This week we finish our reading of the Gospels and begin reading the book of Acts. In John 19:23-24 we read; “When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, a part for each soldier. They also took the tunic, which was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. 24 So they said to one another, “Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it, to see who gets it.” This happened that the Scripture might be fulfilled that says: They divided my clothes among themselves, and they cast lots for my clothing., This is what the soldiers did.” (CSB). One nice feature the CSB translation has is that it puts Old Testament quotations found in the New Testament in Bold print. The last sentence in verse 24, “This is what the soldiers did” doesn’t mean the soldiers intentionally did this to fulfill the Scripture just that God knew that they would do this and inspired David to write this over nine hundred years before the crucifixion. It’s recorded in Psalm 22:18. Psalm 22 is said to be the most frequently quoted psalm in the New Testament. As you are mediating this week on the crucifixion read all of Psalm 22.
James Hamilton a professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at Southern Seminary wrote this about Psalm 22:
1Hamilton, James M., Jr. 2021. Psalms. Edited by T. Desmond Alexander, Thomas R. Schreiner, and Andreas J. Köstenberger. Vol. 1. Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic.
James Hamilton a professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at Southern Seminary wrote this about Psalm 22:
Since David wrote Ps 22 during his lifetime, we should not think that he describes a situation in which he was literally killed. The statements he makes that connote physical death in 22:12–18 (MT 22:13–19) accompany his statement connoting spiritual death in 22:1 (MT 22:2). Perhaps David wrote Ps 22 after an encounter that left him as aching and bruised physically as he felt forsaken and alone spiritually.
Here again we can ask whether and how David might have envisioned his own experience being a typological pattern for that of his descendant. David would have understood that expulsion from Eden and separation from God resulted from sin (see Gen 3). He would further have understood that the seed promised to him in 2 Sam 7:12 would be the seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent promised in Gen 3:15. It is at least possible that David understood that in order for the seed of the woman to conquer death, he would need to experience its worst and be raised from the dead. Perhaps David suspected that his own near-death experiences of defeat at the hands of the seed of the serpent, through which the Lord brought him and raised him up victorious, would be completed in the way his seed would fulfill the pattern: literally dying at the hands of the seed of the serpent to be raised victorious from the dead. The New Testament would seem to validate this interpretation, as the pattern of suffering David describes is cited as fulfilled in Jesus’s God-forsaken cry (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34), in the taunts and head-wagging of his enemies (Matt 27:39, 43; Mark 15:29), and when the soldiers divide up Jesus’ clothing and gamble for his tunic (John 19:23–24; cf. Matt 27:35; Mark 15:24; Luke 23:34).
In this way I would suggest that David spoke of his own experience, knowing full well that the pattern of his experience would be fulfilled in the life of his descendant, whom we know to be Jesus (cf. Acts 2:25, “David says of Him: I saw the Lord”). This suggests that David suspected his descendent would conquer death by dying and rising, but it does not demand that David knew, or had revealed to him, the details of how Jesus would die.1
1Hamilton, James M., Jr. 2021. Psalms. Edited by T. Desmond Alexander, Thomas R. Schreiner, and Andreas J. Köstenberger. Vol. 1. Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic.
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