And when [the] sixth hour was come, there came darkness over the whole land until [the] ninth hour;
Mark moves from the noise of mockery to a silence God Himself imposed. At midday the light failed, and darkness covered the cross for three hours. Why did God draw a curtain over the death of His Son, and what happened behind it?
Mark counts time the Jewish way, starting at six in the morning. His hours need converting before the sequence makes sense.
All the mockeries and preparations came first, including perhaps the trial of the two robbers. Then the actual crucifixion began at the third Jewish hour, which Mark alone specifies — that is, our 9 o'clock in the morning on Friday. The supernatural darkness came at the sixth Jewish hour, our noon. And the Lord died at the ninth Jewish hour, our 3 p.m.
That gives six hours on the cross, split in half: three in daylight, three in darkness.
Three questions arise: how far did the darkness reach, what caused it, and what did it mean?
Did the darkness cover the whole earth? Hardly, for in part of the world it was already night, so darkness there was not possible. No doubt it covered the whole land, and perhaps the whole Roman world... We know it was not an eclipse of the sun, because it was full moon at that time. It was a supernatural darkness... But what is the meaning of this darkness? It was the outward sign of what passed over Him. He was then the sinner's substitute before a holy and righteous God. God had hidden His face from Him; He was forsaken by God Himself. His cry explains the meaning of the darkness, and the darkness gives us the meaning of His bitter cry.
So far the scene has been full of human voices, from the chief priests down to the thieves. Now God replies.
It was more than human: God caused a witness of that hour that stood out from all before and after. There was darkness; the very world felt it... So here men showed no feeling. They reviled and scoffed at the Son of God, from the chief priests down to the thieves. God answered by veiling all nature in the presence of the death of Him who created all.
The darkness cleared the scene. One writer finds its pattern in the law of the Day of Atonement, when the high priest entered the sanctuary alone.
At the last stage of this great transaction there is darkness over all the earth. How fitting that it should be so! God and Christ were alone there. This scene had been pictured long before in these words: "No one shall be in the tent of meeting when he enters to make atonement in the Holy Place" (Lev. 16:17). In one sense that darkness stood for the darkness resting on the mind and heart of the nation at that moment, the terrible moral darkness over Israel. Yet God certainly intended to withdraw His Son in that hour. No one was to see what passed between Him and Christ, when the Blessed One bore the judgment of God against sin.
Behind the covering, the suffering changed in kind.
He no longer has to bear the envy, malice, and cruelty of men. Now He bears the penalty of sin, delivered up to death by a holy God... Darkness was over the land. Christ was alone with God, hidden from every eye, when He who knew no sin was made sin... That such a sacrifice was required magnifies the holy nature of God. That such a sacrifice could be given magnifies the love of God. No smaller sacrifice could secure the glory of God or gain the salvation of men.
The three hours had an end, and what closed for Him opened for others.
Those three hours of darkness rolled on — three hours of total eclipse between God and the One on the cross. Then at the ninth hour, three o'clock in the afternoon, came that great, that terrible cry from Him: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He forsook Jesus in that hour, so that He might never forsake you and me. There was darkness for Him that there might be only light for us. He bore the judgment that we might go free.
- Noon. Mark counts from six in the morning. So the sixth hour is midday and the ninth is three in the afternoon. The light failed at the brightest hour of the day.
- Sign. It was full moon, so no eclipse could explain it; the darkness was God's own witness, and the world felt it.
- Screen. God drew the darkness like the curtain of the Day of Atonement. No one saw what passed between God and His Son.
- Substitution. Behind that screen the suffering came from God, not from men. The One who knew no sin was made sin and bore the judgment.
- Exchange. He was forsaken so that we need never be: darkness for Him, light for us; judgment on Him, freedom for us.
and at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, [saying], Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
The darkness ends with a cry, and Jesus calls God "My God," not "Father." Two questions press on every reader: why was the sinless One abandoned, and who could give the answer?
Until now in Mark's account, the suffering came from people. The darkness draws a line across that.
We have seen the Lord rejected by all men from the highest to the lowest, and forsaken by His disciples. Now we are permitted to hear of His far deeper sufferings when forsaken by God. He no longer bears the envy, malice, and cruelty of men. He now bears the penalty of sin, delivered up to death by a holy God. Into this solemn scene no man can, or shall, intrude. Darkness was over the land. Christ was alone with God, hidden from every eye, when He, who knew no sin, was made sin.
Mark preserves the sound of the cry, not only its sense.
