The Crucifixion Foreseen
Psalm 22, the voice of the Crucified, as the early church read it
Psalm 22 begins with the very words Jesus cried from the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?", and goes on to describe, in detail, a death that would not be invented until centuries later: the mockery ("he trusted in the Lord, let him deliver him"), the pierced hands and feet, the parted garments and the cast lots. The early church read it without hesitation as Christ Himself speaking from the cross, a prophecy a thousand years before the event. Augustine in his own words below, with a plain restatement.
The Father's words are verbatim and attributed (Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, NPNF, public domain; selected from the running prose, footnote apparatus omitted). The box marked "In plain terms" is our own restatement, never the Father's words.
Psalm 22:1 · KJVMy God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
"What follows is spoken in the person of The Crucified. For from the head of this Psalm are the words, which He cried out, whilst hanging on the Cross, sustaining also the person of the old man, whose mortality He bare. For our old man was nailed together with Him to the Cross."
St. AugustineThe early church did not treat the link between this psalm and the cross as a happy coincidence; the psalm is Christ speaking, and Jesus, by crying its opening line from the cross, claimed the whole of it. Augustine adds a tender note: in the forsaken cry, the sinless One is "sustaining the person of the old man," voicing the dereliction of the humanity He bore for us, "our old man nailed with Him to the cross."
Psalm 22:6-8 · KJVBut I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn… saying, He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.
"'But I am a worm, and no man'… I in My own person, Jesus Christ… was made the scorn of men… they shook their head in derision, saying, 'He trusted in the Lord, let Him deliver Him; let Him save Him, since He desireth Him.' These were their words; but they were spoken 'with the lips.'"
St. AugustineRead the psalm beside the Gospel and the overlap is uncanny: the mockers at Calvary jeered almost word for word, "He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him" (Matthew 27:43). David wrote that taunt a thousand years before the men at the cross spoke it. The "worm, and no man" is the depth of the scorn the Messiah willingly bore.
Psalm 22:14-18 · KJVI am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint… They pierced my hands and my feet… They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
"'I was poured out like water, and all My bones were scattered'… through fear… My disciples were scattered from Me… 'They pierced My hands and feet.' They pierced with nails My hands and feet."
St. AugustineThen the detail that astonished the Fathers: "They pierced my hands and feet", Augustine says plainly, "they pierced with nails my hands and feet." This is a portrait of crucifixion written long before the Romans made it their instrument of death, when Israel's own penalty was stoning. The parted garments and the gambling for the seamless robe (John 19:23-24 quotes this very verse) complete a prophecy so exact that the Gospel writers simply point to it as fulfilled.
Where this stands among the traditions
This is shared ground, and the New Testament itself sets the pattern: Jesus prays verse 1 from the cross (Matthew 27:46), the evangelists cite the parted garments (John 19:24) and the mockery (Matthew 27:43) as fulfilled, and Hebrews puts verse 22 on Christ's lips. So Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant alike read Psalm 22 as messianic, the voice of the Crucified. The only "drift" here is the modern critical tendency to deny the psalm any predictive, Christ-directed sense and reduce it to one sufferer's lament, which is exactly the reading the early church, following the apostles, did not take. They heard in it the Savior's own voice, and a cross foreseen across a thousand years.
Patristic text from Augustine's Expositions on the Psalms (NPNF, public domain; the psalm is numbered 21 in Augustine's Latin and 22 in the Hebrew/English), selected from the running prose with footnote apparatus omitted; nothing added or paraphrased within the quotation marks. Scripture in the King James Version; the plain-language lines are our own restatement. This passage in the Study Bible; Psalm 22 at BibleHub.