Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 27:46

"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" — Matthew 27:46 (ASV)

Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani—This cry is recorded only by Matthew and Mark. The very syllables and tones remained in the memory of those who heard and understood it. Its absence from John’s narrative was likely because he had, before this, taken the Virgin Mother away from the scene of the crucifixion, as it was more than she could bear (John 19:27).

To the Roman soldiers and many of the bystanders—whether Greeks or Hellenistic Jews—the words would have been unintelligible, as what followed shows. We instinctively shrink from any overly curious analysis of the inner feelings in our Lord’s humanity that corresponded to this cry. Was it the natural fear of death? Was it the vicarious endurance of the wrath that is the penalty for the sins of the human race, for whom He suffered? Was there a momentary interruption of the conscious union between His human soul and the light of His Father’s countenance? Or, as seems implied in John 19:28, did He quote the words to direct people’s thoughts to the great Messianic prophecy the Psalm contained?

None of these answers is entirely satisfactory. We may well be content to leave the mystery unfathomed and to let our words be wary and few.

We may remember several points:

1. Both the spoken words of His enemies (Matthew 27:43) and the actions of the soldiers (Matthew 27:35) must have recalled the words of that Psalm.
2. Memory, thus roused, would then turn to the cry of misery with which the Psalm opens.
3. As a man, our Lord was to taste death in all its bitterness for everyone (Hebrews 2:9). He could not have tasted it so fully if His soul had remained in full, undisturbed enjoyment of the Father’s presence.
4. The lives of God’s saints, in proportion to their likeness to the mind of Christ, have exhibited this strange union—or rather, this instantaneous succession—of feeling abandoned while having the most intense faith. The Psalmist himself, in this very Psalm, is one instance; Job (Job 19:6–9, 23–26) and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 20:7–9, 12–13) may be named as others.

Consider this conflict—the possibility of which is presented in John 12:27 and in the struggle of Gethsemane. Then, though we cannot fully understand, we may at least begin to conceive how it was possible for the Son of Man to feel, for one moment, that sense of abandonment which is the Enemy’s final weapon. He tasted despair as others have, but in the very act of tasting it, the words “My God” were a protest against it, and by them He was delivered.

It is remarkable, whatever the explanation, that just as these words are recorded only by the first two Gospels, so they are the only words from the cross found in their accounts of the Crucifixion.