It is as the sin-offering that we see our Lord here. There is the cry of anguish, given no doubt in the very words our blessed Lord used, and not the Hebrew as in Matthew. These are in Aramaic, the everyday language used in Palestine at that time.
The words come from Psalm 22, and the answer to the "why" comes a few lines later in the same psalm: "Yet you are holy" (Psalm 22:3, ESV).
For God to forsake a perfectly righteous man in his distress goes against all His ways with men. Yet we know there can be no unrighteousness with God. So we learn from the lips of Christ Himself what happened on this solemn and unique occasion. God was perfectly righteous in forsaking the One who was perfectly righteous. The Lord can say, "But You are holy." So the One whom God forsakes is the One who fully vindicates God.
Suffering is not rare. Being left without God is.
Others suffered cruel mocking and beatings, chains and prison. Others had nothing, and were afflicted and tormented. But not one was forsaken. While they suffered, grace held them up, the Spirit of God strengthened them, and the felt presence of the Lord cheered them... But here is One who is forsaken. He can say to God, "Why are You so far from helping Me?" He cries to God, and has to say, "You do not hear." Forsaken by God, no help in God, no answer from God.
The reason lay in us, not in Him.
But was not Jesus holy? Yes. He was as holy in His perfect Manhood as in the glory of the Godhead. He was as holy in His own Person on that cross as when He created the angels. Then why was He forsaken? I answer for myself — it was for me. That which we were, He was made. He became sin — the thing God hates for ever and without limit — so that God's love might reach us in absolute righteousness.
He says "My God" here, not "Father." That change is not a loss of trust.
First, His trust is perfect. He does not say Jehovah. That relationship was not in use at that moment, as His relationship with His Father was in Gethsemane. He says, "My God, My God." Whatever the dreadful forsaking was, His perfect faith in God and devotion to God, as the only One He owned, remains absolute and unshaken.
The same title also settles a question about when He bore sin — it belongs to the cross, not to His whole life.
"My God, My God," says Jesus when and because He was forsaken on the cross, made sin and bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. It is the true, simple and strong answer to those who suppose that He had been bearing sin all His life here below... But now the sin charged to Him is gone, because He died for it. As the witness that all was gone, He is raised from the dead. Then He declares that very name — "My Father, and your Father; and My God, and your God."
Those hours had a purpose for us.
Those three hours of darkness, those three hours of total eclipse between God and the One on the cross, rolled on. Then at the ninth hour, three o'clock in the afternoon, comes that great, that terrible cry from Him. He forsook Jesus in that hour, so that He might never forsake you and me. There was darkness for Him so that there might be only light for us. He bore the judgment so that we might go free.
- Darkness — three hours where suffering from men ends and suffering from God begins. No eye may see it.
- Distance — God never left a righteous sufferer without an answer. This forsaking stands alone.
- Demand — Psalm 22 answers the "why": "Yet you are holy." God's holiness required it, and the forsaken One vindicates God.
- Debt — He was as holy on the cross as ever. The reason lay in what He was made for us.
- Deliverance — He was forsaken so that we never will be. Darkness for Him, light for us.
And some of those who stood by, when they heard [it], said, Behold, he calls for Elias.
Jesus has just cried out from the cross, and the people standing nearest hear the name of a prophet where He had spoken the name of God. Who were these bystanders, and how could they miss a cry out of their own Scriptures?
Mark and Matthew do not record the cry with the same word, and that difference decides who could have misheard it.
Eloi. This is the Aramaic form. Eli in Matthew 27:46 is the Hebrew, which Wellhausen supposes was the form the Lord Himself used, since it sounds more like Elijah. As he says, the Jews could not have misunderstood Eloi, their everyday language.
Another writer sees a reason behind the two forms.
In the cry itself there is a difference, and there must be a reason for it. It is "Eli" in Matthew and "Eloi" in Mark. Both are names of God, but the meaning differs. "Eloi" is the ordinary expression for "my God," while "Eli" speaks more of power — "my Mighty One." "Eloi," the word in Mark, suits better the thought of the sin-offering, which has in view the holiness of God, or His nature.
The name did not come out of nowhere. Israel was waiting for Elijah to return, and people had already linked that hope to Jesus.
There was a general feeling in Israel that Elijah would come back. Malachi 4:5 was ample authority for this expectation. Among the questions put to John the Baptist was, "Are you Elijah?" And he says, "I am not" (John 1:21). The Lord Jesus once asked His disciples what people were saying about Him. They replied that some said He was Elijah (Matthew 16:13-14). When He cried out in anguish upon the cross, the bystanders said, "He calls for Elijah… let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him."
