Mark 15:34

[Mathete]

“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?” Why did the Lord say this, and where did you get your opinion?

[Pyreaux]

I think he was quoting Psalms. But the word "forsaken", lends the idea God in uncharacteristic fashion, withdrew his indwelling presence from his perpetually righteous son, for "reasons". We guess what reason it was. I think customarily, we think it was to complete his mortal experience, to suffer or feel perhaps like a fallen human feels, or a damned soul, again for "reasons", perhaps to know firsthand what it is to condemn one to damnation. It would fit with Isaiah's Suffering Servant Song, that he would suffer bearing the guilt of his people.

[Saint Bonaventure]

Our Lord is quoting Psalm 22, which is ultimately hopeful. So, while our Lord is suffering, as he is fully human, he is not in despair. 

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Elo-i, Elo-i: Jesus quotes the opening line of Ps 22 in Aramaic (CCC 603, 2605). ● Psalm 22 forecasts both the Messiah’s suffering and his eventual deliverance. The full context of Ps 22, in light of its hopeful outcome, rules out the possibility that Jesus succumbed to despair (Lk 23:46).

Curtis Mitch, “Introduction to the Gospels,” in The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: The New Testament (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 96.

 

Also here:

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34 gives the Aramaic translation of the opening words of Ps 21 (22). This Psalm is the prayer of the just man who, though surrounded by enemies and in deep distress, looks confidently to God for deliverance. The words ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ are a cry of distress wrung from the just man by the taunts and sufferings which God allows his enemies to inflict on him. There is no note of despair in that cry: confidence in God remains unshaken; cf. Ps 21:10, 25. Christian tradition recognizes the Messianic sense of the Psalm, which finds complete fulfilment only in Christ: ‘it contains the whole Passion of Christ’ (Tertullian, Adv. Marcion. 3, 19). Christ, the Just One par excellence, made the cry of the Psalmist his own on the Cross with far more perfect sentiments of submission and confidence in God. The desolation felt in the human soul of Christ is given expression in the Psalmist’s words. But there is no question of despair or of abandonment of the humanity by the divinity. Christ was abandoned by God only in the sense that God did not spare him the sufferings of the Passion and Crucifixion, but allowed his enemies to work their will on him.

J. A. O’Flynn, “The Gospel of Jesus Christ according to St Mark,” in A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, ed. Bernard Orchard and Edmund F. Sutcliffe (Toronto; New York; Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1953), 932.

 

And a little that gives context for Christ's being on the Cross at this moment:

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These words, spoken in Aramaic, are the start of Psalm 22, the prayer of the just man who, hunted and cornered, feels utterly alone, like “a worm, and no man; scorned by men and despised by the people” (v. 7). From this abyss of misery and total abandonment, the just man has recourse to Yahweh: “My God, my God, why art thou so far from helping me.… Since my mother bore me thou has been my God.… But thou, O Lord, be not far off! O thou my help, hasten to my aid!” (vv. 2, 10 and 19). Thus, far from expressing a moment of despair, these words of Christ reveal his complete trust in his heavenly Father, the only one on whom he can rely in the midst of suffering, to whom he can complain like a Son and in whom he abandons himself without reserve: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit” (Lk 23:46; Ps 31:5).
One of the most painful situations a person can experience is to feel alone in the face of misunderstanding and persecution on all sides, to feel completely insecure and afraid. God permits these tests to happen so that, experiencing our own smallness and world-weariness, we place all our trust in him who draws good from evil for those who love him (cf. Rom 8:28).

“So much do I love Christ on the Cross that every crucifix is like a loving reproach from my God: ‘… I suffering, and you … a coward. I loving you, and you forgetting me. I begging you, and you … denying me. I, here, with arms wide open as an Eternal Priest, suffering all that can be suffered for love of you … and you complain at the slightest misunderstanding, over the tiniest humiliation …’ ” (St Josemaría Escrivá, The Way of the Cross, XI, 2).

Saint Mark’s Gospel, The Navarre Bible (Dublin; New York: Four Courts Press; Scepter Publishers, 2005), 145–146.

 

 

[The Nehor]

Do you want a dark take?

