In the midst of my struggles I find myself closely clinging to the incarnation. This idea that God took on humanity, somehow links me closer to Him in a deep connection. He experienced what I experience, and He was tempted in all ways as I am Heb. 4:15, “For we have not an high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” He embraced humanity and at the same time died to redeem it. Through this He promises to, “never leave us nor forsake us.” Heb. 13:5. Yet I find it a struggle to believe this for so many times I constantly feel this distance and disconnection resonating with a painful ring in my soul. It is as if I feel this more times than not, this hunch that God is not keeping His promise. After all, how much can He understand me and my sinful humanity when He lived the perfect, non-sinful life?
It is common to approach the prayer of Jesus in Matthew 26:46 as He quotes Psalm 22:2, with an understanding of Christ’s abandonment as He dies and cries, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Most see this phrase as a theological treatise on the dynamic of what God’s wrath was doing to the Trinitarian union which I will show does not have to be the case. This idea of God abandoning Christ so that He does not have to abandon us due to our sin is not only developed as a crucial doctrine to the faith from insufficient Biblical support, but is also I think a misrepresentation of the account. The text along with other supporting texts I think lend themselves to both an easier understanding of this as well as a more spiritually and emotionally meaningful one.
Matt. 27:26 says, “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ That is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” When we look across the horizontal line of how each gospel writer records this passage we find some interesting facts. Mark and Matthew are the only two that record this quote among the synoptics, while Luke all together omits it. With the view of Markan priority and Matthew being written next, there has been some speculation as to why Luke would directly omit this seemingly important quote. Bultmann was first to make the argument that, “this embarrassing phrase lacked authenticity due to the omission from Luke.” However, this view was unlikely, seeing that it is recorded in both Matthew and Mark. John does not record it but he is doing something entirely different with his narrative gospel account so it would not be fair to rule his in. Also the fact that, “these are the only words Matthew and Mark record Jesus saying from the cross, must be taken as very significant for these Evangelists,” (there are six other sayings but they are all in Luke and John). The fact that Matthew only mentions this one saying on the cross with a direct quotation begs the question of what was so important from his gospel perspective that this phrase was to be all we get from Jesus on the cross? I think it is easily sufficient to say that both Mark and Matthew’s narration focus on this saying in a theological way that Luke simply does not.
Matthew makes a few slight alterations though to the text as he veers from Mark’s account. Mark sticks closely to his Aramaic translation with (eloi, eloi) while Matthew translates this section as (ali, ali) a transliteration of the actual Hebrew represented by the quotation in Psalm 22:2 and leaving the rest in Aramaic. Luz notes that the Matthean text is most likely a, “change to the Markan text in order to make more obvious how one could misunderstand it as a call to Elijah,” as seen in v.47. From the Matthean transliteration of the Hebrew to Aramaic “ali” it is simple to see how one could mistakenly hear “eli” an abbreviation for “eliyahu” or Elijah.
It is also extremely important to note that within Matthew’s gospel account this is the only time that he translates a quotation of Jesus in the Galilean Aramaic dialect. This alone helps this to stand out, as if to say to the reader, “This is so important that I actually want you to hear His exact words, as the sounds and syllables rolled off His lips, crying out to God in despair.” We find the same kind of attention drawn in Mark’s account on top of the fact that as we already noted, Matthew seems to place importance on this fact as he only records this saying and none of the other six found in Luke or John. So, already within the text there are many indicators going off that this utterance is of extreme importance.
(Adam writes) I remember having a conversation with a good friend who was going through a difficult time in their life. He was trying so hard to deepen his relationship with God and to overcome some weighty matters of sin that were crushing him. During this time as he sought and sought after God with what he perceived to be “all his heart” (Jer. 29:13) he felt only more distance and more guilt. Then a tragedy happened in his life that left him void of any answers at all. He looked me in the eyes, with tears streaming down his face and said, “I don’t understand, I feel as though God doesn’t care. I feel as though He has left me. After all, how can I believe that He would never leave me when He forsook His own Son. It is as if He doesn’t care, and if He does care, then there is no way He can really understand.”
We need to stop there, to move ant further would prove fruitless, as he goes into Psalm 22. You need to meditate on Psalm 22 until next time, “My God, My God why hast Thou forsaken Me? Why art Thou so far from helping Me, and from the words of My roaring?” Did you ever feel like Adam’s friend? Destitute, desperate, dejected, alone? After you have feasted on Psalm 22, spend some time on Psalm 42 and until next time, we’ll see you, “…Between The Lines…”
“Abandon Me Not” (Exegesis of Matt. 27:46) by Adaam T. Boguski II 1/12/13
Digging Into Prophecy 