Commentators differ on who spoke these words. Some read it as a language problem among foreign soldiers.
Hearing His cry, some thought He was calling for Elijah. This must have been Romans who did not understand Hebrew, for Jews would know full well that He was crying to God.
Others say there was no confusion at all. To them, the remark is one more taunt.
"And some of the bystanders hearing it said, Behold, he is calling Elijah." This seems to be mere scoffing again. There is no reason to suppose they did not know that He said "My God, My God," and not Elijah.
Either way, their reaction shows who they were.
They would hardly have found a reference to Elijah in His words if they had not been Jews. But then, how dense and ignorant of them! They did not recognise the cry to God written in their own Scriptures.
What they failed to grasp was not a detail of pronunciation but the heart of what was happening on that cross.
This terrible experience He Himself announced aloud, so that anyone who wanted to could hear — "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" As so often, those who heard did not understand His words. They said, "Let Him alone, let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him." They could not grasp how this crucified One could speak to God in heaven like that. Yet in it lies the central truth of the propitiation Christ made for our sins and for the whole world.
Even their failure to understand had a place.
Their thoughts far from His, those who surrounded Him did not even understand His words, but by their ignorance they fulfilled the prophecies.
- Heard wrongly — Mark records the cry as "Eloi," the everyday word for "my God." Jews could not have mistaken it.
- Heard through expectation — Israel was waiting for Elijah, on the authority of Malachi 4:5. People had linked that hope to Jesus long before the cross.
- Heard by whom — writers differ. Some say Roman soldiers who did not know the language. Others say it was more mockery from people who understood.
- Heard without hearing — the words came from their own Scriptures. They missed the propitiation, the sacrifice for sins, that Christ was making in front of them.
- Heard in God's plan — their ignorance changed nothing. In these very words they fulfilled prophecies they did not recognise.
And one, running and filling a sponge with vinegar, fixed it on a reed, and gave him to drink, saying, Let alone, let us see if Elias comes to take him down.
Jesus has just cried out from the cross, and the people standing near hear a prophet's name in it. What follows is a man running with a sponge of sour drink, and a taunt shaped like a question: wait and see if help comes.
The "sour wine" here is not the same cup Jesus had already turned away earlier in the crucifixion. One writer distinguishes the two by the Greek word used and by what had been mixed into the first:
The corresponding text in Matthew 27:34 seems to show that the wine in this case was a sour, weak liquor — the word translated "vinegar," which appears again later in that chapter and in Mark 15:36, Luke 23:36 and John 19:29-30. The mixing with myrrh was to produce stupefaction, and the Lord refused that cup.
Psalm 69:21 says, "for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink." Older translations read "vinegar" there. One writer sets that verse beside the raised sponge and asks whether anyone at the cross felt pity:
I think we sometimes forget that the Lord suffered physically, probably as no other could suffer. He never used His Godhead power to relieve His human suffering. When He cried, "I thirst," we see the suffering Man — the suffering Man in His perfection, showing that He truly suffered. Was there any relenting in His enemies who heard that cry? That cry of distress? Was there any pity, any mercy in any of them? He tells us in Psalm 69 that they gave Him gall for His food, and in His thirst they gave Him vinegar to drink. They pressed the sponge to His mouth so that this Scripture might be fulfilled, though they did not know they were fulfilling Scripture. There was no pity, no mercy for a suffering Saviour.
Commentators differ over the motive of the man who ran with it. Where the writer above sees no mercy, another notes what the sour drink was to the soldiers:
The vinegar was a kind of drink the soldiers had. Some have thought it mockery, but this is not the way in which it is presented here.
The bystanders turned His cry "My God, My God" into the name of a prophet. Writers disagree about whether this was honest confusion or deliberate insult. One reads it as a sneer from people who knew better:
This seems to be mere scoffing again. There is no reason to suppose they did not know that He said, "My God, My God," not Elijah.
Another sees soldiers who did not know the language, and links the drink to the words John records:
Hearing His cry, some thought He was calling for Elijah. This must have been Romans who did not understand Hebrew, for Jews would know full well that He was crying to God. In His thirst they gave Him vinegar to drink, evidently in response to His words, "I thirst" (John 19:28-29).
