What Jesus Said
“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Where It Comes From
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?”
Original Language Note
Jesus spoke in Aramaic ("Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani"), directly translating the Hebrew of Psalm 22:1. In Jewish practice, quoting the opening line of a psalm invoked the entire psalm — a practice called "incipit." The hearers were meant to recall all 31 verses.
The Context
Jesus hung on the cross in the final hours before His death. Darkness covered the land from the sixth to the ninth hour. At the ninth hour (3 PM), Jesus cried out these words — the opening line of Psalm 22.
Seeing Christ
Jesus was not quoting randomly in despair. He was pointing His hearers to Psalm 22, a psalm that begins in anguish ("My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?") but ends in vindication and praise ("He hath done this" — v. 31). The psalm contains extraordinary crucifixion imagery written a millennium before crucifixion was invented: "They pierced my hands and my feet" (v. 16), "They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture" (v. 18), "All my bones are out of joint" (v. 14), "I am poured out like water" (v. 14). In His darkest moment, Jesus was declaring that Scripture was being fulfilled — and that vindication would come.
Answering the Skeptic
Muslims and skeptics often cite this verse to argue that Jesus was abandoned by God, proving He was merely human or that the crucifixion failed. This fundamentally misreads the text. First, Jesus is quoting Psalm 22, which ends in triumph — "He hath done this" (v. 31). Second, the psalm's detailed crucifixion imagery (pierced hands/feet, lots cast for garments, bones out of joint) — written 1,000 years before crucifixion existed and 700 years before Rome adopted it — demonstrates divine foreknowledge, not abandonment. Third, the theological reality of Christ bearing sin (2 Corinthians 5:21) explains the Father's turning away from sin, not from the Son ontologically. The cry is not evidence against Christ's divinity; it is evidence of the depth of His substitutionary work.