Mark 15:34 ‘At the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” – which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”‘

Matthew 27:46 (NET) — 46 At about three o’clock Jesus shouted with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Six hours after he was nailed to his cross, the dying Jesus shouted out these awesome words.

They are in the form of a quotation from Psalm 22:1 – Mark’s quotation is in Aramaic; Matthew’s is mainly in Hebrew.

As Murray Harris (Navigating Tough Texts) remarks, these words were spoken in a loud voice, probably with great difficulty at the end of six hours of unspeakable agony.

The difficulty of this saying

According to Hard Sayings of the Bible,

‘This is the hardest of all the hard sayings. It is the last articulate utterance of the crucified Jesus reported by Mark and Matthew; soon afterward, they say, with a loud cry (the content of which is not specified) he breathed his last.’

According to A. Gelston in the NBD, the very difficulty of this saying is the strongest argument for its authenticity.  It is an unfathomable mystery.  What we can say is that it is insufficient to account for it merely in terms of the intensity of the Lord’s human feeling, still less that it reveals the disappointment of his hope that in his extremity the Father would usher in the new age, or that he was merely reciting the Psalm as an act of devotion.  We must understand it in the light of the NT doctrine of the atonement.  Christ so identified himself with human sin that he endured separation from God (cf. Php 2:8; 2 Cor 5:21).

Matthew Henry comments on the strangeness of this complaint:

‘A strange complaint to come from the mouth of our Lord Jesus, who, we are sure, was God’s elect, in whom his soul delighted, (Isa 42:1) and one in whom he was always well pleased. The Father now loved him, nay, he knew that therefore he loved him, because he laid down his life for the sheep; what, and yet forsaken of him, and in the midst of his sufferings too! Surely never sorrow was like unto that sorrow which extorted such a complaint as this from one who, being perfectly free from sin, could never be a terror to himself; but the heart knows its own bitterness. No wonder that such a complaint as this made the earth to quake, and rent the rocks; for it is enough to make both the ears of every one that hears it to tingle, and ought to be spoken of with great reverence.’

Preliminary questions

How shall we approach this cry?

• Is it a cry of self-pity (“Why me?  What have I done to deserve this?”)?
• Is it a cry of protest: the innocent crying out against the unjustness of it all, even though he has lived his entire life knowing that he would thus bear the sin of the world (cf. Mk 10:45)?
• Is it a cry of incomprehension, as though for a moment he had forgotten the eternal covenant?
• Or is it, perhaps, the cry of amazement, as, knowing all along that he would face a violent death (Mk 2:2), he now confronts a horror that he cannot fully have anticipated?
• Does the cry imply some kind of intraTrinitarian breakdown?

Interpretative options

There are several possible ways of understanding this ‘cry of dereliction’ theologically:-

1. As an expression of a crisis of faith: he thought that God’s plan had failed, and his expectation that his Father would uphold him (see Jn 16:32) had been dashed.  This was, apparently, the view of Reimarus (1694–1768) and of Albert Schweitzer (it was the ‘despairing cry of a deluded apocalyptist’).

Carson (Scandalous: he Cross and Resurrection of Jesus) characterises this interpretation as follows:

‘Some contemporary commentators insist that these words demonstrate that at this point Jesus does in reality abandon his trust in God. The appropriate pastoral application, they conclude, is that if even Jesus can crack when he is subjected to enough pressure, then it is not too surprising if we sometimes crack, too. We should not be too hard on ourselves, they say, if we lose our confidence in God, if we abandon trust in God, since even Jesus could lose his trust in his heavenly Father.’

Stott comments:

‘Those who thus explain the cry of dereliction can scarcely realise what they are doing.  They are denying the moral perfection of the character of Jesus.  They are saying that he was guilty of unbelief on the cross, as of cowardice in the garden.  They are accusing him of failure, and failure at the moment of his greatest and supremest self-sacrifice.  Christian faith protests against this explanation.’

