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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Matthew 27:46 - 27:46
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46. Ἠλὶ ἠλί, λεμὰ σαβαχθανεί; (Psa 22:1). Sh’baktani is an Aramaic form and occurs in the Chaldee paraphrase for the Hebrew azabtani. Such quotations of the Aramaic are very valuable and interesting as evidence of the language most familiar to Jesus, and also of the reverent accuracy of the Evangelists.
The repetition, θεέ μου, θεέ μου, gives a deeply pathetic force; cp. ch. Mat 23:37. It is an expression of utter loneliness and desolation, the depth of which it is not for man to fathom. Yet, ‘it is going beyond Scripture to say that a sense of God’s wrath extorted that cry. For to the last breath He was the well-beloved of the Father, and the repeated ‘My God! My God!’ is a witness even then to His confidence in His Father’s Love’ (Dean Perowne. Psa 22:1).
Just as we are permitted to know that a particular passage of Zechariah was passing through the Saviour’s mind as He crossed the valley of Kedron, so now we learn that Jesus, who in his human agony on the Cross had watched the various incidents that brought the words of that particular Psalm to his soul, found no words more fit to express the sense of awful desolation in that dark hour than the cry of the unknown psalmist—a captive perhaps by the waters of Babylon—in whose breast was such deep sorrow that it was like the sorrow of the Son of Man.
θεέ. Noticeable as perhaps the only instance of this—the regular form of the vocative of θεός.
ἱνατί; Elliptical for ἵνα τί γένηται; ‘in order that what may happen?’ So ‘to what end?’ precisely synonymous with εἰς τί (Mar 15:34).
ἐγκατέλιπες; Cp. Joh 16:32 : ἰδοὺ ἔρχεται ὥρα καὶ ἐλήλυθεν ἵνα σκορπισθῆτε ἕκαστος εἰς τὰ ἴδια κἀμὲ μόνον ἀφῆτε· καὶ οὐκ εἰμὶ μόνος ὅτι ὁ πατὴρ μετʼ ἐμοῦ ἐστίν. Now even the sense of the Father’s presence was lost.
This was probably the fourth word from the cross; the fifth ‘I thirst’ (John); the sixth ‘It is finished’ (John); the seventh ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit’ (Luke). It is thought by some that after these words the darkness, which had lasted to the ninth hour, rolled away; others think that it lasted till the death of Jesus.
The thought of the Saviour’s loneliness upon the cross has perhaps never been more feelingly expressed than in the smaller of Vandyke’s two pictures of ‘Christ on the Cross’ in the Museum at Antwerp—the single figure dimly seen with none beside Him, or near, and a background of impenetrable darkness.