Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?
Terrible words, so terrible that both Mark and Matthew, record them in the original Aramaic. Not quite the same in their transliteration into Greek text reflecting their own dialects, Mark being the more colloquial, more working class.
Jesus is slowly suffocating to death as his lungs collapse through the weight of his body. Just to breath is an ordeal; to speak, an agony.
And yet he manages not just one word but four, a question. Jesus often asked questions; in fact, it was his default response. But who would have thought that his dying gasp would have a question mark?
“Eli, Eli” (Matthew 27:46), “Eloi, Eloi” (Mark 15:34). Jesus is addressing God himself, the God who at the beginning of his ministry had addressed him as “My beloved Son.” But he is not making a statement, a bold affirmation of trust; he is asking a question: “Why have you forsaken me?”
“Lema sabachthani?” Jesus knows he has been forsaken, abandoned by God. He wants to know WHY?, even as he breathes his last.
These are terrible words indeed and we may try to blunt their impact by explaining that Jesus is simply quoting Psalm 22 which begins:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me?
so far from my cries of anguish?”
(verse 1)
Certainly this Psalm anticipates some of the details of Jesus’ crucifixion.
The bystanders who taunt him:
All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
“He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
“let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him.”
(verses 7f)
His bodily agony:
“I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
it has melted within me.
My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me in the dust of death.
(verses 14f)
The Roman execution detail:
Dogs surround me,
a pack of villains encircles me;
they pierce my hands and my feet.
All my bones are on display;
people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my clothes among them
and cast lots for my garment.
(verses 16-18)
But above all, the Psalm ends with a note of confidence in God’s deliverance.
Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn:
He has done it!
(verses 30f)
Some commentators would blunt the horror of Jesus’ cry of dereliction by explaining that he is referring to the Psalm in its entirety, a Psalm which concludes with an assertion of God's victory. But that, I think, is to miss the mark: Jesus does die in despair.
He dies in despair because he is torn apart from his Father. As Tom Wright explains: “Part of the whole point of the cross is that there the weight of the world’s evil really did converge upon Jesus, blotting out the sunlight of God’s love as surely as the light of day was blotted out for three hours.” He continues: “Jesus is ‘giving his life as a ransom for many’ and the sin of the ‘many’, which he is bearing, has for the first and only time in his experience caused a cloud to come between him and the father he loved and obeyed, the one who had been delighted in him.”
The physical pain of crucifixion was immense. But this is but nothing compared to the spiritual agony which so terrified Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus is being abandoned by his Father, left to die alone and abandoned. You cannot exaggerate the trauma that he suffered.
And he wants to know WHY?
Jesus is being sacrificed. As it happens, sabachthani is not found in any early Jewish texts. It may derive from zavah, meaning "to sacrifice, slaughter.” Jesus is no less than our Passover lamb.
As the apostle Paul explains: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
The final irony is that on hearing Jesus’ final words, he is completely misunderstood. They think he is calling for Elijah.
And then he dies.
We may not know, we cannot tell,
What pains He had to bear;
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.