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.