A messianic prophecy
Given Vinegar to Drink
The promise
Psalm 69 is one of the great psalms of the afflicted righteous, the cry of a man drowning in troubles, sunk in deep mire where there is no standing, hated without cause by more than the hairs of his head, bearing reproach and shame for God's sake. He is an outcast even to his own family, consumed by zeal for God's house, and mocked by those who sit in the gate. Among all these sufferings he numbers one especially bitter cruelty.
They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Instead of comfort in his agony, instead of the small kindness of food and water offered to a suffering man, he receives cruelty dressed as refreshment: bitter, poisonous gall where he hungered, and sour vinegar where he thirsted. The very things offered to relieve him are turned into instruments of his torment.
Gall was a bitter and often poisonous substance; vinegar was sour, cheap wine. To offer these to a suffering man in his hunger and thirst was to mock his most basic needs, to answer his longing for relief with contempt and bitterness. The line paints, in a single image, the depth of the sufferer's rejection, tormented even in the small mercy of a drink, denied even the least comfort by those who should have shown pity.
The psalm was well known in Israel and often on the lips of the faithful, a voice for all who suffer unjustly and cry to God from the depths. It is one of the most frequently echoed psalms in the whole New Testament. Its details, the undeserved reproach, the zeal for God's house, the vinegar and the gall, waited like so many others in the Scriptures to find their fullest and most terrible echo.
“They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.”Psalm 69:21
The fulfillment
Matthew records that as the soldiers brought Jesus to the place of crucifixion, they gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink. This first offering, at the beginning of the crucifixion, may have been a bitter narcotic meant to dull the senses, and Jesus tasted it and refused it, choosing to meet his suffering with a clear mind rather than a drugged one.
Later, as the end drew near, the scene answered the other half of the psalm. John records that Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, and that the scripture might be fulfilled, said, I thirst. And someone ran and filled a sponge with vinegar, the sour wine of the soldiers, put it on a reed or a stalk of hyssop, and held it up to his mouth. The thirst and the vinegar of Psalm 69 were both fulfilled at the cross.
The correspondence with Psalm 69 is exact and unmistakable: gall and vinegar, the very two things the psalm had named, offered to the suffering righteous one on the cross, in his hunger at the start and his thirst at the end. The Roman soldiers, carrying out a routine and callous cruelty, or perhaps a rough mercy, placed the psalm's ancient words directly into the events of that afternoon, without any knowledge of what they were doing.
John's note is worth weighing. He tells us that Jesus said I thirst not merely from bodily need but that the scripture might be fulfilled, knowing that all things were now accomplished. Even in the last extremity of the cross, with the great work of salvation nearly finished, the smallest remaining details were consciously falling into the shape the Scriptures had traced long before, down to the sour taste of vinegar on the lips of the dying Son of God.
“After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth.”John 19:28-29
Why it matters
It is the very smallness of this fulfillment that is so striking. This is not a grand messianic sign, not a throne or a crown or a conquering victory, but a passing and painful detail, the bitter drink offered to a dying man, and it matches a specific line in an old psalm of lament. The whole scene at Calvary is dense with such small correspondences, as if the cross were the single point where a hundred scattered threads from the Scriptures were drawn together and tied.
The bitterness he tasted is part of how completely he entered into our suffering. He was given gall and vinegar, cruelty where he longed for kindness, bitterness where he thirsted for relief, and he drank the cup of human cruelty down to its very dregs. There was no comfort spared him, no small mercy granted at the end, no kindness shown that the record dwells on, and he bore it all without turning back from the cross.
That such a minor and humiliating detail was foreseen deepens the sense that nothing about the cross lay outside God's knowledge or slipped past his notice. From the towering truth of substitution, the sinless one bearing the sins of the world, all the way down to the sour taste on his parched lips, the whole event was held within the ancient words. The God who noticed and foretold the vinegar and gall is a God who notices the smallest bitterness in the life of every sufferer.
And there is comfort here for anyone whose suffering has been met with cruelty instead of kindness, whose thirst has been answered with vinegar. Jesus knows that particular wound, the added cruelty piled on top of pain, the mockery of comfort withheld. He has tasted the gall himself. And because he drank that bitter cup willingly and to the end, he is able to meet us in our own bitterness, not from a safe distance, but as one who has been there, and has come through it to the far side of resurrection.
Questions people ask
Did Jesus really fulfill Psalm 69:21 on the cross?
John says Jesus spoke of his thirst so the Scripture might be fulfilled, and sour wine was lifted to him. He does not quote Psalm 69:21 word for word, so it is best called a strong echo. The psalm gave Israel a song of the righteous sufferer, and Jesus embodies that pattern fully, including the vinegar offered in his thirst.
What is the difference between vinegar and gall in the gospels?
Gall is a bitter substance, and vinegar here means sour wine, a cheap drink common among soldiers. Psalm 69 pairs gall for food with vinegar for thirst as images of cruelty. The gospels mention both a bitter mixture Jesus refused and the sour wine offered near the end, echoing the psalm's picture of a sufferer met with harshness instead of mercy.
Was the offering of vinegar a kindness or a cruelty?
Psalm 69 names it among the sufferer's torments, the answer of bitterness where he longed for relief. At the cross Jesus was first offered a bitter drink he refused, and later, in his thirst, given sour vinegar. Whether callous or a rough gesture, it matched the psalm exactly, and John notes that Jesus said I thirst that the scripture might be fulfilled, showing that even the smallest detail lay within God's foreknowledge.