Mat 27:46 Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?)

By far, the most interesting words of Christ in the Bible. Did Christ feel abandoned by God? Was he quoting a Hebrew psalm that ends very optimistically? Was Matthew's translation accurate? As usual, my choice to to believe all of the above.

I have two sources for this verse. (I would have three if I could find a decent Aramaic dictionary on-line, but I haven't yet.) Christ is quoting Psa 22:1, which is Hebrew, but Matthew provides his translation, which is, of course, in Greek.

The Hebrew for this part of the psalm is "el, el azab." "El" means "God" or "Might one." "Azab" means "to leave," "to depart," "to abandon," "to foresake," "to let go," and "to free." The line completes by saying "far from me." For me, the original Psalm says the basic truth of all reality: that God is distant so that we can be free. Only his distance gives us the freedom to choose. If God was not hidden, we would have no choice but to do his will. Our distance from God is a prerequisite for our freedom. I find it surprising that none of the many commentaries I have read regarding this line mentions this. I find that the whole Psalm has more interesting shades of meaning in the original Hebrew than in English translation, but my knowledge of Hebrew is limited.

In the Greek translation, the focus is more personal. The verb doesn't have the sense of "freeing" someone or "forsaking" them as much as abandoning them or leaving them behind. Thinking about Christ's words from this angle, Christ is expressing what we all feel: that God has left us alone, left us to make our own decisions, to suffer our own consequences.

Christ knew this was coming. He spoke about this exactly in the previous chapter. This was his decision in accepting his fate and do what God willed for him. What God willed for him and all of us was to die alone, without knowing our fate, but of course, Christ alone knew his fate exactly.

But there is something more here. This cry as a final prayer and it was the last time Christ could make this particular prayer. With his death, he was ending his separation from God. His death wasn't his separation from the Father: his birth was. Life is separation from God. Our human freedom to choose comes at the terrible price of that separation. His agony in the garden was the agony of him making his final, free choice. Despite the needs of history, he was still separated enough from God so that he was free and still connected enough to God that In a way, this prayer was his way of saying good bye to that separation.

"Forsaken" in the Greek is from enkataleipô (egkataleipo), which means "to leave behind," "to leave in the lurch," and "to abandon."