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Mat_27:46 Ἀνεβόησεν ] He cried aloud. See Winer, de verbor. cum praepos. compos, usu, 1838, III. p. 6 f.; comp. Luk_9:38; LXX. and Apocr., Herod., Plato.
The circumstance of the following exclamation being given in Hebrew) is sufficiently and naturally enough accounted for by the jeering language of Mat_27:47, which language is understood to be suggested by the sound of the Hebrew words recorded in our present passage.
σαβαχθανί ] Chald.: ùÑÀáÇ÷ÀúÌÇðÄé = the Heb. òÂæÇáÀúÌÈðÄé . Jesus gives vent to His feelings in the opening words of the twenty-second Psalm. We have here, however, the purely human feeling that arises from a natural but momentary quailing before the agonies of death, and which was in every respect similar to that which had been experienced by the author of the psalm. The combination of profound mental anguish, in consequence of entire abandonment by men, with the well-nigh intolerable pangs of dissolution, was all the more natural and inevitable in the case of One whose feelings were so deep, tender, and real, whose moral consciousness was so pure, and whose love was so intense. In ἐγκατέλιπες Jesus expressed, of course, what He felt, for His ordinary conviction that He was in fellowship God had for the moment given way under the pressure of extreme bodily and mental suffering, and a mere passing feeling as though He were no longer sustained by the power of the divine life had taken its place (comp. Gess, p. 196); but this subjective feeling must not be confounded with actual objective desertion on the part of God (in opposition to Olshausen and earlier expositors), which in the case of Jesus would have been a meta-physical and moral impossibility. The dividing of the exclamation into different parts, so as to correspond to the different elements in Christ’s nature, merely gives rise to arbitrary and fanciful views (Lange, Ebrard), similar to those which have been based on the metaphysical deduction from the idea of necessity (Ebrard). To assume, as the theologians have done, that in the distressful cry of abandonment we have the vicarious enduring of the wrath of God (“ira Dei adversus nostra peccata effunditur in ipsum, et sic satisfit justitiae Dei,” Melanchthon, comp. Luther on Psalms 22, Calvin, Quenstedt), or the infliction of divine punishment (Köstlin in the Jahrb. f. D. Theol. III. 1, p. 125, and Weiss himself), is, as in the case of the agony in Gethsemane, to go farther than we are warranted in doing by the New Testament view of the atoning death of Christ, the vicarious character of which is not to be regarded as consisting in an objective and actual equivalent. Comp. Remarks after Mat_26:46. Others, again, have assumed that Jesus, though quoting only the opening words of Psalms 22., had the whole psalm in view, including, therefore, the comforting words with which it concludes (Paulus, Gratz, de Wette, Bleek; comp. Schleiermacher, Glaubensl. II. p. 141, ed. 4, and L. J. p. 457). This, however, besides being somewhat arbitrary, gives rise to the incongruity of introducing the element of reflection where only pure feeling prevailed, as we see exemplified by Hofmann, Schriftbew. II. 1, p. 309, who, in accordance with his view that Jesus was abandoned to the mercies of an ungodly world, substitutes a secondary thought (“request for the so long delayed deliverance through death”) for the plain and direct sense of the words. The authenticity of our Lord’s exclamation, which the author of the Wolferibüttel Fragnents has singularly misconstrued (in describing it as the cry of despair over a lost cause), is denied by Strauss (who speaks of Psalms 22 as having served the purpose of a programme of Christ’s passion), while it is strongly questioned by Keim, partly on account of Psalms 22 and partly because he thinks that the subsequent accompanying narrative is clearly (?) of the nature of a fictitious legend. But legend would hardly have put the language of despair into the mouth of the dying Redeemer, and certainly there is nothing in the witticisms that follow to warrant the idea that we have here one legend upon another.
ἵνατι ] the momentary but agonizing feeling that He is abandoned by God, impels Him to ask what the divine object of this may be. He doubtless knew this already, but the pangs of death had overpowered Him (2Co_13:4),—a passing anomaly as regards the spirit that uniformly characterized the prayers of Jesus.
ἐγκαταλείπω ] means: to abandon any one to utter helplessness. Comp. 2Co_4:9; Act_2:27; Heb_13:5; Plat. Conv. p. 179 A; Dem. p. 158, 10, al.; Sir_3:16; Sir_7:30; Sir_9:10.