2. As an expression of feeling, not of fact.  According to Garrett, this was the view of T.R. Glover.  According to this view, Jesus experienced ‘the dark night of the soul’.  He has not lost his faith, but he has lost all comfortable feeling.  He cannot, for the moment address God as ‘Father’, but can still call out, ‘My God’:

‘I have sometimes thought there never was an utterance that reveals more amazingly the distance between feeling and fact’ (Glover).

Peter Bolt outlines variants of this interpretation:

‘Perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity (runs one explanation), and it must have been one of the others crucified with Jesus who uttered this cry. Or perhaps we are listening, not to Jesus, but to the church: this is the voice of the sinful body speaking through her head. Or, if it was Jesus, perhaps the bystanders thought that Jesus was deserted by God, but, in fact, he was not (Reed 1992: 261). To take this a little further, because he was so distraught, perhaps Jesus himself thought that he was deserted, but in fact he was not.  Reed calls this the ‘traditional answer’, which ‘strive[s] valiantly both to present Jesus’ full humanity and to preserve his divinity and the unity between Father and Son even in the cry of dereliction.’’

For Fred Gaiser, the cry is the language of prayer, rather than of doctrine or creed:

‘When we hear Jesus take up the cry, “Why have you forsaken me?” we learn more clearly than possible in any creedal or doctrinal language that Jesus is fully and completely human, sharing not only in the physical pain and suffering of the world but also in the spiritual suffering that comes with the feeling of being separated from God.’

Steve Chalke has asserted in debate with Andrew Wilson that when Jesus uttered the ‘cry of dereliction’ from the cross he was not forsaken by God.  Rather, as Chalke writes elsewhere, his feeling of abandonment

‘mirrors those of countless millions of people who suffer oppression, enslavement, abuse, disease, poverty, starvation and violence.’  (The Lost Message of Jesus, p185)

But we would be wise not to speculate on our Lord’s psychological state at this time.  Hurtado counsels against using this cry of Jesus as a clue to his innermost feelings:

‘Mark’s purpose in giving this statement is to make the allusion to Ps 22:1, so as to portray Jesus as the righteous sufferer who is beset unjustly by his enemies and appeals to God.’

Whichever way we approach this, we would be wise to tread gently:

‘It would be wise not to make the utterance a basis for reconstructing the inner feelings which Jesus experienced on the cross. The question “Why?” was asked, but remained unanswered…If it is a hard saying for the reader of the Gospels, it was hardest of all for our Lord himself. The assurances on which men and women of God in Old Testament times rested in faith were not for him. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all,” said a psalmist (Ps 34:19 RSV), but for Jesus no deliverance appeared.’ (Hard Sayings of the Bible)

It seems to me that this interpretation is incomplete: while rightly emphasising the humanity of our Lord, neglects other elements.

Bavinck insists:

‘In the cry of Jesus we are dealing not with a subjective but with an objective God-forsakenness: He did not feel alone but had in fact been forsaken by God. His feeling was not an illusion, not based on a false view of his situation, but corresponded with reality.’ (Reformed Dogmatics)

3. As an expression of real abandonment: sin separates us from God, and he experiences that separation as he bears our sins in his person.

It was a real abandonment:

‘The burden of the world’s sin, his complete self-identification with sinners, involved not merely a felt, but a real, abandonment by his Father.’ (Cranfield)

‘Did he merely feel abandoned? No, it was a reality attested by the companion darkness that settled on the scene. The great teacher on prayer now finds prayer unavailing. God cannot look upon sin, and now his Son is bearing the sin of the world in his own person, taking the sinner’s judgment. What a terrifying loneliness! Yet his cry appeals to relationship – not “God” but “my God.”‘ (ISBE)

Did the Father ‘turn his face away’?

