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Psalm 69, Zeal, Vinegar, and Gall

Fulfilled in First Coming. Rejection, temple-zeal, vinegar-and-gall at the cross.

Primary passage:Psalm 69:9

Full Ps 69 in context.

NT anchors: John 2:17 ("Zeal for thy house shall eat me up", applied to the temple cleansing); John 15:25 ("hated me without a cause"); Rom 15:3 ("the reproaches of them that reproached thee fell upon me"); Matt 27:34, 27:48 (vinegar and gall); Acts 1:20 (imprecation applied to Judas, Ps 69:25). Contested (the imprecatory problem): verses 22–28 curse the psalmist's enemies at length, and the NT does not put those curses on Christ's own lips, it applies them selectively, to Judas's vacant office (Acts 1:20) and to Israel's judicial hardening (Rom 11:9–10, quoting Ps 69:22–23).

Say so rather than paper over it: the psalm is read canonically, not as a prayer Christ himself prayed against his enemies. See Praying the Hard Psalms for the imprecatory question in full. Spurgeon's Treasury has sober exposition.

Commentary

Full verse-by-verse commentary and cross-references live on the verse page →