A Song for the Last Supper (Ps. 41)

Our final Psalm in our journey through book One of the Psalter is Psalm 41. If you read it simply as an individual lament over sickness and trouble, then you will struggle over how to sing it. After all, few of us have enemies who would rejoice over our death. And (hopefully) few of us are wishing that God would raise us up, so that we can repay our enemies for their malicious betrayals!

If you read Psalm 41 as a generic individual lament, then Psalm 41 is a mean and nasty song that Christians simply shouldn’t sing.

But here is the problem. Jesus said that Psalm 41 is about himself and Judas. That line about “my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me” – Jesus says in John 13 that this scripture was fulfilled by Judas.