Why did Jesus say "Father, why have you forsaken me?"

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CollegeStinks

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If Jesus was God, shouldn’t he have known that God didn’t actually abandon him? Or did God actually abandon him? I feel like this is out of place, for Jesus to feel abandoned. I thought God never abandons us.
 
He didn’t say “Father why have you…” He recited Psalm 22 which is a Psalm Jews recited when despair, trouble, sickness, pain, death and dark times were experienced. If one reads the whole Psalm, one will find that the ending of the psalm is a much different “sentiment” than the beginning of the psalm. It was a prayer used by Jews…not a statement of being forsaken by God.
 
That Psalm also prefigures Christ… I bet the jews witnessing this were pretty shocked.

Not only does the psalm end in proclaiming God …but it also mentions : “they have pierced my hands and feet , they have numbered all my bones” and other such depictions that clearly represent Christ.

You have to remember…hanging on the cross was VERY painful and to draw breath to speak…you would have to pull yourself up on the nails…so in that 9 word statement…Christ says a lot.
 
MichaelHowling said:
That Psalm also prefigures Christ… I bet the jews witnessing this were pretty shocked.

Not only does the psalm end in proclaiming God …but it also mentions : “they have pierced my hands and feet , they have numbered all my bones” and other such depictions that clearly represent Christ.

You have to remember…hanging on the cross was VERY painful and to draw breath to speak…you would have to pull yourself up on the nails…so in that 9 word statement…Christ says a lot.
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4 words, actually, “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani”

Oh, and other parts that reference Christ:
“I am poured out like water,”
“They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.”
 
Publisher said:
He didn’t say “Father why have you…” He recited Psalm 22 which is a Psalm Jews recited when despair, trouble, sickness, pain, death and dark times were experienced. If one reads the whole Psalm, one will find that the ending of the psalm is a much different “sentiment” than the beginning of the psalm. It was a prayer used by Jews…not a statement of being forsaken by God.
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He is perfect God and perfect man and so was praying as man on behalf of all man to God.
 
lol…i used the english…and used my fingers to count it by the way. lol
 
MichaelHowling said:
That Psalm also prefigures Christ… I bet the jews witnessing this were pretty shocked.

Not only does the psalm end in proclaiming God …but it also mentions : “they have pierced my hands and feet , they have numbered all my bones” and other such depictions that clearly represent Christ.

You have to remember…hanging on the cross was VERY painful and to draw breath to speak…you would have to pull yourself up on the nails…so in that 9 word statement…Christ says a lot.
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Very painful is an understatement. I read an account of the hows and whats et al medically. Beyond brutal and gruesome. So much so that we have a word for it, one that I try very diligently not to use. And He did it for us. Humbling…
 
yes. They say it was a miracle He survived 3 hours on the cross.
 
Jewish education at that time largely consisted of memorizing the Torah. Just as, nowadays, hearing someone recite the first line of something well-known would bring the rest of it to mind.

Thus, Jesus saying the first few words of the 22nd Psalm would instantly bring it to the mind of all the Jews listening, just as we could probably remember the next Psalm when hearing “The Lord is my shepherd…”

Thus, His words were not a cry of despair, but a song of victory.
Posterity shall serve him; men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that he has wrought it.
Psalms 22:30-31 (RSV)
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I learned that in the Denver Catholic Biblical School - the best Bible study going! 👍
 
CollegeStinks said:
If Jesus was God, shouldn’t he have known that God didn’t actually abandon him? Or did God actually abandon him? I feel like this is out of place, for Jesus to feel abandoned. I thought God never abandons us.
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Psalm 22. 😉
 
yea, they could be up there for days. but a miracle due to the brutal beating and possible shock that should have probably set in
 
Do not be confused by the words spoken by the Lord Jesus, when He “cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

Understand that the Lord Jesus truly had to suffer everything, humbling himself to the level of the lowest of all creatures, He who was the Lord, Son of God, true God of true God, submissive to the infamous death by the Cross (“whosoever is crucified is cursed by God”, reads the Torah), and so that the Psalm 22 of the Sacred Scriptures may be fulfilled:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; in you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads.‘He trusts in the LORD,”’ they say, ‘let the LORD rescue him.’"

