This article addresses three primary questions about John 19:28: (1) What Scripture is ‘fulfilled’? (2) Why does John employ the unique fulfillment formula ἵνα τελειωθῇ ἡ γραφή? (3) What is the nature of Jesus’s ‘thirst’? The author understands 19:28 as a ‘formal allusion’ to Psalm 69:21 [68:22 LXX]. In light of the context of Psalm 69 and the previous usage of ‘thirst’ language in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus’s penultimate saying in John is profoundly ironic, as the giver of living water and the best wine thirsts and drinks sour wine at the cross. The fulfillment formula in 19:28 signals that Jesus’s conscious aim in his death was the completion of Scripture, which includes giving the Spirit to those who believe (7:37–39). Jesus’s physical thirst is emblematic of his thirst to drink ‘the cup’ the Father has given him (18:11) and to depart to his Father.
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Brian J. Tabb (2013) studied this question.