Analyzing Psalm 22 - Why Have You Forsaken Me?
Analyzing Psalm 22 - Why Have You Forsaken Me?
Psalm 22: 1-2; Matthew 27:45-46 - Although we may feel forsaken, we know the outcome of this spiritual war and can rest in the suffering of Christ.
”My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning. O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer; And by night, but I have no rest.“
Psalms 22:1-2 NASB1995
Psalm 22 starts out immediately with this sorrowful lament. Why has God forsaken David, and even more to the point, why did God forsake His son on the cross? Jesus spoke the first phrase from this Psalm right near the end of his suffering, as documented in Matthew 27. The crowd at the crucifixion thinks that He is calling out to Elijah:
”Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”“
Matthew 27:45-46 NASB1995
What does forsaken mean? This word in the Psalm comes from the Hebrew word עָזַב or ʻâzab with the following Biblical usages:
to leave, loose, forsake
(Qal) to leave
to depart from, leave behind, leave, let alone
to leave, abandon, forsake, neglect, apostatise
to let loose, set free, let go, free
(Niphal)
to be left to
to be forsaken
(Pual) to be deserted
to restore, repair
(Qal) to repair
From the Greek (New Testament) (for Matthew) forsaken comes from the word ἐγκαταλείπω or enkataleípō with the following usages:
abandon, desert
leave in straits, leave helpless
totally abandoned, utterly forsaken
to leave behind among, to leave surviving
In both cases, the usages associated with abandonment or desertion are the likely usages in the context of the lament.
Here is some lengthy but very superb commentary from Enduring Word about this tragic beginning of this Psalm, pointing to its countpart in Matthew:
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me: This psalm begins abruptly, with a disturbing scene: someone who knows and trusts God is forsaken, and cries out to God in agony.
This is a Psalm of David, and there were many instances in the life of David where he might write such an agonized poem. Before and after taking the throne of Israel, David lived in seasons of great danger and deprivation.
While this psalm was certainly true of King David in his life experience, it – like many psalms – is even truer of Jesus the Messiah than of David. Jesus deliberately chose these words to describe His agony on the cross (Matthew 27:46).
“We can be fairly certain that Jesus was meditating on the Old Testament during the hours of his suffering and that he saw his crucifixion as a fulfillment of Psalm 22 particularly.” (James Boice)
“I doubt not that David, though he had an eye to his own condition in diverse passages here used, yet was carried forth by the Spirit of prophecy beyond himself, and unto Christ, to whom alone it truly and fully agrees.” (Matthew Poole)
My God, My God: This opening is powerful on at least two levels. The cry “My God” shows that the Forsaken One truly did have a relationship with God. He was a victim of the cruelty of men, but the cry and the complaint is to God – even My God – and not to or against man. Second, the repetition of the plea shows the intensity of the agony.
“Then it was that he felt in soul and body the horror of God’s displeasure against sin, for which he had undertaken.” (John Trapp)
Why have You forsaken Me? There is a note of surprise in this cry and in the following lines. The Forsaken One seems bewildered; “Why would My God forsake Me? Others may deserve such, but I cannot figure out why He would forsake Me.”
We may easily imagine a situation in the life of King David where he experienced this. Many times he found himself in seemingly impossible circumstances and wondered why God did not rescue him immediately.
Yet beyond David and his life, this agonized cry and the intentional identification of Jesus with these words are some of the most intense and mysterious descriptions of what Jesus experienced on the cross. Jesus had known great pain and suffering (both physical and emotional) during His life. Yet He had never known separation or alienation from God His Father. At this moment He experienced what He had not yet ever experienced. There was a significant sense in which Jesus rightly felt forsaken by God the Father on the cross.
