Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos — Psalm 22 and the Voice of Christ
The collection contains Augustine’s Exposition on Psalm 22 (NPNF1_Vol8.pdf) — and it is remarkably explicit. Augustine opens his commentary on Psalm 22 by stating unequivocally that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself speaks in the psalm, and that what follows is “spoken in the person of The Crucified” .
The hermeneutical framework is key: Augustine reads “O God, my God, look upon me, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1) not as David’s personal lament but as the old man nailed to the Cross speaking — that is, Christ bearing the person of fallen humanity. He writes: “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” . This is a sophisticated theological reading: the cry of dereliction is not Christ’s own despair but His identification with sinful humanity, speaking “the words of my sins” in the person of the old Adam being crucified with Him .
Augustine also reads Psalm 3 (“I laid me down and slept; I awaked, for the Lord sustained me”) as prophecy of Christ’s death and resurrection — the “sleep” is death, the “awakening” is the resurrection . He notes the deliberate mixing of past and future tenses in prophetic speech as a mark of divine foreknowledge: things prophesied “are future in reference to time but in reference to the knowledge of those who prophesy they are already to be viewed as done” .
The David-Goliath Typology in Patristic Literature
The documents yield a rich vein of David-Goliath typology. Several Church Fathers read the battle as a direct prefiguration of Christ’s victory over the devil.
Gregory of Nyssa (in NPNF2_Vol05) develops this at length: “even as bulky Goliath… inspired no fear in his opponent, though a shepherd and unskilled in the tactics of war, but having met him in fight loses his own head by a direct reversal of his expectations, so our Goliath, the champion of this alien system… has failed to inspire us” . The shepherd David — untaught in warfare, improvised from the Lord’s sheepfold — becomes the type of Christ and His followers, who defeat the enemy “simply slinging our plain, rude argument of truth against him” . Gregory draws the parallel to its conclusion: just as David cut off Goliath’s head with the giant’s own sword, so does the devil’s own weapons get turned against him.
Another patristic source (NPNF_Complete_Combined) extends the typology to the five stones: “David put five stones in his scrip, he hurled but one. The five Books were chosen, but unity conquered. Then, having smitten and overthrown him, he took the enemy’s sword, and with it cut off his head. This our David also did, He overthrew the devil with his own weapons” . The five stones represent the five books of the Law (the Torah), and the single stone that fells Goliath is the unity of faith that conquers. When converts who were once in the devil’s power turn their tongues against him, “Goliath’s head is cut off with his own sword” .
Justin Martyr (in ANF_Vol1) also appears in the collection, arguing directly with Trypho the Jew that Psalm 22 refers to Christ and to no one else in Jewish history. He presses the point forcefully: “no one in your nation who has been called King or Christ has ever had his hands or feet pierced while alive, or has died in this mysterious fashion — to wit, by the cross — save this Jesus alone” . Justin then recites the entire Psalm to demonstrate its detailed correspondence to the crucifixion narrative — the pierced hands and feet, the parting of garments, the casting of lots — all of which had their fulfillment only in Jesus.
Augustine on the Broader David-Christ Typology
In City of God (Augustine’s own work, present in the collection), the typological framework is systematic. Augustine devotes sustained attention to how the promises made to David in the 89th Psalm (titled “For the understanding of Ethan the Israelite”) are referred to Christ: “All these prophecies, when rightly interpreted, are referred to the Lord Jesus, under the name of David because of the ‘form of a servant’ which that same mediator took from the virgin, from the line of David” . The “David” of Psalm 89 is Christ — the same Christ who “in rising from the dead dies no more; and death will no more hold sway over him” .
Augustine also tackles an important textual question: who wrote the Psalms? He attributes all 150 to David’s authorship, arguing that David’s prophetic spirit was so powerful that it could even reveal the names of future prophets and compose material appropriate to them . This supports the claim that when David speaks in the Psalms, he is speaking prophetically beyond himself — and ultimately, in the person of Christ.
In City of God 17.16-18, Augustine walks through the Psalms systematically, showing how Psalm 22 (“They pierced my hands and my feet… they parted my garments”), Psalm 3 (the sleep of death and awakening of resurrection), Psalm 41, and Psalm 69 all prophesy Christ’s passion and resurrection . He notes that these prophecies point not just to events past but to what he could see in his own day: “All the ends of the earth will remember, and they will turn back to the Lord… The sovereignty belongs to the Lord” — fulfilled in the spread of the Church across the known world .
Three Key Threads
First, the voice of the Psalms. The patristic tradition, especially Augustine, reads the Psalms as a book in which Christ speaks — sometimes in His own person, sometimes in the person of His body the Church, sometimes in the person of the old man being crucified with Him. Psalm 22 is the paradigmatic case: David’s words become Christ’s words, and even Christ’s cry of dereliction becomes the voice of fallen humanity being redeemed.
Second, the David-Goliath narrative as Christus Victor. The battle is not merely a historical episode but a cosmic type: the shepherd-king who defeats the giant with a stone becomes the shepherd-Christ who defeats sin and death with the seeming weakness of the cross. Goliath’s own sword beheading him becomes the devil defeated by his own instruments.
Third, the argument from prophecy. For Justin Martyr and Augustine alike, the detailed correspondence between Psalm 22 and the crucifixion narrative functions as an apologetic argument: no one else in Israel’s history died in this way, with hands and feet pierced and garments divided by lot. The prophecy demands a fulfillment, and the fulfillment demands Christ.