Israel had long expected that prophet to return. One writer traces the hope to Malachi, and finds the same question asked twice before in the Gospels:
There was a general feeling in Israel that Elijah would come back. Malachi 4:5 was ample authority for this expectation. Among the questions put to John the Baptist was, "Are you Elijah?" And he says, "I am not" (John 1:21). When the Lord Jesus asked His disciples what the people were saying about Him, they replied, "Some say you are Elijah" (Matthew 16:13-14). When He cried out in anguish upon the cross, the bystanders said, "He is calling for Elijah… let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him."
The words spoken over the sponge are not a question anyone wanted answered. Writing on the parallel scene in Matthew, one commentator explains what that "wait and see" was doing inside the men who said it:
To those standing by the cross the Lord's words are a call for Elijah. This was probably a misunderstanding by the soldiers rather than the Jews. They had picked up some of the common Jewish beliefs they would have heard around them. Would Elijah come and take Him down? Conscience was stirring in them, and they quieted it with faint mockery aimed at the man who gives the vinegar to One in the agonising thirst of crucifixion: "Let be; let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him."
- Thirst. He never used divine power to ease His own pain; the cry of thirst was the real need of a real Man.
- Sour wine. He refused the earlier cup mixed with myrrh, which was meant to dull the senses. This later drink was the ordinary sour wine the soldiers had.
- Sponge. Writers differ on the motive: cruelty with no mercy, or the soldiers' own drink offered without mockery.
- Scripture. Whatever the motive, the men at the cross fulfilled Psalm 69:21 without knowing it.
- Elijah. Israel was waiting for the prophet Malachi promised. So the crowd heard that name in His cry to God, then used "let us see" to quiet a stirring conscience.
And Jesus, having uttered a loud cry, expired.
The verse gives the death of Jesus in the fewest possible words: a loud cry, then the end. Writers look closely at both halves, because the strength of the voice and the verb Mark chose show a death unlike any other.
A dying man's strength fades and his last words drop to a whisper. Here the voice is at full power. That single detail rules out the idea that Jesus simply reached the end of what His body could bear.
It was no exhaustion of nature. Jesus did not die because He could not live, as all others do. He had still the full energy of life. He died not only in atonement, but to take His life again. How else could He have proved that His life was greater than death, if He had not died? Still less could He have delivered us. "We were reconciled to God by the death of His Son" (Rom. 5:10).
The change from one moment to the next struck the soldier on guard duty.
Mark gives the fact of His actual death in the briefest way. Right after He cried with a loud voice, He breathed out His spirit into the hands of God. Luke and John record what He said. Mark tells us only the way He said it. There was no gradual failing of strength, so that His last words were a feeble whisper. At one moment a loud voice, and the next moment He was dead! His death was plainly supernatural. It deeply impressed the centurion on duty, who stood watching.
Each Gospel writer picks a different word for the moment of death.
Nowhere in the Gospels is the word "died" used as the result of our Lord's crucifixion. Mark's word here is exepneusen, "expired," the same word Luke uses, while Matthew's word is "dismissed His spirit," and John's is "gave up."
Why the humbler word here? This Gospel shows Him at the very bottom of His self-humbling, not as One holding power over the moment.
Mark also has the forsaking of God — the marks of the sin offering. Here is the Son of God in the glory of His willing humbling. He was obedient even to death, glorifying God at His own personal cost… But His humiliation is most absolute. In Matthew He "dismisses His spirit," as One who had power to keep it. In Mark, in true sin-offering character, He "expires."
The plain word does not make Him a victim. His death was needed if sinners were to be saved, and nothing outside Him brought it about.
When everything was accomplished, "Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last." That loud cry proved that His death was not the result of failing, exhausted natural powers. If the holiness of God was to be met, and salvation made possible for sinners, He had to die. But no man took His life from Him. He Himself gave up His life.
Two reactions at the cross prove it.
Notice how carefully Scripture rules out the thought that His death came from anything outside Him. It was not the result of crucifixion. Crucifixion went with His death, but that is all. The soldiers came to hurry His death by breaking His legs. They found He was already dead, but the two criminals were not (John 19:31-33). Pilate was surprised that He was already dead (Mark 15:44). No! He laid down His life Himself, as He had said (John 10:17-18).
His service was finished, so nothing kept Him here. The death itself is the last act of obedience.
Others understood little of this. Everything is between Himself and God. Crying again with a loud voice, He gives up His spirit. His service was completed. What more had He to do in a world where He lived only to do the will of God? All was finished, and He had to depart. I do not mean physical necessity, for He still kept His strength… He had drunk in His soul the cup of death and of judgment for sin. There was nothing left for Him but the act of dying; and He expires, obedient to the end.