From C.S. Lewis while mourning his wife’s death:

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They tell me H. is happy now, they tell me she is at peace. What makes them so sure of this? I don't mean that I fear the worst of all. Nearly her last words were 'I am at peace with God'. She had not always been. And she never lied. And she wasn't easily deceived; least of all, in her own favour. I don't mean that. But why are they so sure that all anguish ends with death? More than half the Christian world, and millions in the East, believe otherwise. How do they know she is 'at rest'. Why should the separation (if nothing else) which so agonizes the lover who is left behind be painless to the lover who departs?

'Because she is in God's hands.' But if so, she was in God's hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? If God's goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine. If it is consistent with hurting us, then He may hurt us after death as unendurably as before it.

Sometimes it is hard not to say 'God forgive God'. Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn't. He crucified Him.

Come, what do we gain by evasions? We are under the harrow and can't escape. Reality, looked at steadily, is unbearable. And how or why did such a reality blossom (or fester) here and there into the terrible phenomenon called consciousness? Why did it produce things like us who can see it and, seeing it, recoil in loathing? Who (stranger still) want to see it and take pains to find it out, even when no need compels them and even though the sight of it makes an incurable ulcer in their hearts? People like H. herself, who would have truth at any price.

If H. 'is not', then she never was. I mistook a cloud of atoms for a person. There aren't, and never were, any people. Death only reveals the vacuity that was always there. What we call the living are simply those who have not yet been unmasked. All equally bankrupt, but some not yet declared.

But this must be nonsense; vacuity revealed to whom? bankruptcy declared to whom? To other boxes of fireworks or clouds of atoms. I will never believe--more strictly I can't believe--that one set of physical events could be, or make, a mistake about other sets.

No, my real fear is not of materialism. If it were true, we--or what we mistake for 'we'--could get out, get from under the harrow. An overdose of sleeping pills would do it. I am more afraid that we are really rats in a trap. Or, worse still, rats in a laboratory. Someone said, I believe, 'God always geometrizes'. Supposing the truth were 'God always vivisects?'

Sooner or later I must face the question in plain language. What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, 'good'? Doesn't all the prima facie evidence suggest exactly the opposite? What have we to set against it?

We set Christ against it. But how if He were mistaken? Almost His last words may have a perfectly clear meaning. He had found that the Being He called Father was horribly and infinitely different from what He had supposed. The trap, so long and carefully prepared and so subtly baited, was at last sprung, on the cross. The vile practical joke had succeeded.

 

 

[blackstrap]

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

, worse still, rats in a laboratory

Sounds like the , " we are all in a simulation " theory. Or perhaps the Shakespeare idea that all the world is a stage and we are merely players. 

[OGHoosier]

4 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Do you want a dark take?

From C.S. Lewis while mourning his wife’s death:

 

I don't think he ended it there.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, OGHoosier said:

I don't think he ended it there.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/ownwords/grief.html
 

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Something quite unexpected has happened. It came this morning early. For various reasons, not in themselves at all mysterious, my heart was lighter than it had been for many weeks. For one thing, I suppose I am recovering physically from a good deal of mere exhaustion. ... And suddenly, at the very moment when, so far, I mourned H. least, I remembered her best. Indeed, it was something (almost) better than memory; an instantaneous, unanswerable impression. To say it was like a meeting would be going too far. Yet there was that in it which tempts one to use those words. It was as if the lifting of the sorrow removed a barrier.

Why has no one told me these things? How easily I might have misjudged another man in the same situation? I might have said, 'He's got over it. He's forgotten his wife,' when the truth was, 'He remembers her better because he has partly got over it.'

Such was the fact. And I believe I can make sense of it. You can't see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can't, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can't get the best out of it. 'Now! Let's have a real good talk' reduces everyone to silence. 'I must get a good sleep tonight' ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when we think about our dead? 'Them as asks' (at any rate 'as asks too importunately') don't get. Perhaps can't.

And so, perhaps, with God. I have gradually come to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.

On the other hand, 'Knock and it shall be opened.' But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac? And there's also 'To him that hath shall be given.' After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can't give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity. ...

... How far have I got? Just as far, I think, as a widower of another sort who would stop, leaning on his spade, and say in answer to the inquiry, 'Thank'ee. Mustn't grumble. I do miss her something dreadful. But they say these things are sent to try us.' We have come to the same point; he with his spade, and I, who am not now much good at digging, with my own instrument. But of course, one must take 'sent to try us' in the right way. God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize that fact was to knock it down. 

 

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

I don't think he ended it there.

