Psalms 69:21

Only a few psalms apply wholly and entirely to the Lord in His personal sorrows. Psalm 22 is one, and Psalm 102… There are a great many in which some passages apply to the Lord and others to the faithful remnant in Israel. For instance, this line in Psalm 69 refers to Christ; but the subject of Psalm 69 is first Israel.

Gall (Hebrew rosh, Greek chole) is some extremely bitter or poisonous plant, not definitely identified. The word stands as a symbol of "bitterness."… Roman soldiers mixed gall with the sour wine, or vinegar, that they drank. They gave it to men about to be crucified, it is now supposed, to make them less sensitive to the torture. They offered it to the Lord, but He refused it. In Mark 15:23 myrrh is named instead of gall; the meaning would be the same.

At the cross "they gave Him vinegar to drink mingled with gall" (v. 34). We must not confuse this with the moment in John, where the Lord says, "I thirst." In Matthew's account it was the numbing drink given to prisoners before they suffered. This the Lord would not drink. In John, the Lord, while on the cross, fulfils a Scripture… He did drink the vinegar then. But here in Matthew, on the contrary, "when He had tasted it, He would not drink" — He wanted no relief from man.

Of course He knew what it was before tasting it. But by tasting it He let His enemies know something. He was not simply refusing a drink out of defiance. He was refusing it because of the numbing gall added to it. He would bear His sufferings without this, and in full consciousness of all that was involved.

We now see Jesus Himself in that dark hour surveying the whole field of prophecy, and well aware that of all the predictions centring on His death only one remained to be fulfilled. In Psalm 69 David had written, "In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." A small thing in itself, but every word of God must come true in its season. In that hour of suffering He rose above His circumstances. He saw the one thing lacking, and He spoke words that at once brought it to pass. No mere man could have done either the one or the other.

So He looks to God alone in the day when the reproaches of men had broken His heart. To look elsewhere for comfort was useless… He looked for some to take pity, for some to comfort, but He found none. So far from pity and comfort, they only answered His cry with gall and vinegar.

Here was brought to light what men are: utterly, altogether sinful. No feeling of pity moved their evil hearts when they stood in the presence of absolute goodness in the extremity of suffering. It was as they would have it — goodness nailed to a cross, and evil enthroned. Jesus cursed, and Barabbas cheered.

Without doubt, the cup of the wrath of God has almost blotted out all the rest. But it is no less true that these Psalms describe sufferings of Christ at the hands of men, right up to death, and show that He felt them. We see them literally fulfilled in the Gospels… Read Psalm 22:14-20, and notice the contrast between these sufferings and the forsaking of God.