Indeed, right before His departure, the Lord also said: “I thirst!” for Psalm 22 reads:

“My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.”
Code: 
Also, after His death, when the soldier pierced His side with a spear, blood and water came out:
“I am poured out like water… My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me”.

But after all this suffering, right before death, the Lord Jesus cried: “It is finished!”

For the Psalm 22 recited:

“All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. All who go down to the dust will kneel before him— those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!”

“And Jesus gave a loud cry and said, ‘Father, into your hands I give my spirit!’ and when he had said this, he gave up his spirit.”

For the Holy Scriptures read in Psalm 31:

“Into your hand I commit my spirit: you have redeemed me, O Lord God of truth! Let me not be put to shame, O Lord, for I have called upon thee. Let the wicked be ashamed, and be brought down to hell. Let the lying lips be put to silence. And as for me, I said in my fear, “I am cut off from your sight!” but you gave ear to the voice of my prayer, when my cry went up to you.”

And the Scriptures continue being fulfilled through Psalm 16:

“Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have secured my inheritance. The land you have given me is a pleasant land. What a wonderful inheritance! I know the Lord is always with me. I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me. My body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.”
 
CollegeStinks said:
If Jesus was God, shouldn’t he have known that God didn’t actually abandon him? Or did God actually abandon him? I feel like this is out of place, for Jesus to feel abandoned. I thought God never abandons us.
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Jesus, is an eldest creation of God… He is not God. God made him as our Lord and Saviour, commanded by God that evry man to kneel every knee to pray and worship our lord jesus.
As a man, fear in his heart when times he suffers in torture and death to cross,
he knows that to happen and before that Jesus ask to take away the test he will be going through, but he deliver himself to God’s will. actually he has not forsaken by God, its a fullfillment to the will of God is to prove through his blood he purchase his church. He is the head of the church and the church is his body. Before he grasp his last breath he said that THIS IS ETERNAL LIFE… TO KNOW YOU THE ONLY GOD.
Righteousness of God is to whoever sinned must pay its sin. Jesus havent sinned before God, but he pays the sinned of people (His people) because in front of God the church and head is one NEW man. Cheerss… hope thats help…
 
cheezey said:
Very painful is an understatement. I read an account of the hows and whats et al medically. Beyond brutal and gruesome. So much so that we have a word for it, one that I try very diligently not to use. And He did it for us. Humbling…
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You could use the word agony instead then. No word can truly adequately describe anything…not even the word you’re thinking of.
 
