Matthew 27:46

Matthew 27:46. And about the ninth hour. During the three hours of darkness, our Lord was silent. He seems not to have become gradually exhausted, for after nearly six hours on the cross, according to three Evangelists, Jesus cried out with a loud voice (comp. Matthew 27:50). The agony resembles that in Gethsemane, but seems even more intense. Matthew and Mark mention only this utterance from the cross.

Eli, Eli. The first words of Psalms 22, given by Mark in the Aramaic dialect then spoken: ‘Eloi, Eloi.'

Lama, or ‘Lema' (Aramaic, and better supported).

Sabaohthani, also Aramaic. The translation follows: My God, etc., suggesting that Matthew wrote in Greek. The 22 d Psalm, from which this cry is taken, had already been cited (from Matthew 27:8) in mockery by the rulers (Matthew 27:43), whose conduct is described in the Psalm (Matthew 27:7). The casting lots for His garments (Matthew 27:35) is a fulfilment of Matthew 27:18 (comp. John 19:24). There are so many other points of agreement, that the Psalm has been deemed a direct and exclusive prophecy of Christ's passion. But it is better to admit a primary reference to David, or to an ideal person representing the righteous. It is then typical of the life, sufferings, and victory of Christ, necessarily finding its highest and most striking fulfilment in Him.

Why hast thou forsaken me? These words express feeling, and the feeling indicated by their obvious meaning. Bodily causes, inflammation, interruption of the flow of blood, dizziness, no doubt acted on His real human body and soul. But His soul was capable of unusual sufferings. The speedy death, while He could cry with a loud voice (Matthew 27:50) points to a deeper struggle. This was an experience of sin and death in their inner connection and universal significance for the race, by One who was perfectly pure and holy, a mysterious and indescribable anguish of the body and the soul in immediate prospect of, and in actual wrestling with, death as the wages of sin and the culmination of all misery of man, of which the Saviour was free, but which He voluntarily assumed from infinite love in behalf of the race. In this anguish, He expresses His actual feeling of abandonment. But His spirit still holds fast to God, and thus our hold on God is established. Here the vicarious nature of the sufferings distinctly appears.