‘It appears to be an inescapable inference that Jesus so closely identified himself with sinners, and experienced the horror of sin to such a degree, that for a time the closeness of his communion with the Father was broken, so that his face was obscured.’ (Vincent Taylor, cited by Morris)

Murray Harris agrees, while warning against undue speculation:

‘It was not merely that Jesus felt deserted by God, as the psalmist had been (Ps 22:11, 19–21); in reality he was deserted by God. All active communion between Father and Son was suspended, although God was still Jesus’ God (“my God”). God had actually hidden his face (cf. Ps 22:24) from his dearly loved Son, the constant joy of his heart. Given the fact that constant, undisturbed, blissful fellowship with the Father was the essence of Jesus’ existence on earth, how can humans, even redeemed humans, begin to understand his agonizing spiritual trauma in being abandoned by his Father?’

He tasted the abandonment of hell:

‘Jesus endured the true taste of hell for us on Calvary’s cross. The essence of hell is God- forsakenness. The experience of hell was testified to when Jesus said, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” Jesus knew perfectly well why he was forsaken, but he asks this question to quote Psalm 22:1. He did this to reveal to his hearers that he was tasting hell for them and let them know that Scripture was being fulfilled.’ (J.I. Packer, quoted by Brad Vaughn)

On the possibility of intraTrinitarina disruption, we should not speculate:

‘What does this psalm quotation signify? It is best to take the words at face value: Jesus is conscious of being abandoned by his Father. For one who knew the intimacy of Mk 11:27, such abandonment must have been agony. If we ask in what ontological sense the Father and the Son are here divided, the answer must be that we do not know because we are not told.’ (Carson)

It was for us, and for our salvation:

‘So then an actual and dreadful separation took place between the Father and the Son; it was voluntarily accepted by both the Father and the Son; it was due to our sins and their just reward; and Jesus expressed this horror of great darkness, this God-forsakenness, by quoting the only verse of Scripture which accurately described it, and which he had perfectly fulfilled, namely, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”’ (Stott)

A variant on this theme was taught be some medieval theologians, including Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas.  In this view, Jesus was abandoned to death, without losing fellowship with the Father.  The Father ‘forsakes’ Jesus in a specific and limited sense: he hands the Son over to suffer death at the hands of sinful humans.  But there is no loss of love or disruption of the relationship.

Other interpretations posit a real intraTrinitarian rupture – a moment of actual separation between Father and Son, arguably undermining core doctrines concerning God’s unity, God’s triunity, and Christ’s person.  The cry of dereliction would then be a response to the outpouring of God’s personal wrath on his Son, a moment when ‘the Father turns his face away’.

A version of this interpretation is offered by Moltmann, who understood Jesus’ cry to be an indication of a rupture within the Godhead (‘God against God’).  For McCall, this seriously undermines the classical doctrine of God.  Nevertheless, it is still reflected in some popular presentations, which picture the Father from turning away from Jesus in revulsion.

R.E. Brown (The Death of the Messiah) helpfully draws attention to the context of this cry from the cross:

‘In the tragic drama of the Mark/Matt [Passion Narrative] Jesus has been abandoned by his disciples and mocked by all who have come to the cross. Darkness has covered the earth; there is nothing that shows God acting on Jesus’ side. How appropriate that Jesus feel forsaken! His “Why?” is that of someone who has plumbed the depths of the abyss, and feels enveloped by the power of darkness. Jesus is not questioning the existence of God or the power of God to do something about what is happening; he is questioning the silence of the one whom he calls “My God.”’

In addition (Brown observes) the prayer in the garden (Mark 14:35–36; Matt 26:39) uttered three times and addressed to ‘Father’, received no visible or audible answer.  Thus:

‘Feeling forsaken as if he were not being heard, he no longer presumes to speak intimately to the All-Powerful as “Father” but employs the address common to all human beings, “My God.”’