He didn’t. I showed it more as an example of what despair can do to someone, the kind of despair Christ endured then.

He was not stuck in that state of mind forever.

[Stargazer]

On 3/26/2023 at 3:30 PM, Mathete said:

“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?” Why did the Lord say this, and where did you get your opinion?

That's a great question.

I don't know precisely from where I get this opinion, but this is it:

That having endured mortal life and its travails as all men must do, and in the end endured the travails of death, in order to have experienced all, as all others in mortality had to experience it, it was necessary for Christ to finally feel the last thing, which was to be alone and without the constant companionship of God's presence (since as a perfectly righteous person he would have been worthy of that presence at all times). So, the Father did withdraw briefly from him at the end. And Christ then knew that he had completed the task, and this is why he said "It is finished." Some like to say that the Son understands us so well because he has experienced what we will experience, and all of it.

[Mathete]

On 3/26/2023 at 3:41 PM, Saint Bonaventure said:

Our Lord is quoting Psalm 22, which is ultimately hopeful. So, while our Lord is suffering, as he is fully human, he is not in despair. 

Also here:

And a little that gives context for Christ's being on the Cross at this moment:

 

This is the the correct answer, it comes from the Teacher Himself. For those folks that have non scripture based answers, ponder this; The Savior NEVER addressed the Heavenly Father as God! Perhaps this may shed some light for some.

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Mathete said:

This is the the correct answer, it comes from the Teacher Himself. For those folks that have non scripture based answers, ponder this; The Savior NEVER addressed the Heavenly Father as God! Perhaps this may shed some light for some.

He does refer to Himself as the Son of God though. 

[Mathete]

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

He does refer to Himself as the Son of God though. 

I just stated a fact from scripture about addressing. Words are important, and their use in scripture is not an accident.

[bluebell]

9 minutes ago, Mathete said:

I just stated a fact from scripture about addressing. Words are important, and their use in scripture is not an accident.

Agreed. But, the words that we have in the scriptures are translations of translations. They are not direct quotes of what came out of anyone’s mouth. There is a limit to what we can infer from just the words that are on the pages of the Scriptures that we read today.

[Mathete]

48 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Agreed. But, the words that we have in the scriptures are translations of translations. They are not direct quotes of what came out of anyone’s mouth. There is a limit to what we can infer from just the words that are on the pages of the Scriptures that we read today.

So if you can’t trust it, why wast your time reading it?

[bluebell]

11 minutes ago, Mathete said:

So if you can’t trust it, why wast your time reading it?

Because I don't believe that they need to be infallible or word-for-word iterations of an experience for them to have value and trust that value in my life.  Plus, having living prophets and scriptural witnesses other than just the Bible provides further testimony of the truths the scriptures contain. And finally, the Holy Ghost also works as a guide, letting me know what and where the value to my life is in the scriptures.

[Benjamin McGuire]

17 hours ago, Mathete said:

So if you can’t trust it, why wast your time reading it?

I think you may be missing the point.

The Greek text of Matthew 15:34 reads:

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Ἐλωῒ ἐλωῒ λεμὰ σαβαχθάνι

The parallel version in Matthew:

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Ἠλὶ ἠλὶ λεμὰ σαβαχθάνι

If words matter, then which version is right? Perhaps the difference is because Jesus is quoting Psalm 22:2:

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 אֵלִי אֵלִי, לָמָה עֲזַבְתָּנִי

Except that this is Hebrew, and Jesus was speaking in Aramaic. And does עֲזַבְתָּנִי really mean σαβαχθάνι?

We could suppose, I guess, that the King James translators were so inspired that they may have fixed any issues (but that doesn't help us with the different versions of the speech). You asserted this:

23 hours ago, Mathete said:

The Savior NEVER addressed the Heavenly Father as God! Perhaps this may shed some light for some.

18 hours ago, Mathete said:

I just stated a fact from scripture about addressing. Words are important, and their use in scripture is not an accident.

