And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? My God! Why have you deserted me? And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying: Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani? And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
From noon to three, the whole earth was dark. The phrase is found in both Matthew and Mark Forsake means to turn away from or withdraw from. Why would God do that to his own son? As it is something that we would not do to our own children, it is odd that the source of all love would turn away from his own son, yet this is exactly what has happened in this moment. When Jesus cries out this phrase, it is a reference to Psalm We can examine it and find tie-ins to the crucifixion narrative.
Matthew and Mark both say that the people mocking Jesus claimed that if God loved him so much, then God should save him in that moment. Psalm 22 , though a Messianic Psalm, is also classified as a lament another category of Psalm.
Laments are notable in that not only do they describe an unbearable situation in which the author finds himself, they also declare a universal dependence upon the Lord and gratitude is offered for the grace of God. When Jesus cried out the first verse of this Psalm, he was also calling out his dependence upon God and his gratitude for the benevolence of God Psalm , , He recognized the desperation of humanity that suddenly hung upon his shoulders and even in that agonizing moment, his voice called out to show that only God can deliver us.
Matthew and Mark share the same verse in the same way almost word-for-word. Yet they are doing it with different goals. Matthew stresses throughout his writings that Jesus is the Messiah that was predicted in the Old Testament. Keeping that in mind, Matthew would have likely connected in his mind the author of Psalm 22 King David to Jesus and thereby making Jesus the one who was anointed to complete the work, save his people, and rule in eternity.
Mark had a different focus. While he did understand Jesus as the Son of God, he typically made sure that people understood his humanity as being a part of the unique personhood of Jesus.
Jesus is not half human and half God. But it's interesting that that is the longest of the seven sayings from the cross, and I believe it is so because he was quoting that first verse and letting us know that's what was on his mind. So I believe he was praying that Psalm. But I believe that in the time when in his humanity he felt forsaken by the Father, that as he looked around and we have this parade of people coming by that were mocking him, the chief priest and rulers.
There are like three different groups of leaders who come by and they mock him. It's interesting that there are multi-sentence statements that they say, and they're prophesied verbatim in Psalm So those groups are mocking him, the thieves on both sides, though one of them is going to be converted shortly after.
At one point, it says in one of the gospels, it says the thieves also, so it's plural, were saying some of the same mocking things that the group at his feet were mocking. So all these people were mocking. The disciples weren't there. So I think it was a cry that was saying, I know why my apostles, my disciples, in fear have forsaken me. And the scripture said you strike the shepherd the sheep will be separated.
I understand why these robbers would mock me. I understand why the crowds who said Hosanna five days ago, they don't understand. I understand why they would forsake me. I understand why these Jewish leaders would forsake me. But my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That was what broke his heart. He understood why all these others, for various reasons would forsake him.
But that was what broke his heart because never had he known a moment's time of any sort of separation in his relationship with the Father. So I think this was the great low point, if you will, in his experience on the cross. But as he prays through that, you get down to Verse 3 in Psalm 22 , he says, "Yet you are Holy. It's because God is Holy. I have become sin, and that's why he uttered that cry.
God was forsaking him, the perfect, Holy, sinless Jesus. Once my sin was put on Jesus, he was forsaken by the father. There is significant scholarly debate surrounding the Gospel of Peter, 42 a noncanonical Gospel purportedly written by Simon Peter that was preserved in the vicinity of Syria. According to early interpretations, the gospel was written no earlier than the first half of the second century.
More recent scholarship claims that the gospel may preserve the earliest seeds of the passion narratives, possibly being written—in its first form—as early as the first half of the first century AD.
The Gospel of Peter is written in such a way that almost every concept discussed therein points to one of the psalms, and Jesus is seen as the fulfillment of many of the psalmic prophecies. As can be seen in the chart, there are four clear textual allusions to Psalm 22 found in the Gospel of Peter, more than are contained in any of the canonical gospels. Its inclusion in the Gospel of Peter, whether early or late, and its absence in the canonical Gospels, may indicate a reticence by the other Gospel authors to use the text because of the existence of the two variants discussed above.
In their purposeful description of Christ upon the cross, his cry showing a stark separation from the Father may not have been the image they wanted to emphasize. Later Christians struggled to reconcile their theological beliefs with Psalm One of the primary reasons for this concern can be found in a significant difference that exists between the LXX version actually in LXX and the Masoretic text.
Why art thou so far from helping me and from the words of my roaring? The account of my transgressions is far from my salvation. The second theological concern came from Trinitarian theologians such as Augustine who struggled to understand how Christ could be completely separated from or forsaken by God while he himself was God.