Perhaps surprisingly, it is William Barclay (DSB) who gives one of the most forthright theological accounts of this cry.  Barclay says that Jesus had endured everything – ‘the failure of friends, the hatred of foes, the malice of enemies’.  The one thing he had not experienced was the consequence of sin; the effect of that impenetrable barrier that sin places between ourselves and God.  Now, at this moment, Jesus does experience this, not because he is himself a sinner, but because he totally identifies with us as sinners.  In his pure and holy soul, which had hitherto known unbroken communion with God, he now feels the horror and desolation of separation.

For once, Jesus addresses is to, ‘My God’, rather than to, ‘Father’.  But:

‘Here the words are those of Ps 22:1, and the very sense of forsakenness which they express may well be sufficient explanation of why the more familiar Abba did not come so naturally to Jesus’ lips on that occasion.’ (DJG)

MacLeod notes that for once, his address was not to ‘Abba’ (as it was even in Gethsemane, Mk 14:36), but ‘my God’.  He stood in the relation not of a son, but of a sinner.  He was numbered with the transgressors.  He was sin (2 Cor 5:21).  He was condemned to bear sin’s curse.  No-one could deliver him; God would not spare him.  God was forsaken by God.

His sense of divine sonship was restored later, as he prayed, “Father, forgive them.”  But, for a moment, he experiences utter abandonment.  His beloved Father, with whom he has enjoyed unbroken fellowship since before time began, is out of reach.  He is acknowledged as ‘God’, but not known as ‘Abba’.  There is no sense of divine love, and no sense of divine approval.  He cries out, but there is no answer.  He is in trouble, but no help is at hand.  No comforting scriptures are brought to mind, no reassuring voice from heaven is heard (as at other times of crisis – see Mk 1:11; 9:7), no strengthening angel, no promise of ultimate victory, no vision of a future redeemed multitude.

McLeod:

‘He hears only the derision of the spectators, the curses of the soldiers and the whispers of the Prince of Darkness.  He is on his own.’

And again:

‘Never before had anything come between him and his Father, but now the sin of the whole world has come between them, and he is caught in this dreadful vortex of the curse. It is not that Abba is not there, but that he is there, as the Judge of all the earth who could condone nothing and could not spare even his own Son (Romans 8:32).’

Some have objected that this interpretation of Jesus’ cry would introduce a novel element into the accounts of Matthew and Mark: they have Jesus predicting his sufferings at the hands of cruel men, but not anticipating abandonment by God.  But this objection is not conclusive.  Neither is the objection that this interpretation is

‘inconsistent with the love of God and the oneness of purpose with the Father manifest in the atoning ministry of Jesus’ (Taylor, cited by Garland).

To be sure, we must give full weight to those scriptures that teach that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.’  But we must also recognise those that teach that in a very real sense the suffering of Christ (spiritual as well as physical) was caused by his heavenly Father.

We have a number of indications in the Gospels that Jesus’ experience was something that was ‘no ordinary perturbation’ (Morris): his extreme distress in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mk 14:33), his reference to drinking the ‘cup’, Mt 20:22f; 26:39; Mk 10:38f; 14:36 (suggestive of God’s wrath), and the supernatural darkness that fell over the land.  Many have pointed out how cheerfully Jesus’ followers so often face martyrdom.  Jesus was no coward, and cannot have been afraid of leaving this life (Morris).  It was not death, but this particular death, that he feared so much.

There was, then, an element of uniqueness to his agony, for no-one else could occupy the place that he occupied as the world’s sin-bearer.  His was an unspeakable torment; he could find no words within himself to express it, and he had to appropriate the words of the psalmist in order to do so.

If we accept Isa 53 as predictive of the cross, then we note the solemn statement that ‘it was the will of the Lord to bruise him; he has put him to grief’.  And if we take seriously the apostolic witness to Jesus death, then we must accept that God did not simply ‘give’ Jesus, but ‘gave him up for us all’ (Rom 8), that Jesus ‘bore our sins’ (1 Pet 2:24), that ‘God made him sin’ (2 Cor 5:21), and he became a ‘curse’ for us (Gal 3:13).  Perhaps this experience forms the essence of his ‘descent into hell’ (so Cranfield, cited by Morris).

