A messianic prophecy

My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me

Foretold Psalm 22:1 → Fulfilled Matthew 27:46

The promise

Psalm 22 opens with a cry that has echoed through every age of human anguish: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me. It is the prayer of a righteous sufferer who feels utterly abandoned by God even as he keeps crying out to him. The psalm goes on to describe a scene of horror, a man surrounded by mockers who wag their heads, his strength poured out like water, his bones out of joint, his hands and feet pierced, his garments divided by lot.

The psalm was David's, written a thousand years before the Romans, yet it reads like an eyewitness account of a crucifixion that did not yet exist. The sufferer is scorned and despised, taunted with the very words, He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him, and left to the dust of death. The forsakenness at the opening is the deepest note of all, the sense that even God has turned away.

But Psalm 22 does not stay in the dark. It turns, decisively, from anguish to deliverance and praise. The sufferer who cried of abandonment ends by declaring that God has not despised the affliction of the afflicted, and that all the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all nations shall worship before him. The cry of forsakenness opens a psalm that ends in worldwide worship.

Psalm 22 holds together two things that seem impossible to hold: the most desolate cry of abandonment and the most confident hope of vindication. The sufferer never stops calling God my God even as he asks why he is forsaken, and by the end his lament has turned into a summons for all the ends of the earth to worship. The psalm teaches that the darkest cry can still be a prayer, and that forsakenness is not always the end of the story.

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?”Psalm 22:1

The fulfillment

On the cross, in his ninth hour of agony, Jesus cried out with a loud voice the opening line of this psalm: Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me. Of all the words he could have spoken in his dying, he chose the first line of Psalm 22, taking its ancient cry of dereliction onto his own lips as his own.

Around him the psalm was being fulfilled in detail. The rulers and soldiers mocked him and wagged their heads, taunting that he trusted in God, in words almost identical to the psalm. His hands and feet had been pierced by the nails; the soldiers had divided his garments and cast lots for his clothing at the foot of the cross. The scene David had glimpsed a thousand years before was unfolding around the crucified Christ.

And by crying the first line, Jesus invoked the whole psalm, including its triumphant end. His cry was not despair having the last word but the entrance into a psalm that moves through forsakenness to vindication and to the worship of all nations. The one who cried of abandonment was the one through whom the ends of the earth would turn to God, exactly as the psalm foretold.

The bystanders at the cross unknowingly played their parts in the psalm. They mocked him for trusting God to deliver him, almost quoting the psalm's taunt word for word; they watched his thirst; they gambled at his feet. Even the darkness over the land and the sense of abandonment fit the scene the psalm had drawn. Jesus, crying its first line, gathered all of it into the ancient song and made the psalm's sufferer unmistakably himself.

“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?”Matthew 27:46

How strong is this connection? Direct New Testament link. The New Testament itself makes this connection, quoting or naming it directly.

An honest note. This is a strong and direct connection. Jesus deliberately cried the opening words of Psalm 22 from the cross, and the Gospels record the mockery, the pierced hands and feet, and the dividing of his garments as matching the same psalm. In its own setting Psalm 22 was David's lament of the righteous sufferer, and it moves from forsakenness to deliverance and praise. Christians read it as brought to its fullness in the crucifixion, and Jesus' own use of it makes the connection unmistakable.

Why it matters

This is the most searching of all the fulfillments, because it shows the Son of God entering the experience of God-forsakenness itself. Jesus did not merely suffer physical agony; he cried out the deepest human cry, the sense of being abandoned by the very God he trusted. He went into that darkness so that those who trust him would never have to be finally forsaken.

For anyone who has felt abandoned by God, who has cried into what seemed an empty heaven, this fulfillment is a strange comfort. The Lord himself prayed that prayer. He knows the feeling of forsakenness from the inside, and he took it upon himself on the cross, bearing the abandonment we deserved so that we might be received.

And the cry was not the end. Jesus took the first line of a psalm that ends in resurrection and worldwide worship, and by rising from the dead he carried it through to its triumphant close. To trust Christ is to trust that even the darkest cry of forsakenness stands inside a story that ends in vindication, and that the God who seemed to have turned away was, all along, accomplishing salvation.

This fulfillment guards us from two errors at once. It will not let us pretend that Jesus' suffering was shallow, a mere show of pain, for he entered the true depths of God-forsakenness. And it will not let us end in despair, for the cry he chose opens a psalm that ends in resurrection joy and the worship of the nations. Trusting Christ means learning to pray even our darkest cries into a story we know ends in God's vindication.

For the church this cry has become strangely precious. It means there is no depth of desolation the Lord has not touched, no cry of abandonment he cannot meet from the inside. When believers pray Psalm 22 in their own darkness, they pray words their Savior prayed before them, and they pray them, as he did, toward an ending they have not yet seen but can trust, the vindication that turns the cry of forsakenness into the worship of all the earth.

Who is Jesus? · Begin with Jesus

Questions people ask

Why did Jesus say My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

He was quoting the opening line of Psalm 22, taking its whole shape onto himself. The words voice real anguish as he bore the weight of the cross, yet they come from a psalm that moves from forsakenness to rescue and praise. Jesus enters the depth of abandonment honestly while still calling God my God, so the cry expresses suffering without abandoning faith or hope.

Was Jesus actually forsaken by God on the cross?

Christians answer this in different ways. Many hold that Jesus truly bore the weight of sin and its separation on behalf of others; others stress that he quoted a psalm which ends in vindication, voicing anguish without final abandonment. All agree he entered the deepest human experience of feeling forsaken. The cry is honest suffering, and the psalm he prayed points beyond the darkness to God's coming rescue.

Was Jesus truly abandoned by God on the cross?

By crying the opening line of Psalm 22, Jesus entered fully into the experience of God-forsakenness, bearing the abandonment we deserved. Yet that same psalm moves from the cry of dereliction to vindication and to the worship of all nations. By invoking the whole psalm, Jesus took its darkest cry into a story that ends in triumph, and his resurrection carried it through to that end. The cry was real, and it was not the last word.