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A. Critique of Thesis. Our thesis in this paper is that certain Messianic psalms, those in which the Messiah speaks in the first person, give us an intimate picture of the thoughts, feelings, and concerns of Jesus Christ. We have applied this thesis to Psalms 6, 34, 22, and 69. We leave in the readers hands the evaluation of our efforts.
We have discovered in this way many dimensions of our Lord which, while present in the gospels (the outside view), are nowhere else revealed as in these psalms (the inside view). We have dealt with every problem verse in these psalms which seems ill fitted to our thesis and found none which seriously resist attribution to Jesus Christ.
Indeed, many aspect of these psalms fit Jesus Christ much better that David, their human author. Specifically Psalm 22 fits the experience and concerns of Jesus better than those we realistically could attribute to David. Also, the imprecatory sections of Psalm 69 seem inappropriate from the pen of David yet conform to the role of Jesus as judge of all men and to the enormity of the crimes of his enemies.
B. The portrait of Jesus from these psalms. In these psalms we see Jesus to be a person of intense loneliness and deep suffering. We see him as a person of fervent prayer to God -- for himself, for his followers, for his enemies. We find the scope of Jesus' concerns to encompass the entire world and ages. We get a glimpse of his pain over the treatment he received from his fellow Jews, particularly from his betrayer and from the leaders of his nation in their determined opposition to him. In short, we see Jesus to be a person "who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning". (Heb. 4:15)
Compilation Copyright, 1996-2008, by Robert McAnally Adams,
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