A Scripture Jesus quoted
My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me
In the darkness of the crucifixion, Jesus cried out the opening line of a psalm of David: my God, my God, why have you forsaken me. It was a real cry of anguish from the cross, yet also the first words of a psalm that moves through suffering to trust and finally to triumph.
“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
“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
The Scripture in its own place
This psalm of David begins in raw desolation, the sufferer feeling abandoned by God, crying out day and night without answer. He is scorned and mocked, surrounded by enemies who wag their heads, pierced in hands and feet, his bones out of joint, his garments divided by lot. The description is startlingly vivid, a portrait of extreme affliction. Yet the psalm does not end there. Midway it turns, as the sufferer recalls God's faithfulness and vows to praise Him among the congregation. It climbs toward a sweeping vision of all the ends of the earth turning to the Lord and future generations declaring His righteousness. From forsakenness the psalm rises to worldwide worship and vindication.
How and when Jesus used it
As Jesus hung on the cross through hours of supernatural darkness, He voiced this psalm's opening cry, expressing the depth of His anguish and apparent abandonment as He bore the weight of the world's sin. The circumstances around Him uncannily matched the psalm: mockers wagging their heads, His garments divided by lot, His body pierced, taunts to let God deliver Him. His cry was no mere quotation for effect but a genuine lament wrung from real suffering. Yet by taking up this particular psalm, He set His agony within a text that ends in vindication and universal worship, hinting that the forsakenness was not the final word even as He truly endured its horror.
What it reveals about Jesus
Here Jesus reads His own suffering through the psalm and makes David's words His own with terrible truth. He is the righteous sufferer the psalm foreshadowed, enduring a forsakenness beyond David's, bearing sin so that God's face was turned away. Yet His choice of this psalm reveals how He read Scripture even in agony: as a story that runs through death to vindication and the gathering of the nations to worship. This shows a Savior who trusts God in the dark, whose cry is real yet framed by hope. In Him the psalm is fulfilled to its depths, both the abandonment and the triumph that follows through resurrection.
Questions people ask
Why did Jesus cry my God, why have you forsaken me?
From the cross Jesus quoted Psalm 22:1, a genuine cry of anguish as He bore the weight of sin and endured apparent abandonment by God. Yet these are the opening words of a psalm that moves through suffering to vindication and worldwide worship. His cry was real desolation, framed within a text that does not end in forsakenness but in triumph.
How does Psalm 22 point to the crucifixion?
Psalm 22 vividly describes a sufferer mocked by enemies who wag their heads, his hands and feet pierced, his garments divided by lot, and his bones out of joint. These details uncannily matched Jesus on the cross. By crying its opening line, Jesus identified Himself as its righteous sufferer, fulfilling a portrait of affliction written centuries before His death.