“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”
(My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?)
– Matthew 27:46
Jesus’ poignant outcry as He hung on the cross has troubled many Gospel readers for generations. Why would the Father abandon His only begotten Son at the moment of His greatest need—leaving Him feeling absolutely forsaken?
The depths of despair Jesus communicated in this heartbreaking plea can only be rightly understood in light of a prophetic passage written by King David almost 1,000 years before. The great Jewish king and forebear of Christ certainly fell short of the sinless life Jesus would exhibit, and yet he represents a prefigure of His anointed descendant, his Lord who communed with his LORD (Psalm 110:1).
David as a Type
David was the least of Jesse’s sons and would have been rejected by anyone looking for a potential king with human eyes. However, as Samuel came to understand, God looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). Jesus was also undistinguished in His appearance and rejected by most of His Jewish brothers. Yet, this stone which the builders rejected was chosen by God to become the chief Cornerstone.
Once anointed by Samuel, David had to wait several years to ascend to his rightful place as God’s chosen king. Likewise, Jesus was hailed by an angelic host as the King of kings, and yet He is still waiting to be exalted on Earth when every knee bows and tongue confesses that He is Lord.
Finally, David was hunted down by his enemies—both Jewish and Gentile. He repeatedly had to hide away to preserve his own life. At one point, he even had to flee from the murderous aspirations of his own son. In those moments of discouragement, David wrote songs where he poured out his heart before the Lord, confessing his own encroaching despair but always turning back to affirm his trust in God. Calling on God to preserve him in a moment of crisis, David confidently asserted, “You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay” (Psalm 16:1, 10). Yet obviously, after his eventual death, David was laid to rest with his fathers and his body has returned to dust. So, David’s affirmation of his unshakable faith in God in Psalm 16 is best understood as a Messianic prophecy.
The Greater David
As mentioned before, Psalm 110 stands as a testimony to David’s anticipation of his coming Lord who would reign from Zion. With a “strong scepter” He will rule in the midst of God’s enemies, “shattering kings in the day of His wrath.” This Anointed One will also serve as a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek and judge the nations.
The prophetic picture painted by Psalm 110 is of a majestic and mighty Messiah. This is the Messiah most Jews were eager to welcome: a Son of David who would rule with a rod of iron and restore the primacy of the Jewish people. This is the kind of redemption for Jerusalem that Anna’s friends were excited to anticipate (Luke 2:38).
Jews and Gentiles respect or fear a ruler who appears with regal grandeur and imposes His authority on the willing and the unwilling, weak and strong alike. But neither the Jews nor the Gentiles could understand that God’s eternal plan was to send His Son as a suffering servant who would offer salvation from sin before He returned to reign in glory.
Some Jewish writings allude to a “Messiah ben Joseph”—a suffering king who would cry out to God as “Father” before dying ignobly. In Psalm 89, Ethan the Ezrahite recorded a maskil foreshadowing the son of David. This suffering king would “crush his adversaries before him, and strike those who hate him” (Psalm 89:23). But, for a time, this anointed one would also be cast off and rejected by God, suffering His wrath as his crown is “profaned in the dust” (Psalm 89:38-39). At the culmination of this ignominy, his adversaries will be exalted and his enemies will rejoice as his days are shortened and he is covered with shame (Psalm 89:41-45).
Despite the foreshadowing of such treatment David’s life represented, most Jews could not conceive of a Messiah who would suffer and die. But David had penned a psalm conveying his own desperation before the Lord.
Psalm 22
The editors of most Bibles describe Psalm 22 as David’s “cry of anguish and song of praise.” Jesus recited David’s own opening words as He hung on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1).
David interweaves affirmation of his faith in God (verses 3-5, 9-10, 22-24) with heart-wrenching appeals for deliverance. His first complaint is, “I cry by day, but You do not answer; and by night, but I have no rest” (v. 2). In his desperation, David has become “a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and despised by the people; all who see me sneer at me… saying, ‘Commit yourself to the LORD; let Him deliver him; let Him rescue him, because He delights in him’ “ (v. 6-8).
The parallels to the scene at Golgotha are obvious. As Jesus suffered and died, His accusers scoffed and mocked, saying, “He saved others; He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel; let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in Him. He trusts in God, let God remove Him now, if He delights in Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God’ “ (Matthew 27:41-43). The robbers who were crucified alongside Him heaped the same scorn on Him.
The details contained in Psalm 22 demonstrate the miraculous nature of this prophetic psalm. David writes,
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; and You lay me in the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded me; a band of evildoers has encompassed me; they pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me; they divide my garments among them; and for my clothing they cast lots (vv. 14-18).
