translation_id: net-engnet

book_id: PSA

label: NET study note

text: . In this song of thanksgiving the psalmist praises God for delivering him from distress. He encourages others to be loyal to the Lord, tells them how to please God, and assures them that the Lord protects his servants. The psalm is an acrostic; vv. 1-21 begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. (Verse 6 begins with the letter he ( ה ) and v. 7 with the letter zayin ( ז ). The letter vav ( ו ), which comes between ה and ז , seems to be omitted, although it does appear at the beginning of v. 6 b. The final verse of the psalm, which begins with the letter pe ( פ ), is outside the acrostic scheme.


text: Not one of them is broken . The author of the Gospel of John saw a fulfillment of these words in Jesus’ experience on the cross (see John 19:31-37 ), for the Roman soldiers, when they saw that Jesus was already dead, did not break his legs as was customarily done to speed the death of crucified individuals. John’s use of the psalm seems strange, for the statement in its original context suggests that the Lord protects the godly from physical harm. Jesus’ legs may have remained unbroken, but he was brutally and unjustly executed by his enemies. John seems to give the statement a literal sense that is foreign to its original literary context by applying a promise of divine protection to a man who was seemingly not saved by God. However, John saw in this incident a foreshadowing of Jesus’ ultimate deliverance and vindication. His unbroken bones were a reminder of God’s commitment to the godly and a sign of things to come. Jesus’ death on the cross was not the end of the story; God vindicated him, as John goes on to explain in the following context ( John 19:38-20:18 ).