How the passage is read as messianic in the Christian interpretive tradition — the patristic writers, the Reformers, and later confessional commentators, named and dated in order from earliest to latest; a direct quotation is shown where a public-domain translation of the work survives.
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Justin Martyr
Justin Martyr (Justin of Neapolis)
Greek Apologist / Ante-Nicene · c. 100 – c. 165
In an extended verse-by-verse reading addressed to his Jewish interlocutor Trypho, Justin takes the psalm as spoken by the crucified Christ. He treats the piercing of the hands and feet, the casting of lots for the garments, the derisive head-shaking, and the encircling of the sufferer as literal descriptions of the crucifixion, and argues that these particulars were realized in no figure of Israel's history but Jesus. He reads the psalm's turn from anguish to praise as the Messiah's vindication.
“For when they crucified Him, driving in the nails, they pierced His hands and feet; and those who crucified Him parted His garments among themselves, each casting lots for what he chose to have, and receiving according to the decision of the lot.”
ch. 97, on Ps. 22:16–18 — Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1, ed. Roberts & Donaldson (Am. ed. A. C. Coxe), 1885
Dialogue with Trypho, chs. 97–106 (c. 155–160)
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Tertullian
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus
Latin / North African Ante-Nicene · c. 155 – c. 220
Tertullian cites the psalm's language of pierced hands and feet and the division of the garments as prophecy of the passion, contending that the crucified Christ, not David in his own person, is its true subject. He deploys the text to argue that the specific manner of the Messiah's death — crucifixion — was foretold in Scripture. He reads the sufferings described as prospective rather than merely biographical of the psalmist.
Against Marcion, Book III (esp. ch. 19); An Answer to the Jews, ch. 10
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Augustine
Aurelius Augustinus of Hippo
Latin patristic · 354 – 430
Augustine expounds the whole psalm as the voice of Christ (vox Christi), taking the opening cry of dereliction as uttered from the cross and the mocking and garment-division as the passion itself. He reads the psalm's closing movement toward the nations as the ingathering of the Gentiles into the church, so that the sufferer and the worldwide worshipers form one body, head and members. For Augustine the suffering and the universal vindication are a single continuous prophecy of Christ and his people.
Expositions on the Psalms (Enarrationes in Psalmos), on Psalm 21 [22] (c. 392–418)
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John Calvin
Jean Calvin
Reformed / Protestant · 1509 – 1564
Calvin holds that David speaks first of his own afflictions, but as a type whose full reality is completed in Christ, and he insists that the garment-division and the cry of forsakenness were truly and properly accomplished only at the crucifixion. He treats David's experience and Christ's passion as bound together, the shadow and the substance, rather than reading the psalm as bare prediction detached from its author. He sees the psalm's progress from distress to the praise of all nations as pointing beyond David to the reach of Christ's kingdom.
Commentary on the Book of Psalms (1557)
Where this stands
Psalm 22 is an individual lament psalm that moves from suffering to vindication. The opening cry ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") is attributed to Jesus on the cross in Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46. The psalm's vivid imagery — "they have pierced my hands and feet" (v. 16, though the Hebrew is textually disputed), "they divide my garments among them" (v. 18) — is heavily echoed in the passion narratives. Critical scholars classify this as a pre-exilic individual lament, possibly royal, with no original messianic referent. The psalmist describes personal suffering using conventional ancient Near Eastern lament imagery. The Midrash Tehillim discusses portions of this psalm with some messianic application.