How are the psalms related to Jesus?

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dustdev14

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Hi everyone.
To put it simply, I don’t see how psalms can have anything to do with Him other than how they reference God. The psalm I’ve personally heard the most often when discussing how the psalms are tied to Jesus is psalm 22. This Psalm is (from what I’ve heard) meant to describe the crucifixion of Christ. Now I’ll admit reading this psalm, it has a lot of similarities to the crucifixion. 22:14-15 is pretty spot on to how Jesus would’ve died from what I’ve heard, with His shoulders and arms dislocating and a possible buildup of CO2 “melting” His heart in a sense. However, why does this have to related to Jesus? I almost always hear that when Jesus did a certain thing or something happened to Him, it happened to “fulfill” a psalm. But the psalms aren’t prophesies, but are instead a book of prayers hymns written by the ancient Hebrews. The psalms don’t say “the messiah will do this” they simply use pronouns that (from what I’ve seen) always reflect a first-person and present tone of voice. “MY bones ARE out of joint” “MY heart IS like wax” yet many people say that Jesus has to “fulfill” these psalms. How does that make sense when they aren’t even meant to be prophesies?

Many thanks, Kaden
 
The whole Bible is filled with allegories and pointers to Jesus from Genesis onward. It was a crescendo of revelation.
You read and read the Bible and suddenly a new spark, something you hadn’t noticed before that ties with the season or mass or a friends troubles and most important the life of Jesus.
All “coincidences” he he…
 
Some may coincide with him just as they might for anyone. But I don’t think they necessarily point to him specifically.
 
The psalms were the words of prayer in ancient Israel. They were their liturgy, which is why they became the heart of the prayer of the Church. They give people a language for speaking about God.

Below I have interspersed parts of the feeding of 5000 in Mark with the words of Psalm 23. When we are used to hearing Psalm 23, the meaning of the miracle is more evident. “He restores my soul” echoes along with the more exlicitly quoted parts. You could do something similar with Psalm 22 and the Passion and a couple of other places, but everywhere the words of prayer, of the psalms, affect the way we understand the gospels.

Psalm 23 and Mark 6:34-42

The LORD is my shepherd;
there is nothing I lack.

When he saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

In green pastures he makes me lie down;

he gave orders to have them sit down in groups on the green grass.

to still waters he leads me;
he restores my soul.
He guides me along right paths
for the sake of his name.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
your rod and your staff comfort me.
You set a table before me

taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to [his] disciples to set before the people; he also divided the two fish among them all.

in front of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.

They all ate and were satisfied.

Indeed, goodness and mercy will pursue me
all the days of my life;
I will dwell in the house of the LORD
for endless days.
 
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Something that strikes me about the Psalms is that Jesus himself prayed therm. Isn’t it kind of mind boggling to think that we can offer the same prayers he did? And that they’ve been used in prayer for such a long time.
 
dustdev14 said:
But the psalms aren’t prophesies, but are instead a book of prayers hymns written by the ancient Hebrews.
Click to expand...
Like the rest of Sacred Scripture, the psalms were written by men under God’s inspiration. (2 Timothy 3:16) The psalms might not contain explicit prophecies about the Messiah but God could have easily inspired the human authors to write about their contemporary circumstances in such a way that the things they wrote about were also “hidden” prophecies concerning the Messiah. The human authors need not have known that they were also writing about the Messiah. (See John 11:51, where Caiaphas unknowingly prophesied.)
 
The psalms of David for example are a type of Christ.

Dr Taylor Marshall has a book entitled The Crucified Rabbi, and there is an appendix with some 300 prophecies of the Old Testament that were fulfilled by Christ. Among that list are approximately 85 examples from the psalms . One of these, taken for no special reason is “Ps 90:2 He is from everlasting”

At a higher level of abstraction, all scripture is about Christ. This is the idea that we need to take a canonical approach to scripture, to consider what it all says, not to take verses in total isolation.
 
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