Goguel:

‘The sense of being abandoned by God must have caused unfathomable pain to him whose whole life had been supported by the experience of the presence of God.’ (Cited by Morris)

Morris connects this with the incarnation.  Although we may not speculate on some kind of intra-Trinitarian disruption, nevertheless

‘The incarnation means something. It means among other things that it became possible for Christ to die.  And if it became possible for him to die it became possible for him to die the most bitter of deaths, the death of God-forsakenness.’

Bolt agrees that Jesus’ cry means, among other things, that he has entered our human situation and has identified himself with us in our own distress.  He has been tested as we are, and so is able to us in our time of need (Heb 4:15f).  Indeed, the human race is in a state of God-forsakenness, lying as it does under divine wrath (Rom 1:18ff).  Jesus has stepped into that situation in order to take our place.  Psa 22 anticipates Jesus as Messiah, the obedient Servant who utters this cry of sufferng at the end of his ministry, who experienced the wrath of God, left to die by a God who could have rescued him.

Bolt sees the cry as the culmination of Christ’s ministry as the Lord’s Servant.  As such, he is ‘forsaken in the wrath of God’.  That wrath has been experienced in a number of concrete ways: in his being handed over, in his being mocked, in his cursed death.  He had spoken of his death as a baptism and as a cup – both images of divine wrath.

Bolt notes, further that this cry was appealed to by the Arians to deny the full deity of Christ.  And the Gospel of Peter represented a Docetic view (denying or separating Christ’s two natures) when it had Jesus cry, “My power, my power, thou hast left me!”

Harris asks:

‘Why would a holy God abandon his dearly loved and holy Son, even temporarily, especially since Jesus had earlier reassured his readers, “I am not alone, for my Father is with me” (John 16:32)?’

Harris answers:

‘Two scriptural passages provide an adequate answer: 2 Corinthians 5:21 (see part 2, ch. 27) and Galatians 3:13. In both verses, God’s abandonment of Christ is said to be “for us” (hyper hēmōn). When the Father totally identified his sinless Son with the sin of sinners (2 Cor 5:21) and so abandoned him, and when Christ endured the divine curse that rightly belonged to lawbreakers (Gal 3:13) and so was abandoned by God, the action was both “on our behalf” and “in our place.” Substitution as well as representation was involved.’

What, then, does this forsakenness mean?

We hesitate to suggest that the eternal communion between Father, Son and Holy Spirit was broken; God did not cease to be triune.  Nor could it mean that the Father ceased to love his Son – especially now that Jesus was demonstrating the ultimate sacrificial obedience.  Nor yet could it mean that the Holy Spirit had ceased to minister to Jesus: it was by that very Spirit that Jesus offered himself to God (Heb 9:14).  Once again: it does not mean that Jesus was in despair: from the depths of his loneliness and pain, he still calls out to “My God”; he still retains a sense that God is holding him.

The cry was indicative of terrible and unique suffering.  Christ experienced the full force of divine wrath, yet he himself continued to be beloved, not hated, by God.  Calvin says:

‘If Christ had died only a bodily death, it would have been ineffectual. No—it was expedient at the same time for him to undergo the severity of God’s vengeance, to appease his wrath and satisfy his just judgment. For this reason, he must also grapple hand to hand with the armies of hell and the dread of everlasting death…

‘And surely no more terrible abyss can be conceived than to feel yourself forsaken and estranged from God; and when you call upon him, not to be heard. It is as if God himself had plotted your ruin. We see that Christ was so cast down as to be compelled to cry out in deep anguish…

‘Yet we do not suggest that God was ever inimical or angry toward him. How could he be angry toward his beloved Son, “in whom his heart reposed” [cf. Matt. 3:17]? How could Christ by his intercession appease the Father toward others, if he were himself hateful to God? This is what we are saying: he bore the weight of divine severity, since he was “stricken and afflicted” [cf. Isa. 53:5] by God’s hand, and experienced all the signs of a wrathful and avenging God.’