I believe it was a tract from St. Alphonse Liguori which said that our Blessed Lord had uttered this cry indicating that his abandonment should be more complete. He mentions these same words of Our Blessed Lord again when referring to spiritual aridity/desolation in his tract Conformity to the Will of God :
Let the soul thank God when she experiences his loving endearments, but let her not repine when she finds herself left in desolation. It is important to lay great stress on this point, because some souls, beginners in the spiritual life, finding themselves in spiritual aridity, think God has abandoned them, or that the spiritual life is not for them; thus they give up the practice of prayer and lose what they have previously gained. The time of aridity is the best time to practice resignation to God’s holy will. I do not say you will feel no pain in seeing yourself deprived of the sensible presence of God; it is impossible for the soul not to feel it and lament over it, when even our Lord cried out on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” In her sufferings, however, the soul should always be resigned to God’s will.
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This one took a little more work to post, but to date it remains the most complete and most profound meditation I’ve ever personally read relating to those words of Our Blessed Lord. It comes from the mind and soul of the late Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.
Excerpt from: The Seven Last Words, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen ; pp 32-35
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. . . But the sun refused to shine on the crucifixion ! The light that rules the day, probably for the first time in history , was snuffed out like a candle when, according to every human calculation, it should’ve continued to shine. The reason was that the crowning crime of man, the killing of nature’s Lord, could not pass without a protest from nature itself. If the soul of God were in darkness, so should be the sun which He had made.
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Truly , all was darkness ! He had given up His Mother and His beloved disciple, and now His Heavenly Father seemingly had abandoned Him. “Eli,Eli lamma sabacthani?” “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me ?” It is a cry in the mysterious language of Hebrew to express the tremendous mystery of a God “abandoned” by God. The Son calls His Father, God . What a contrast with a prayer He once taught : “Our Father Who art in Heaven!” In some strange mysterious way His human nature seems separated from His Heavenly Father, and yet not separated ,for otherwise how could He cry, “My God My God”? But just as the sun’s light and heat can be withdrawn from us by the intervening clouds, though the sun remains in the sky, so there was a kind of withdrawal of His Father’s Face in the terrible moment in which He took upon Himself the sins of the world. This pain and desolation He suffered for each of us, that we might know what a terrible thing it is for human nature to be without God, to be deprived of a Divine Remedy and Consolation. It was the supreme act of atonement for three classes of people : those who abandon God , those who doubt the presence of God, and those who are indifferent to God.
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He atoned first of all for atheists, for those who on that dark midday half believed in God, as even now at night they half believe in Him. He atoned also for those who know God, but live as if they had never heard His name; for those whose hearts are like waysides on which God’s love falls only to be trampled by the world; for those whose hearts are like rocks on which the seed of God’s love falls only to be quickly forgotten; for those whose hearts are like thorns on which God’s love descends only to be choked by the cares of the world. It was atonement for all who have had faith and lost it; for all who once were saints and now are sinners. It was the Divine Act of Redemption for all abandonment of God, for in that moment in which He was forgotten, He purchased for us the grace of never being forgotten by God.
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It was also atonement for that other class who deny the presence of God; for all those Christians who abandon all effort when they cannot feel God near them; for all who identify being good with feeling good; for all those skeptics beginning with the first who asked , “Why has God commanded you?” It was reparation for all the haunting questions of a doubting world:
“Why is there evil ?”
“Why does God not answer my prayers ?”
“Why did God take away my mother ?”
“Why” . . . “why” . . . “why ”?
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CollegeStinks said:
If Jesus was God, shouldn’t he have known that God didn’t actually abandon him? Or did God actually abandon him? I feel like this is out of place, for Jesus to feel abandoned. I thought God never abandons us.
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Jesus did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned. But in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin, to the point that he could say in our name from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? ”Having thus established him in solidarity with us sinners, God “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all,” so that we might be “reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” - paragrah 603 CCC

Apart from the obvious parallels regarding the crucifixion “they pierce my hands and feet” etc. psalm 22 is a famous “Todah” psalm. The Todah was a Jewish sacrifice of thanksgiving. Whenever a Jew was saved from imminent danger or death he would offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Lord which consisted of a sacrificed lamb, bread and wine. He would share this meal with his family and friends and chant a psalm of thanksgiving. Psalm 22 is one of these psalms, notice how psalm 22 ends in victory?

Todah in Hebrew means Eucharistia in Greek, which mean Eucharist or thanksgiving in English which is where Catholics get the term Eucharist from.

The night before Jesus’ crucifixion Jesus shared the last supper with his apostles; there were elements of the Todah during this supper. Jesus shared bread and wine with his friends and offered his body on Good Friday as the sacrificial lamb and cried out Psalm 22 which in a nutshell is the basic practice of a Todah ritual.

The enemies of Jesus thought they had defeated him but what seemed like defeat in the beginning turned into victory, hence when you read psalm 22, it seems like a defeat in the beginning but it transforms into a victory in the end.
 
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