David’s ordeals did not lead to his death. He may have felt undone by his physical and psychological sufferings, but there is no biblical record to indicate that his hands and feet were literally pierced or that his garments were ever divided and distributed by lot. What was poetically written to describe the anguish in David’s heart as he fled from mortal enemies became literally fulfilled by the Greater David as He suffered and died.
Jesus’ Anguished Cry
We can begin to comprehend Jesus’ physical suffering—even if few people alive today have experienced a Romanesque flogging or been subjected to the intentional agony of crucifixion. Some can also identify with the heartbreak of betrayal by friends and family and the sense of isolation and despair that ensues. Certainly, in His humanity Jesus felt every blow. Many who were flogged as He had been died from the trauma and loss of blood. By the time Jesus was crucified, every nerve in His beaten and weakened body would have been screaming. Crucifixion added insult to injury.
The Romans perfected a means of execution that was designed to heighten suffering while inflicting maximum shame. Contrary to artist’s renditions of Jesus’ crucifixion, it is likely that He would have been stripped naked and exposed to unrelenting humiliation. The placement of the nails in His hands and feet was intended to cause intense pain—while sadistically prolonging suffering before the mercy of death. Yet Jesus refused wine mixed with myrrh that might have assuaged His physical suffering. It has been documented that some people lingered for days during crucifixion, their anguished screams fading over time.
Shortly after Herod’s death, Rome put down a rebellion centered in Sepphoris—a Galilean city next to Nazareth. The Roman governor of Syria burned the city and crucified 2,000 rebels along the surrounding roadways. It is quite possible that as a boy, Jesus would have heard the cries of those hapless Jews as they suffered and died. Their execution—like every challenger to Roman authority—was meant to send a clear and unmistakable signal: Don’t mess with Rome lest you suffer a fate worse than mere death!
From the Jewish perspective, death on a cross also represented a devastating spiritual condition: the curse of God. Citing the Law of Moses from Deuteronomy 21:22-23, Paul reminded the Galatians, “cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Galatians 3:13). Moses was even more emphatic: everyone who is hanged on a tree “is accursed of God.”
Even that admonition becomes prophetic in light of the Cross. That is because, at Calvary Jesus took on the sins of the world. Hanging between heaven and earth, every sin you and I and every person who ever lived has committed (or will commit) was borne by Him. In that tragic earth-shattering moment, I believe the Father could not even look upon the Son—a spiritual crisis conveyed in the darkness that fell over the whole land for three hours (Mark 15:33). For the first time in eternity, the Son was rejected by the Father. The communion Jesus had with His Father (“I and the Father are one,” John 10:30 and 17:21) was broken.
Jesus was abandoned and alone. Forsaken for you and for me.
It is Finished
David’s Psalm 22 alternates between despair and tough faith. It ends with an affirmation of God’s faithfulness and the king’s determination to praise the Lord. The last two verses sound this hopeful note: “Posterity will serve Him; it will be told of the Lord to the coming generation. They will come and will declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, that He has performed it” (vv. 30-31).
The Gospel writers do not record the full extent of Jesus’ words on the cross, perhaps because, in His weakened state, His voice trailed off and was simply hard to hear. We know that when He began to recite David’s Psalm, some of those standing nearby thought He was calling for Elijah (Matthew 27:47). But His last words are also drawn directly from Psalm 22. Whereas David’s testimony turned to an affirmation of faith and hope and the assurance that God would perform a great work of salvation that would be told to coming generations and elicit ongoing worship, Jesus’ recitation captured the culmination of that prophetic expectation.
With the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ—“the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)—that work of salvation was indeed finished.
He Loved You This Much
When we read about the crucifixion, Jesus’ words focus our attention where His own was always oriented: on His Father in heaven. We ponder the horror of the Son being forsaken by the Father and immediately think of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
It was obviously the will of the Father to send His Son—and for the Son to suffer and die. Jesus’ own prayers in the garden of Gethsemane demonstrate that despite grief to the point of death, He was determined to always yield to the will of the Father (“Not My will, but Yours be done” Luke 22:42). But it is a mischaracterization to say that Pilate or the Jews or even God the Father took Jesus’ life from Him. Regarding His approaching death, Jesus testified, “No one has taken [My life] from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father” (John 10:18).
Why did Jesus lay down His life? Why was it the Father’s will to send His only begotten Son and subject Him to a horrible cup of suffering and death? Because He loves us. More pointedly, He loves you.
The Holy Spirit inspired Paul to recognize, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). To the Galatians, he wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20).
Do you know His amazing love? As the song “Amazing Love” says: “I’m forgiven, because You were forsaken…”
