Those who gathered around the cross, on that dusty hill, could feel Jesus’ raspy cry reverberate in their own dry throats: “I thirst!” These are the words of one whose vitality was almost dried up to death. Yet, in them, we witness the thoughtful tenderness of the Good Teacher as he breathes these words into Scripture for our edification (2 Tim. 3:16-17). “I Thirst” — a single onomatopoeic Greek word (dipsao) — reveals rich truths about their speaker.

Jesus Fulfilled Scripture⤒🔗

Jesus’ cry of thirst would have arrested the attention of those familiar with the Old Testament. In at least two ways “I thirst” confirmed Jesus’ promise that in Jerusalem, “all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished” (Luke 18:31).

First, God foretold that his Messiah would thirst. Jesus had just cried out those penetrating opening words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” When Jesus publicized his thirst he spotlighted the fifteenth verse. “My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue clings to My jaws; You have brought Me to the dust of death.” It is difficult to imagine a more thorough fulfillment of this prophesy.

Second, before Christ came to earth, he told through David that he would drink bitterness. “…For my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (Ps. 69:21). Ironically, the Psalmist was drowning in deep waters yet his throat was dry (v. 3) and his only drink was bitterness (vv. 1, 2, 15). Jesus, swirling in a sea of sorrow, receives only bitter wine to wet his parched tongue.

Jesus Suffered as a Real Man←⤒🔗

Frederick Krummacher vividly describes the cross-induced thirst of our Lord. “The blood vessels of His sacred body are almost dried up. A dreadful fever rages through his frame. His tongue cleaves to His jaws. His lips burn…” He concludes by saying, “There is scarcely a greater torment than that of insatiable thirst.”¹

Jesus is not pretending to be thirsty in order to illustrate spiritual truths. Our High Priest fully sympathizes with all the pains and discomforts that come from living in a sin-afflicted world (Heb. 4:15). If ever there were understanding ears into which we should speak our hurts and cry out for grace and mercy, it is those ears which on Calvary heard the sticky crackling of his own dry mouth (v. 16).

Jesus Bore Our Thirst-Curse←⤒🔗

In the Old Testament, God threatened to make unfaithful Israel a “dry land, and slay her with thirst” (Hos. 2:3; Cf. Deut 28:48). The tongue of the one afflicted by God’s judgment “clings to the roof of its mouth for thirst” (Lam. 4:4; Cf. Amos 8:11). Such was the curse for spiritual adultery (Ps. 137:6).

In a startling way, Jesus’ inserts himself into his parable of the rich man and Lazarus. In hell the rich man cried out for mercy, pleading for Lazarus to “dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame” (Luke 16:24). The rich man’s croaking screams for relief are denied. So long as he endured the hellish agony of God’s wrath against sin, Christ’s tongue, likewise, rattled in his mouth. Even when his mouth expressed the sour wine from the sponge, it offered little relief. Did it not burn as the vinegar washed over his withered cells? Was it not a further portrait of the cup of God’s wrath which our Lord had consented to drink? Only hours ago, Jesus shuddered over his anticipated cup of suffering (Matt. 26:36-46). Now he drinks the wine like a man who drinks salt water to assuage dehydration.

On the cross the Mediator of the covenant of grace experiences the thirst-curse earned by covenant breakers.

Jesus Thirsted for His People←⤒🔗

By nature, because we have forsaken God, “the fountain of living waters,” and have hewn ourselves “broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13), we are the thirsty ones. God’s wayward ones are “dried up with thirst” (Is. 5:13). We are spiritual dehydrated – a deadly condition. But here, Jesus musters a cry from his dry, hoarse throat … and all he gets is sour wine. Why? Because, on the cross he “redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13). Jesus announced his thirst knowing that “All things had been accomplished” (John 19:28). Of our salvation he could say, “It is finished!” (v. 30).

Christ is the rock from which the wandering Israelites drank in the desert (1 Cor. 10:4) and the Living Water which rehydrated the woman at the well (John 4:13-14). On the cross, the Living Water became thirsty securing the salvation that his spiritually thirsty people desperately needed.

Jesus Refreshes His People←⤒🔗

Jesus died thirsty but he arose refreshed. In his suffering, Jesus thirsted after the full restoration of his father’s fellowship, that the smile of his father’s face might be turned toward him and his people again (Ps. 69:16, 17). In his glorification, beginning with his resurrection, his thirst was quenched. God will hear the cry of his thirsty people. “The poor and needy seek water, but there is none, their tongues fail for thirst. I, the LORD, will hear them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them” (Is. 41:17). He now says to us, “he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).

In response, we echo the Man of Sorrows: “I thirst! Give me the water of eternal life gained for me at the cross that I will thirst no more!” The answer to this request is a picture we see in the last book of the Bible. “They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore…” (Rev. 7:16).