(Institutes, 2.16.10-12)

Matthew Henry notes:-

1. That our Lord Jesus was, in his sufferings, for a time, forsaken by his Father…Not that the union between the divine and human nature was in the least weakened or shocked; no, he was now by the eternal Spirit offering himself: nor as if there were any abatement of his Father’s love to him, or his to his Father; we are sure that there was upon his mind no horror of God, or despair of his favour, nor any thing of the torments of hell; but his Father forsook him; that is,

First, he delivered him up into the hands of his enemies, and did not appear to deliver him out of their hands. He let loose the powers of darkness against him, and suffered them to do their worst…and no angel is sent from heaven to deliver him, no friend on earth raised up to appear for him.

Secondly, he withdrew from him the present comfortable sense of his complacency in him. When his soul was first troubled, he had a voice from heaven to comfort him; (Jn 12:27,28) when he was in his agony in the garden, there appeared an angel from heaven strengthening him; but now he had neither the one nor the other. God hid his face from him, and for awhile withdrew his rod and staff in the darksome valley…

Thirdly, he let out upon his soul an afflicting sense of his wrath against man for sin. Christ was made Sin for us, a Curse for us; and therefore, though God loved him as a Son, he frowned upon him as a Surety…

2. That Christ’s being forsaken of his Father was the most grievous of his sufferings, and that which he complained most of…He did not say, “Why am I scourged? And why spit upon? And why nailed to the cross?” Nor did he say to his disciples, when they turned their back upon him, Why have ye forsaken me? But when his Father stood at a distance, he cried out thus…

3. That our Lord Jesus, even when he was thus forsaken of his Father, kept hold of him as his God, notwithstanding; my God, my God; though forsaking me, yet mine…This supported him, and bore him up, that even in the depth of his sufferings God was his God, and this he resolves to keep fast hold of.’

This one moment of suffering surpasses all the suffering of the world:

‘No further entry of the Supreme God into the tangle and bewilderment of finitude can be conceived.  All that we can suffer of physical or mental anguish is within the divine experience; he has know it all himself.  He does not leave this world to suffer while he remains at ease apart; all the suffering of the world is him’ (William Temple, cited by Morris).

But then it is over:

‘The sacrifice is complete, the curtain torn, and the way into the Holiest opened once and for all; and now Jesus’s joy finds expression in the words of another psalm, Psalm 31:5. In the original, it had not contained the word Abba, but Jesus inserts it: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46).  We have no means of knowing what intervened between the two cries. We know only that the Cup is drained and the curse exhausted, and that the Father now proudly holds out his hands to the spirit of his Beloved Son.’ (MacLeod)

Harris concludes:

‘Christ was forsaken by God for a temporary but agonizingly long period on the cross so that believers may never be separated from God, either during life or after death (Rom 8:35–39; Heb 13:5–6).’

Brad Vaughn makes the following observations:

The context in Psa 22 indicates that the writer is complaining of God’s being ‘far away, but not of having rejected or spurned him.

Psa 22:22-31 contradicts the idea that God had totally abandoned the psalmist.  Rather, the writer entertains a hope that God will save him.

‘Forsaken’ does not mean that the psalmist is being rejected as a condemned sinner.  It means, rather that God is perceived as distant and unavailable to help.

The complaint of Psa 22:1, is, then, that the psalmist is in trouble and God has not intervened to help.

Jesus’ cry must be understood in the light of the entire psalm.  David hopes that God will ultimately rescue him.  Beyond the forsakenness lies vindication.