Since Latter-day Saints understand Christ as the Son of God and a distinct being from the Father, this theological challenge for Trinitarians is not an issue for them. As stated above, Luke and particularly John, who always showed the closeness between the Father and the Son, may have chosen not to include a statement that might be misconstrued by future readers as a disconnect between the two. Why, then, did Mark and Matthew include that statement, both Gospels offering it as the only thing Jesus said while upon the cross?
Recognizing that the cry was not just a quotation of one biblical verse but was instead the opening line of a psalm, we may assume that Christ was not simply fulfilling prophecy and expressing his feelings of loss while hanging on the cross but, in addition, was still lovingly teaching his people by communicating to them the many concepts contained in Psalm 22—including his final victory over suffering—while uttering only one short phrase.
In the midst of his own suffering, perhaps he was attempting to pierce the fog of confusion and shocked doubt that surrounded his followers, who never expected to see their Messiah tortured and killed, and to provide them with some scriptural context that his suffering was foreknown and that he would eventually be exalted in triumph.
Matthew and Mark are clear that Jesus was speaking to a certain degree in coded language, sharing a message that was completely misunderstood by some present, who thought that he was calling for Elijah Matt.
Instead, they would have seen his cry only as another demonstration of his failure and his cursed status before God. Two important questions remain for biblical scholars. First, was the quotation of Psalm truly intended to reference all of Psalm 22?
Numerous biblical scholars have seen it this way. In AD , when Theodore of Mopsuestia averred that the psalm did not refer to the crucifixion of Christ, he was censured by the Second Council of Constantinople and condemned by Pope Vigilus.
Additionally, Jewish authors also connected Psalm and its introductory statements with famous salvational figures such as David and Moses, and even the entire Israelite people, 58 and then went on to show how the entire psalm connected to key events in their lives or history. The second question remaining for biblical scholars is whether the statement was truly made by Jesus on the cross, or whether the quotation of Psalm was simply placed in his mouth by later Gospel authors in order to attach his sacrifice to biblical prophecy.
Although it is impossible to fully ascertain the historicity of words in a text that was written decades after the event and that is received in modernity through a distance of centuries, a number of details strengthen the argument that Christ really spoke the statement as he hung upon the cross.
Hebrew or Greek would have connected the statement most clearly to its Hebrew or Greek scriptural antecedent in Psalm Greek was the lingua franca of the day and was the primary language of the Gospels.
For these reasons, this instance of Aramaic usage in Matthew and Mark is noteworthy as one of the few examples from any of the Gospels. This detail that seems of relative unimportance in the passion narrative again works to indicate that Matthew and Mark were recording a real event.
What, then, have Latter-day Saint prophets, apostles, and scholars thought of Psalm ? In that bitterest hour the dying Christ was alone, alone in most terrible reality. That the supreme sacrifice of the Son might be consummated in all its fulness, the Father seems to have withdrawn the support of His immediate Presence, leaving to the Savior of men the glory of complete victory over the forces of sin and death.
That is what made him sweat blood. In Gethsemane the best among us vicariously became the worst among us and suffered the very depths of hell. And as one who was guilty, the Savior experienced for the first time in his life the loss of the Spirit of God and of communion with his Father. His sufferings—as it were, enormity multiplied by infinity —evoked His later soul-cry on the cross, and it was a cry of forsakenness.
Christians and Saints alike have taken comfort that even Christ at times suffered feelings of aloneness. Art thou greater than he?
This understanding tempers the suggestion that he was hurling any type of accusation against his Father. Later verses in Psalm 22 emphasize that Christ would continue to trust in God, notwithstanding his extreme difficulties, and that he knew with certainty that God would deliver him in the end. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland has taught that although Christ was alone, he was never truly abandoned by the Father. A Son in unrelieved pain, a Father His only true source of strength, both of them staying the course, making it through the night—together.
I conclude this article with the stirring words of Elder Bruce R. In proclaiming these central Easter lessons of suffering swallowed up in the triumph of the resurrection, Psalm 22 takes its place for Latter-day Saints alongside Isaiah 53 as one of the twin pillars of Old Testament prophecy of Christ. He and his wife, Jennifer, live with their four children in Orem, Utah. The author would like to express appreciation for John W.
John W. Welch and John F. Uses of Psalm 22 in the New Testament will be discussed below in the paper. Other Old Testament passages that were used frequently include Exodus 20 the Ten Commandments , eleven times; Psalm employed primarily by Paul , ten times; and Psalm with prophecies of Christ , ten times.
No other Old Testament passages rival these with regard to frequency in the New Testament. Welch and Hall, Charting the New Testament, chart Richard D. Parry, Jay A. Parry, and Tina M. Because LDS commentary on Isaiah 53 is so extensive, the authors of a bibliographic survey on Isaiah in the Book of Mormon chose to devote an additional eight pages to the observations of these commentaries in a verse-by-verse format.
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