see me laugh me to scorn:
They shoot out their lips, and shake their heads, saying,
He trusted in God, that He would deliver him:
Let Him deliver him now, if He will have him.
(_Cf._ Matt, xxvii. 39-43.)

Another startling prediction is that of the piercing of the hands and
the feet. No such punishment was used by the Jews, or endured, as far
as we know, by any of the martyrs of the Old Testament. All the four
Evangelists, again, note the literal fulfilment of xxii. 18:

They part my garments among them:
And cast lots upon my vesture.

Indeed, this 22nd Psalm along with Isaiah liii. stands forth beyond all
the other writings of the Old Testament as a witness which is proof
against all attempts to explain it away, to the {60} truth that "the
Spirit of Christ" was in the prophets "testifying beforehand of the
sufferings of Christ "(1 Peter i. 11).

The 69th (like the 40th) may have been originally suggested by the
persecution of the prophet Jeremiah, when he was thrown into the miry
cistern (Jer. xxxviii.); but it contains an anticipation of Calvary,
whose fulfilment is described by all the Evangelists, in the wine
mingled with myrrh, and the vinegar and gall offered in mockery before
the Crucifixion:

They gave me gall to eat:
And when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink.

S. John, the nearest to the Cross and to the heart of the Crucified,
tells us moreover that this verse was consciously appropriated by
Christ Himself, when, "knowing that all things are now finished, that
the Scripture might be accomplished, He saith, I thirst" (John xix. 28).

Each of the other proper Psalms for Good Friday bears its witness to
the suffering Christ. The 88th, at first sight one of the most
difficult in the Psalter, a Psalm whose darkness seems scarcely
illuminated by any ray of hope, is clearly chosen to illustrate
Christ's desolation on the Cross, the Three Hours of darkness, His {61}
Burial and His descent into Hades. The Sufferer is absolutely alone,
lover and friend are in darkness; He is fighting the battle with that
last enemy of mankind, the King of Terrors, yet overcoming the
sharpness of death by faith and patient endurance; He is looking on to
the dawn of Easter:

Unto Thee have I cried, O Lord:
And early shall my prayer come unto Thee;

or--

In the morning shall my prayer come before Thee (R.V.).

May not even those strange words "from My youth up Thy terrors