Week 10 Psalm 69
Unexpectedly I thought about Judas today. I thought about him because last year when I was reading about his suicide in Acts 1 I made a note to myself to look at Acts 1 the next time I read Psalm 69. And I read Psalm 69 today.
The connection is that in Acts Peter told the disciples that they needed to replace Judas: it was necessary for the Scriptures to be fulfilled concerning Judas…This was predicted long ago by the Holy Spirit, speaking through King David…in the book of Psalms, where it says, “Let his home become desolate, with no one living in it”.
And today I read David’s quote: may their homes become desolate and their tents become deserted.
Reading psalm 69 today I wasn’t think about Judas. I was thinking about David’s opponents (the people he’d been talking about in verses 4 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 18 19 20 & 21). And David hoped & prayed that his enemies’ homes would become desolate.
So then hundreds of years later Peter is saying that that verse applied to Judas…that it was a direct prediction about Judas.
I’m pretty sure that as far as David was concerned the ‘desolated houses’ referred to his preferred outcome for his own contemporary opponents. But now Peter says it also had an unexpected and unanticipated application to Judas.
But I’ll admit that reading psalm 69 today I never would have guessed it.
Note: quotes from Acts 1:20 & Psalm 69:25 (NLT)