Mark 15:34 "At three o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani...'"

"At three o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' which means 'My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?' (Mark 15:34 NRSV).

Question:

This verse seems to indicate Jesus felt separated from God in this moment. Seems like an especially bad time to have doubt and/or fear just as he is about to perform His resurrection.

Comment:

Well, actually, he still has three days until he performs his resurrection. But you're right, the statement reported in Mark would seem to indicate a dimension of doubt that would prevent the demonstration in which he is engaged. There are three possible explanations, I think.   First, perhaps he didn't say it. Mark's is the only Gospel that reports this particular statement, and we can be sure that Mark wasn't there. And if, as is believed, the Gospel of Mark is based on the testimony of Peter, we can be very sure that Peter is also not present.   Second, the statement is from the first line of Psalm 22, a psalm that begins in despair but moves through the despair to a kind of exultant understanding. "For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him. Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it" (Psalm 22: 28-31 NRSV). That's a pretty ringing awareness—one that would be entirely appropriate to Jesus at that moment.   The third explanation involves the curious fact that the statement is carefully preserved in Aramaic. It's a delicate language, soft and poetic, with many possible nuances of meaning depending on intonation and rhythm—not at all like the more hard-edged, precise Greek, Latin and English languages through which the translation has moved. Dr. George Lamsa, the Aramaic scholar who translated the Gospels more directly from the Aramaic, suggests that the same words in Aramaic could be understood to mean "My God, my God! For this I was born!" That glorious realization really resonates with me. I can't prove that's what Jesus meant. But I believe it.   Blessings!

Rev. Ed