Tom McCall: Matthew’s Gospel presents an extra layer of tension, because it has stressed the kingship of Jesus:

(a) in the enquiry of the Magi (“Where is he who is born King of the Jews?”);
(b) in the Temptations (Who has the right to command, and what kind of King will Jesus be); and
(c) in the paradox of the trial and crucifixion (the condemnation and execution of ‘the king of the Jews’).

The cry of derelicton emerges from this background as an apparent admission of defeat.  It calls into question his identity and mission.  The faithful one (Mt 3:17) suffers the divine abandonment that the righteous judgment of the unfaithful.

The issues can be complicated by our own emotional responses.  If Jesus was abandoned by the Father, he understands when we feel thus abandoned.  On the other hand, If even Jesus could be abandoned by the Father, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Psalm 22 as a guide to interpretation

The words are quoted from Psalm 22, showing that what Jesus suffered is not without some kind of parallel in the lives of others (in this case, David).  Still, the words of that Psalm seem to go well beyond anything that we know about David’s life.  Therefore, we are justified in regarding it as truly Messianic.

If we take Psalm 22 as a guide, then we could regard the cry of dereliction as an urgent enquiry.  In this case, the “Why?” may be taken literally.  Alternatively, Grudem (Systematic Theology) understands this cry to mean: “Why have you abandoned me for so long?”  He believes that this is the sense in Psalm 22.  Grudem reasons that Jesus knew that he must suffer, but he didn’t know how long he would suffer for.  This appears to assume more than the text itself warrants.

Alternatively, we might see the cry of dereliction as part of an expression of robust faith: possibly, he recited the whole psalm from the cross, ending with the words, “It is finished (accomplished)!”  So Garland (on Mark).

R.E. Brown maintains there there is no strong reason to suppose either that Jesus quoted the entire psalm or that the readers would have understood this quotation of the first verse as standing for the whole:

‘Some would invoke a hermeneutic principle that a NT citation of a specific OT passage supposes that the readers will be familiar with the context of that passage and so understand implied references to that context. At times that principle has validity, but it is not universally true. Applied here, it would mean that Mark expected his readers to recognize that a psalm was being cited, to know the whole psalm, and to detect from a reference to the agonized opening verse the triumphant fate of the one who prays—in short, to take almost the opposite meaning of what Jesus is portrayed as saying! Elsewhere in citing psalms, Mark/Matt have shown the ability to quote a verse with exact appropriateness to the point under consideration, and there is insufficient reason to think they have not followed the same procedure here.’

Brown concludes:

‘I find no persuasive argument against attributing to the Jesus of Mark/Matt the literal sentiment of feeling forsaken expressed in the psalm quote. The interpretation of this prayer at the end of the PN should follow the same course as the interpretation of the opening prayer of the PN in Mark 14:35–36 and Matt 26:39. There many would reject the literal meaning that Jesus really wanted the hour to pass from him and was not eager to drink the cup of suffering. They could not attribute to Jesus such anguish in the face of death. If one accepts literally that anguish at the opening moment when Jesus could still call God “Abba, Father,” one should accept equally literally this screamed protest against abandonment wrenched from an utterly forlorn Jesus who now is so isolated and estranged that he no longer uses “Father” language but speaks as the humblest servant.’

Even if Jesus did not recite the whole of Psalm 22, it is reasonable to see Jesus as identifying himself with the message of the psalm as a whole, with

‘the righteous sufferer who endures insult and injury but anticipates divine vindication.’ (DJG)

Blomberg (Commentary on the OT use of NT) notes that Psalm 22

‘contains an astonishing number of close parallels to the events of Jesus’ crucifixion: a cry of abandonment (22:1–2), despising and mocking (22:6–7), the taunt that the Lord should deliver the one who trusts in him (22:8), a near-death experience described as being poured out like water with all his bones out of joint, his heart melted like wax, and his strength dissipated (22:14–15). Furthermore, he is surrounded by wicked onlookers (22:16a) who pierce his hands and feet (22:16b) and divide his garments by lot (22:18).