- Cry — The loud voice shows strength, not collapse. He did not die because He could not live.
- Word — Mark says "expired," not "died"; the Gospels never say Jesus simply died of crucifixion.
- Character — The lower word fits Mark's picture: humbled to the very bottom, obedient even to death.
- Act — Yet it remained His own giving. No man took His life; Pilate himself was surprised He was already dead.
- Purpose — He died to reconcile us to God and to take His life again. The work was complete, so He departed, obedient to the end.
And the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom.
The moment Jesus died, something happened inside the temple. The heavy curtain that closed off the innermost room ripped in two, and the tear ran from the top down. Mark records it without comment, leaving the reader to ask who tore it, and what the tearing announced.
The curtain was not decoration. Older translations call it the veil. It closed off a room man could not enter, and its message was the message of the whole time of law.
The veil separated the holy place from the holy of holies. It spoke of the presence of God, but it also spoke of man shut out from God. Such was the character of the time of law. God present but man unable to draw near to God. The tearing of the veil proclaimed that all was over with Judaism. But it tells us more than that. God can now, in righteousness, come out in grace with the good news of forgiveness for man. And man can draw near to God on the ground of the precious blood.
Some have explained the tear as damage from an earthquake. One commentator answers that the record itself rules this out.
Simply reading the passage ought to show the enormous importance attached to the tearing of the veil. That tearing was in truth the death-knell of the Jewish ritual priesthood and system. It is named separately from the account of the earthquake and its effects, and before it. It may also bear on this point to notice that the veil was torn not from below but from above, "from top to bottom."
Hebrews calls the curtain a picture of Christ's own body. That link fixes where Christ finished the work, and when.
Long ago the veil showed that the way into the holiest of all — communion with God from above the mercy-seat — was not yet made known (Heb. 9:8). But torn like this, it proclaimed that a new and living way into the holiest had been dedicated. So by the blood of Jesus we may enter with boldness. But the veil was above all a figure of Christ's flesh (Heb. 10:19-20). It points clearly to this: the work that removed the restrictions of the most holy place was done in His flesh on the cross, and not in heaven after His death.
A torn curtain opens a road that runs two ways.
This was a divine action, God's own intervention. Hebrews 9 and 10 show what it means. It proclaimed that God was now free, in righteousness as well as in grace, to go out after the sinner, on the ground of what was accomplished on the cross. The sinner was now free too. On receiving the testimony about that finished work, he could go into the holiest of all, into the immediate presence of God.
Mark and Matthew describe the tear by its direction; Luke describes it by its place. Writers have read the two descriptions as carrying different emphases.
Matthew and Mark both write of the tearing of the veil in two from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51; Mark 15:38), which speaks of God coming forth to meet man as a Saviour God, but in Luke 23:45 the veil is spoken of as torn "in the midst," no doubt signifying that the legal system of Judaism, in which there was no access to God, had been set aside in the death of Christ, so that by that same death men might have access to God in an entirely new system.
A curtain pulled aside can be drawn back; a curtain ripped in half cannot.
The veil of the temple separated the presence of God from man. It hid the throne and barred the way into His presence. Now it was torn in two from the top to the bottom — not drawn aside or lifted up, but torn right through — declaring that it never again could be put back.
The tear also changed what people can know of God, and one writer warns that many are trying to reverse it.
God had said that He would dwell in thick darkness, but now He dwells in it no longer. He was hidden behind the veil. Now He reveals Himself in the death of Jesus, and by means of that death. The veil separated God in His holiness from man, and shut man in his sins out from God. It was torn in two from the top to the bottom; that is, from God to man. Could anything be more blessed? Yet man today is trying to put that veil up again — to put God in the darkness and man at a distance from Him.
- Barrier. The curtain announced God's presence and man's exclusion — the settled arrangement under law.
- Hand. The tear ran from top to bottom. This was God's act, not an earthquake's, and it sounded the death-knell of the whole ritual system.
- Body. The curtain pictured Christ's flesh. So the work was finished on the cross itself, not in heaven afterwards.
- Road. The opening runs both ways: God comes out to seek sinners, and by the blood of Jesus sinners go in with boldness.
- Permanent. It was torn, not drawn aside — it can never be hung again, though people keep trying to put God back in the dark.
And the centurion who stood by over against him, when he saw that he had expired having thus cried out, said, Truly this man was Son of God.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.