There is something more than a little bizarre in your statement - that makes me think that you have read a little too much on the internet. Decades ago, I took my first Hebrew class. My instructor was actually an Assyriologist. He was fairly old at the time (mid 60s, I think - and this was thirty years ago), and he was quite traditional. We were not allowed to use the name 'God' by pronouncing YHWH or Jehovah or any variant related to them - it was a major classroom infraction - it would get you invited to leave. We always had to use the word Adonai when reading the Hebrew text and encountering the name of God. One of the earliest things you deal with in Biblical Hebrew instruction is the tetragrammaton (YHWH). Long before Jesus was born, the Jews stopped pronouncing the name of God in Hebrew (except for the High Priest, who only did so once a year). At first, they used archaic letters in their manuscripts to prevent people from making a mistake and reading it while they were reading the biblical text. The most common spoken replacement at the time of Jesus was the name Adonai. When the Masoretic text was was produced (when they added vowels to Hebrew), the vowels for Adonai were added to the Hebrew text of the tetragrammaton - forming an artificial name: YaHoWaH - which eventually was anglicized into our Jehovah. Using these vowels created a name that was mispronounced - and this was deliberate. If someone was reading without paying attention, and read the name as it was written, they wouldn't actually speak the name of God. In a similar fashion, the Greek Old Testament (the LXX) doesn't reproduce or transliterate the Tetragrammaton, it just uses the Greek word Kyrios in its place (Kyrios is the Greek translation of Adonai). Additionally, the LXX also doesn't transliterate the Hebrew word Elohim either. It consistently represents it using the Greek word theos (which translates to our God).

So what does this mean? It means first, that we don't expect to see Jesus ever referring to God the Father by name in the New Testament. We would expect, instead, to have him use the Aramaic substitutes in his speech (adonai or el or elohim). And, we would expect to see these words converted in the Greek in the New Testament to Kyrios and Theos, and not some sort of transliteration of the Hebrew names for God. So, when we see these terms in the Greek text of the New Testament (adonai and theos), we can be more than a little confident that Jesus is naming the Father using the religious conventions of his time. So, for example, in Matthew 4:7, we read that Jesus said: "It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." And the Greek text uses kyrios and theos here. But Jesus isn't extemporizing, he is quoting scripture (as he notes). He quotes Deuteronomy 6:16, which reads (in the King James):  "Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God, as ye tempted him in Massah." The Hebrew text of Deuteronomy 6:16 is (emphasis added):

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לֹא תְנַסּוּ, אֶת-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם, כַּאֲשֶׁר נִסִּיתֶם, בַּמַּסָּה

The bolded part can be transliterated YHWH Elohim. This is the name of the Father. Jesus doesn't pronounce the Hebrew (or its Aramaic equivalent) or, if he did, it isn't recorded in that way (and certainly the New Testament wouldn't put these words in the mouth of Jesus) because it would have been considered blasphemous. The idea that you present, that Jesus never names the Father by name, is only true in the sense that the Greek New Testament never puts the Hebrew tetragrammaton into the mouth of Jesus. But, we wouldn't expect it to. In those same terms, there isn't another single person in the New Testament who does so either.

Words may matter, but trying to push meanings onto the text by decontextualizing those words and misunderstanding their context is also problematic.

[Calm]

8 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

He was fairly old at the time (mid 60s, I think

Oh, that one hurt…

I am 64

[Orthodox Christian]

On 3/27/2023 at 1:44 AM, The Nehor said:

Do you want a dark take?

From C.S. Lewis while mourning his wife’s death:

 

That really is dark, but honest and his grief is palpable. He is daring to pose the questions many avoid. 

[Orthodox Christian]

On 3/27/2023 at 11:22 PM, Stargazer said:

That's a great question.

I don't know precisely from where I get this opinion, but this is it:

That having endured mortal life and its travails as all men must do, and in the end endured the travails of death, in order to have experienced all, as all others in mortality had to experience it, it was necessary for Christ to finally feel the last thing, which was to be alone and without the constant companionship of God's presence (since as a perfectly righteous person he would have been worthy of that presence at all times). So, the Father did withdraw briefly from him at the end. And Christ then knew that he had completed the task, and this is why he said "It is finished." Some like to say that the Son understands us so well because he has experienced what we will experience, and all of it.

Our Lord, I think at that moment was allowed by the Father to feel the full malice of sin and its consequence which is separation from God. At Gethsemane He had already suffered terror at the forthcoming events. He had already suffered scourging and humiliation, but at that last moment He felt the despair of separation and felt forsaken. I guess this is the malice of sin, that it separates us from God, but He doesn't separate Himself from us. He is always waiting for us to turn to Him, that is our hope, because if He were not waiting for us to return, then we would, possibly at that last hour also feel that despair. That is why in Orthodoxy we are called to constantly repent.