McCall comments:

‘For the Gospel writers, then, the use of Psalm 22 is not an incidental footnote. It’s the interpretive framework they’re weaving into the story.’

Taking the whole of Psa 22 into account:

‘Though commentators often speak of Jesus’ cry of abandonment on the cross, Psalm 22 as a whole moves from apparent despair of God’s presence to a hope of vindication. Since Mark when quoting the OT normally refers to the larger context of a particular verse, readers of the Gospel are to hear Jesus’ words as those of the suffering just one who dies with the hope of vindication.’ (Harper’s Bible Commentary)

Matthew Henry comments:

‘It is not probable (as some have thought) that he repeated the whole psalm; yet hereby he intimated that the whole was to be applied to him, and that David, in spirit, there spoke of his humiliation and exaltation. This, and that other word, Into thy hands I commit my spirit, he fetched from David’s psalms (though he could have expressed himself in his own words), to teach us of what use the word of God is to us, to direct us in prayer, and to recommend to us the use of scripture-expressions in prayer, which will help our infirmities.’

This view would be supported by the several occasions when Jesus did express utmost confidence in his ultimate vindication – Mk 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; Jn 2:19.  Also in support of this view is the fact that entire psalms were identified simply from their opening sentences; but there is no indication that this ever happens in Matthew’s Gospel or in Jesus’ teaching.

The fact is that we do not know that Jesus uttered any more than the first verse of the psalm at this time.  And, if he did, Matthew and Mark single out v1 for quotation, ignoring the rest.

Morris points out,

‘the evangelists do not give the impression that they are recording a pious meditation.’

And Stott asks that if Jesus had quoted from the Psalm’s first verse while actually alluding to its last verse, would anyone have understood what he was doing?

McCall sugsests three interpretative lenses through which a theological reading might be focussed:

(a) Context – interpret the cry according to its use in Matthew and Mark, and against the background of Psalm 22.

(b) Canon – take account of Jesus’ other sayings from the cross (especially, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”, Lk 23:46 and “It is finished”, Jn 19:30) which are scarcely consistent with total despair or an intratrinitarian rupture.

(c) Creed – let our interpretation be guided and bounded by creedal trinitarianism and orthodox Christology.

McCall concludes that:

‘The cry expresses Christ’s solidarity with humanity. Jesus is not forsaken from being the Son. He is forsaken in the sense that he has entered the human condition, and in that moment takes up our cries and prays them as our representative.’

In relation to the atonement, McCall affirms:

(a) a penal substitutionary dimension: Christ suffered in the place of sinners, bearing the just penalty for their sins;

(b) a christus victor dimension: Christ triumphs over sin, death and the devil;

(c) a moral-exemplar dimension: Christ’s faithful suffering is a model for discipleship.

In our doctrine of the atonement, we may not pit the Father against the Son.  The divine will is undivided.

McCall adds:

‘In no way does this involve an ontological separation within God. The Father does not hate the Son. He does not turn his face away. The Trinity is not broken. There is no interruption in the communion of love between Father and Son. The divine relationship is not abandoned.’

Conclusion

An adequate account of this saying must:

• take account of other sayings of Jesus, both prior to and during his crucifixion
• understand the significance of the quotation from Psalm 22
• safeguard what is established, on other grounds, concerning the unity of the Godhead

Bibliography

In addition to the commentaries and standard works of reference:

Peter Bolt, The Cross from a Distance: Atonement in Mark’s Gospel, ch. 4.

Murray Harris, Navigating Tough Texts, p35f.

Donald MacLeod, Christ Crucified (pp47-49), and also this article.

Thomas McCall, Did God forsake Jesus on the Cross? (video and synopsis)

Leon Morris, The Cross in the New Testament

John Stott, The Cross of Christ

Brad Vaughn, Was Jesus Forsaken By God? It Depends