On the cross, a holy transaction took place. God the Father regarded God the Son as if He were a sinner. As the Apostle Paul would later write, God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Yet Jesus not only endured the withdrawal of the Father’s fellowship, but also the actual outpouring of the Father’s wrath upon Him as a substitute for sinful humanity. “This was the blackness and darkness of his horror; then it was that he penetrated the depths of the caverns of suffering.” (Charles Spurgeon)
“To be forsaken means to have the light of God’s countenance and the sense of his presence eclipsed, which is what happened to Jesus as he bore the wrath of God against sin for us.” (James Boice)
“It was necessary that he should feel the loss of his Father’s smile, – for the condemned in hell must have tasted of that bitterness – and therefore the Father closed the eye of his love, put the hand of justice before the smile of his face, and left his Son to cry, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’” (Charles Spurgeon)
Horrible as this was, it fulfilled God’s good and loving plan of redemption. Therefore Isaiah could say Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him (Isaiah 53:10).
At the same time, we cannot say that the separation between the Father and the Son at the cross was complete. Paul made this clear in 2 Corinthians 5:19: God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself at the cross.
Why have You forsaken Me? There is a definite question in these words of David, and as Jesus appropriated them to Himself on the cross. What Jesus endured on the cross was so complex, so dark, and so mysterious that it was, at the moment, beyond emotional comprehension.
Charles Spurgeon considered this question with an emphasis on the word You. “‘Thou:’ I can understand why traitorous Judas and timid Peter should be gone, but thou, my God, my faithful friend, how canst thou leave me? This is worst of all, yea worse than all put together. Hell itself has for its fiercest flame the separation of the soul from God.”
We can imagine the answer to Jesus’ question: Why? “Because, My Son, You have chosen to stand in the place of guilty sinners. You, who have never known sin, have made the infinite sacrifice to become sin and receive My just wrath upon sin and sinners. You do this because of Your great love, and because of My great love.”
Then the Father might give the Son a glimpse of His reward – the righteously-robed multitude of His people on heaven’s golden streets, “all of them singing their redeemer’s praise, all of them chanting the name of Jehovah and the Lamb; and this was a part of the answer to his question.” (Charles Spurgeon)
I had to include this lengthy excerpt because it is a perfect commentary on the incredible and mysterious moment reverberating throughout eternity that Jesus had on the cross, when He felt abandoned by His Father because He had taken on the sin of the world. David must have felt this same abandonment at some time in his life, but he also likely projected this forward in prophecy due to the influence of the Holy Spirit to predict the suffering of our Lord. David carries this lament further by noting that there is no answer from God either in the daytime or at night.
Do you feel forsaken at certain times or all the time? I know I have struggled with this feeling, that there is only darkness and nothingness, even now when I am a firm believer (fortunately these feelings only happen rarely, when it used to be much more frequent in my “agnostic” days). Is God really there or has He abandoned us to sin, disease, darkness, death and an eternity in torment? These verses in this Psalm don’t help us answer that question, but there will be answers forthcoming in later verses (after verse 21).
C.S. Lewis had this to say about the feeling that God has abandoned him from his book “A Grief Observed” (1961) after his wife Joy died of bone cancer, as quoted at the Gospel Coalition:
Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in our time of trouble?
Recently, we have been watching a lot of movies about World War II. Particularly interesting are the movies that were made in the early 1940s before the outcome of the war was known. Many of these were done to instill a sense of patriotism and hope in citizens of Allied countries and showcase the abilities of our armed forces, but the darkness and despair is evident in the high casualty counts and the uncertainty that loomed in the background. Our current existence right now is like those people anxiously awaiting news from the front and praying for a good outcome. This life is fraught with despair, suffering and difficulty, but we, unlike the home front in the early 1940s, KNOW the final outcome of this spiritual war and we know it will be glorious for those who believe. C.S. Lewis came to know it, too, and was able to place his grief at the foot of the Cross.
My next devotional examines Psalm 22: 3-5, Remembering God’s nature.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Heavenly Father: Please help me to always look to the cross and the suffering of our Lord Jesus, who took on all of sin, death and despair of the world and waged that eternal battle for us, so that we are saved and know the outcome will be good. Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org.
Commentary from Enduring Word by David Guzik is used with written permission.