Jerusalem will look on. It is a plain word for a wound, with none of the softness that "pierced" has acquired in devotional English. The word in Psalm 22:16 is a different one and is the one in question; Zechariah’s is not in doubt, and it is Zechariah that John quotes when the spear goes in.

Whom they have pierced

Zechariah’s last chapters are about Jerusalem’s future, and in the middle of them stands a sentence that has never been easy.

I will pour on David’s house and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication. They will look to me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him as one mourns for his only son, and will grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for his firstborn. — Zechariah 12:10 · WEB

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I will pour on David’s house and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication; they will look to me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him as one mourns for his only son. God is speaking, and the pierced one is me; then the mourning is for him. Jewish readers have taken the pierced one as a martyr of the last days, or Israel itself; Christian readers have heard God saying that he will be pierced, and mourned as an only son, and have found the grammar strange in exactly the way the fourth Gospel is strange. Whatever the pronouns mean, the next verse of the prophecy is not in doubt: in that day a fountain will be opened to David’s house for sin and for uncleanness (Zechariah 13:1), the two things the Day of Atonement dealt with, now a spring that does not run dry.

“Again another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they pierced.”” John 19:37 · WEB
Again another Scripture says, they will look on him whom they pierced: John, over the spear and the blood and water, quoting Zechariah with the pronoun settled.
“Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of me tonight, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’” Matthew 26:31 · WEB
All of you will be made to stumble because of me tonight, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered: Jesus quoting Zechariah 13:7 of himself, on the way to the garden.
““Awake, sword, against my shepherd, and against the man who is close to me,” says Yahweh of Armies. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered; and I will turn my hand against the little ones.” Zechariah 13:7 · WEB
Awake, sword, against my shepherd, and against the man who is close to me, says Yahweh of Armies: the sword is God’s, and the shepherd is his own.
“He protects all of his bones. Not one of them is broken.” Psalm 34:20 · WEB
He protects all of his bones; not one of them is broken: the other psalm John may be quoting over the unbroken legs, beside the Passover rule.

The anointed one cut off

Daniel’s seventy weeks are the passage most argued over in this series, and the argument should be named before the verse is read.

After the sixty-two weeks the Anointed One will be cut off, and will have nothing. The people of the prince who come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end will be with a flood, and war will be even to the end. Desolations are determined. — Daniel 9:26 · WEB

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After the sixty-two weeks the Anointed One will be cut off, and will have nothing; the people of the prince who come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. Gabriel has told Daniel that seventy weeks are decreed to finish disobedience, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and that after sixty-nine of them an anointed one, a Messiah, will be cut off. The weeks have been read three ways. Most academic readers take them as weeks of years reaching to the second century before Christ, the anointed one a murdered high priest and the desolation Antiochus. Christian readers from the early church have counted them to Jesus, cut off in the crucifixion and the city destroyed forty years later; Adventist readers count precisely, from a decree in 457 BC to a baptism in AD 27 and a cross in the middle of the last week, and read the passage as the frame of the Day of Atonement judgment the fifth lesson marked. The series does not settle it. It notes what the verse says on any reading, that an anointed one is cut off with nothing, and that the same chapter says the cutting off is how iniquity is reconciled and everlasting righteousness brought in. The prophecy of the pierced one is, on this reading too, a prophecy about righteousness.

He has done it

Psalm 22 does not end in the dust.

All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to Yahweh. All the relatives of the nations shall worship before you. For the kingdom is Yahweh’s. He is the ruler over the nations. All the rich ones of the earth shall eat and worship. All those who go down to the dust shall bow before him, even he who can’t keep his soul alive. Posterity shall serve him. Future generations shall be told about the Lord. They shall come and shall declare his righteousness to a people that shall be born, for he has done it. — Psalm 22:27–31 · WEB

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All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to Yahweh; all the relatives of the nations shall worship before you; posterity shall serve him; they shall come and shall declare his righteousness to a people that shall be born, for he has done it. The sufferer of verse 16 is, by verse 27, the reason the nations turn, and the last three words of the psalm in Hebrew are a single verb: he has done it, he has accomplished it. Some readers hear John’s last word from the cross, it is finished, as the Greek of that verb; it is a hearing, not a quotation, and the lesson marks it as such. What is not a hearing is the shape. The psalm the cross quoted at its darkest ends with righteousness declared to people not yet born, which is what the next lessons are about.

What the prophecies ask

They ask the reader to look, which is the verb Zechariah used. They will look on him whom they have pierced and mourn: the prophecy is not that the piercing will happen but that it will be seen, and seen by the ones who did it, and that the seeing will be the beginning of grace. Isaiah’s we, the fourth Gospel’s eyewitness at the foot of the cross, and Zechariah’s Jerusalem are all doing the same thing. The lamb of this series is not only provided and killed. It is looked at, and the looking is where faith starts.