Sometimes it’s hard to know
whether the Old Testament is prefiguring the New,
whether the New Testament writers are calling back to the Old,
whether the Holy Spirit is blatantly knitting together Old and New,
or if all of these (or none of these) are happening simultaneously.
The Bible is weird like that.

Last night, we completed chapter 2 of Hebrews, and while our conversation took us on a meaningful tangent through Calvinism and the history of denominations and all sorts of other significant ground, we ultimately kept landing on the curious relationship between the book of Hebrews and the Hebrew Bible.

In Hebrews 2:12, the author makes a reference to Psalm 22, the same psalm Jesus cites as he dies on a cross— the psalm that begins “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus quotes scripture all over the place in the gospels with good reason: Jesus comes from (and preaches primarily to) a culture where the repetition of song and story is highly prized. Oral tradition is everything to Jesus’s audience, just as it is everything to the book of Hebrews’s audience.
But why this psalm?

One of many “psalms of lament,” Psalm 22 features a speaker crying out to God. Overwhelmed by the suffering he’s already experienced and anticipating the suffering still to come, the psalmist cries to God for relief, and despite his frustration, his cries eventually turn to praise. In a particularly poignant line, the speaker even references his hands and feet being pierced and his detractors gambling for his clothing— both of which famously befall Jesus at his death. A line like this begs the question:
Is the psalmist inadvertently predicting the fate of Jesus?
Are the gospel writers choosing their details to echo the words of the psalm?
Did these authors —separated by centuries— somehow intend this similarity?
When Jesus says these words, is he calling for those near the cross to remember the psalm, and if so, why?
Reading these words, it’s hard to know. As stated before, there’s a certain mystery that always comes with reading this book.
But notice this:

In the portion of Psalm 22 quoted in Hebrews 2:12 —“I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters; in the assembly I will sing your praises”—, who is the you?

In Psalm 22, the psalmist is the speaker, and God is the audience.
In Hebrews 2, Jesus is the speaker, and we are the audience.

Psalm 22 depicts a desperate man crying out to God.
Hebrews 2 depicts a loving God calling out to us.

While beginning in pain, Psalm 22 ends in praise.
While beginning in pain, the crucifixion ends in resurrection.

There’s a shift that occurs.
The speaker is now the hearer.
The hearer is now the speaker.
And all ultimately points toward praise.

How much is intentional?
How much is coincidence?
How much is part of a bigger picture?

I don’t know.
The Bible is weird like that—
beautifully, wonderfully weird.