I made sackcloth also my garment; and I became a proverb to them.
Making sackcloth a garment is sinking in deep sorrow and trembling in fear with weeping and falling tears, and becoming a proverb is being met for that weeping not with help but with reproach, bitter shame, and mockery. The burden of the psalm rests primarily on David and finally and antitypically on Christ, with portions such as zeal for God's house and the giving of vinegar quoted in the New Testament as fulfilled in Christ.
The psalm is prophetic of the experience Christ passed through, prefiguring events in the life of Jesus and fulfilled literally in him as the New Testament expressly states. That prophetic fulfillment includes his betrayal, condemnation, and crucifixion. It points prophetically to Christ's experience when the sins of the world rested upon him for humanity's sake. It gives a prophetic picture of Christ's inner experience as he endured suffering and struggles with the enemy. The verse itself describes the suffering and humiliation of the Saviour in wearing sackcloth and becoming an object of ridicule.
Not every verse of the psalm transfers to Christ, for one verse that confesses sin and foolishness cannot apply to him, since it would make him a sinner. A prophecy may apply partly to what is immediately before the reader and partly to what is remote, so use of one text in an accommodated sense does not require the whole prophecy to be accommodated, nor does literal use of one part require the whole to be literal. The psalm may be appropriated by Christians when their history runs parallel to David's, as when zeal for the Lord's house consumes them and they bear the reproaches of those who reproach the Lord, which is different from fulfillment of prediction though both may be called fulfillment of Scripture, but not in the same sense. By a contrary view held by fewer, the verse is not a prediction about Jesus but a simple record of David's own experience, applying to Jesus no more than to anyone else in the present day who is hated without a cause and whose history runs tangent to David's at certain points.
The prayers of the psalm may also be prayed by God's children in times of need with assurance that God hears them, so that they may share the triumph the Saviour won. The verse stands in one of the cursing psalms together with two others whose prayers are charged with vindictive revenge. Those prayers reveal a sin-hating God who punishes sin and are typical of tribulation upon the enemies of the church, being predictive rather than expressions of personal revenge.
Making sackcloth a garment is sinking in deep sorrow and trembling in fear with weeping and falling tears, and becoming a proverb is being met for that weeping not with help but with reproach, bitter shame, and mockery. The burden of the psalm rests primarily on David and finally and antitypically on Christ, with portions such as zeal for God's house and the giving of vinegar quoted in the New Testament as fulfilled in Christ.
The psalm is prophetic of the experience Christ passed through, prefiguring events in the life of Jesus and fulfilled literally in him as the New Testament expressly states. That prophetic fulfillment includes his betrayal, condemnation, and crucifixion. It points prophetically to Christ's experience when the sins of the world rested upon him for humanity's sake. It gives a prophetic picture of Christ's inner experience as he endured suffering and struggles with the enemy. The verse itself describes the suffering and humiliation of the Saviour in wearing sackcloth and becoming an object of ridicule.
Not every verse of the psalm transfers to Christ, for one verse that confesses sin and foolishness cannot apply to him, since it would make him a sinner. A prophecy may apply partly to what is immediately before the reader and partly to what is remote, so use of one text in an accommodated sense does not require the whole prophecy to be accommodated, nor does literal use of one part require the whole to be literal. The psalm may be appropriated by Christians when their history runs parallel to David's, as when zeal for the Lord's house consumes them and they bear the reproaches of those who reproach the Lord, which is different from fulfillment of prediction though both may be called fulfillment of Scripture, but not in the same sense. By a contrary view held by fewer, the verse is not a prediction about Jesus but a simple record of David's own experience, applying to Jesus no more than to anyone else in the present day who is hated without a cause and whose history runs tangent to David's at certain points.
The prayers of the psalm may also be prayed by God's children in times of need with assurance that God hears them, so that they may share the triumph the Saviour won. The verse stands in one of the cursing psalms together with two others whose prayers are charged with vindictive revenge. Those prayers reveal a sin-hating God who punishes sin and are typical of tribulation upon the enemies of the church, being predictive rather than expressions of personal revenge.