The cry from the cross
As Jesus hung on the cross, he cried out:
"Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani? that is, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Matthew 27:46
That is the first line of Psalm 22. Every Jew standing there knew the Psalms by heart. Quote the first line, and everyone knows the whole psalm.
He wasn't crying out in despair. He was telling them which psalm they were standing inside.
"O God my God, look upon me: why hast thou forsaken me? Far from my salvation are the words of my sins."
Psalm 21:2 (22:1 in most Bibles) · David, around 1000 BC
Why Psalm 21? The Douay-Rheims follows the ancient Greek and Latin numbering, which runs one lower for most psalms. Psalm 22 in most Bibles is Psalm 21 here. Same psalm, same words.
The mocking crowd
"All they that saw me have laughed me to scorn: they have spoken with the lips, and wagged the head. He hoped in the Lord, let him deliver him: let him save him, seeing he delighteth in him."
Psalm 21:8 to 9 (22:7 to 8)
At the cross, the crowd did exactly that. "They that passed by, blasphemed him, wagging their heads." And the chief priests said: "He trusted in God; let him now deliver him if he will have him" (Matthew 27:39 to 43).
The same head wagging. The same taunt. A thousand years later.
Pierced hands and feet
"For many dogs have encompassed me: the council of the malignant hath besieged me. They have dug my hands and feet."
Psalm 21:17 (22:16)
Hands and feet, dug through. That is crucifixion. In David's day, Israel executed by stoning. Crucifixion wasn't invented until centuries after he died.
Bones out of joint, and a terrible thirst
"I am poured out like water; and all my bones are scattered. My heart is become like wax melting in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue hath cleaved to my jaws."
Psalm 21:15 to 16 (22:14 to 15)
Hanging by the arms pulls a body's joints apart. And near the end, John writes that Jesus, "that the scripture might be fulfilled, said: I thirst" (John 19:28).
Stared at, stripped, and gambled for
"They have numbered all my bones. And they have looked and stared upon me. They parted my garments amongst them; and upon my vesture they cast lots."
Psalm 21:18 to 19 (22:17 to 18)
Crucifixion was public on purpose. And at the foot of the cross, the soldiers split Jesus' clothes between them. His coat was woven in one piece, so instead of tearing it they said: "Let us not cut it, but let us cast lots for it" (John 19:23 to 24).
They had no idea they were acting out a psalm. They were just soldiers taking a dead man's things.
The last line
The psalm that opens in agony does not end there. It turns:
"Neither hath he turned away his face from me: and when I cried to him he heard me."
Psalm 21:25 (22:24)
And its very last words:
"...and the heavens shall shew forth his justice to a people that shall be born, which the Lord hath made."
Psalm 21:32 (22:31)
In the Hebrew, the psalm ends on two words: "he has done it." Now look at the last thing Jesus said before he died:
"Jesus therefore, when he had taken the vinegar, said: It is consummated. And bowing his head, he gave up the ghost."
John 19:30
It is finished. He has done it. The first line of the psalm was his cry from the cross. The last line was his final word.
Why this is a big deal
David wrote this around 1000 BC, about a death that hadn't been invented yet, and it describes one afternoon in Jerusalem in detail: the crowd, the taunts, the pierced hands and feet, the thirst, the gambled clothes, and the final words.
Jesus didn't just fulfil it. He pointed at it from the cross.