Psalm 69:2, Psalm 42:7, Psalm 130:1; Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:45,46
I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me…Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy watersports: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me…Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD.
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): These words are quoted by our Lord from Psalm 22:1; they are of very great importance, and should be carefully considered.
H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): Darkness enwrapped His soul and in anguish He cried, “Eli, Eli, lama, sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Some would translate the words, “My God, my God, to what a degree,” or “to what a length of time, hast thou forsaken me?” “Lama” in the Hebrew has this signification.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): A strange complaint to come from the mouth of our Lord Jesus, Who, we are sure, was “God’s elect, in whom his soul delighted,” Isaiah 42:1, and One in Whom He was always “well pleased.”
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): He who hung there on the accursed tree had been from all eternity the object of the Father’s love. To employ the language of Proverbs 8, the suffering Saviour was the One Who “was by Him, as one brought up with Him,” He was “daily His delight.” His own joy had been to behold the Father’s countenance. The Father’s presence had been His home, the Father’s bosom His dwelling-place, the Father’s glory He had shared before ever the world was. During the thirty-three years the Son had been on earth He enjoyed unbroken communion with the Father. Never a thought that was out of harmony with the Father’s mind, never a volition but what originated in the Father’s will, never a moment spent out of His conscious presence. What then must it have meant to be “forsaken” now by God! Ah, the hiding of God’s face from Him was the most bitter ingredient of that cup which the Father had given the Redeemer to drink.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): Matthew represents these three long hours from noon till what answers to our 3 P.M. as passed in utter silence by Christ. What went on beneath that dread veil, we are not meant to know. Nor do we need to ask its physical cause or extent. It wrapped the agony from cruel eyes; it symbolised the blackness of desolation in His spirit, and by it God draped the heavens in mourning for man’s sin. The cry that broke the awful silence, and came out of the darkness, was more awful still.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Every word in this terrible cry from the cross is emphatic; every syllable cuts and pierces to the heart.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): At that awful moment, the iniquity of us all was laid upon Him to the uttermost.
C. H. SPURGEON: Isaiah tells us in his wonderful 53rd Chapter, that “The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all—It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. He has put Him to grief—Thou shall make His soul an offering for sin—We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” This, indeed, was the very sting of Christ’s death―that cry, “My God, My God! Why hast thou forsaken Me?” was the innermost blackness of the thick darkness of death! Our Lord’s death was penal—inflicted upon Him by Divine Justice—and rightly so, for on Him lay our iniquities—and therefore on Him must lay the suffering.
A. W. PINK: The very word “forsaken” is one of the most tragic in all human speech.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): It was unquestionably drawn from Him by intensity of sorrow…For not only did He offer His body as the price of our reconciliation with God, but in His soul also He endured the punishments due to us; and thus He became, as Isaiah speaks, a man of sorrows, Isaiah 53:3.
MATTHEW HENRY: How He uttered it: “with a loud voice”―Now the scripture was fulfilled, Joel 3:15, 16; “The sun and the moon shall be darkened.” “The Lord shall also roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem.” Christ’s being forsaken of His Father was the most grievous of His sufferings, and that which He complained most of—this brought the “waters into the soul,” Psalm 69:1,2.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: Separation from God is the true death―the “wages of sin;” and in that dread hour He bore in His own consciousness the uttermost of its penalty. The physical fact of Christ’s death, if it could have taken place without this desolation from the consciousness of separation from God, would not have been the bearing of all the consequences of man’s sins…He then was indeed bearing the whole weight of a world’s sin.
A. W. PINK: The Redeemer was left alone with the sinner’s sin―that was the explanation of the three hours darkness.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): All the hosts of hell were, as it were, let loose upon Him; as He himself says, “This is your hour, and the power of darkness,” Luke 22:53. Above all, the wrath of God was now poured out upon Him, as the Surety and Substitute of a guilty world.
C. H. SPURGEON: The darkness outside of Him was the figure of the darkness that was within Him…And now, when I come to think of it, this darkness appears to have been most natural and fitting―it would have been impossible for human eyes to have looked upon the Saviour when He was in the full vortex of the storm of wrath which fell upon Him—It was not meet, when He trod the winepress, that He should be gazed upon. He must tread the winepress alone in all the fullest meaning of that word―He, alone, of all mankind could truly say, “All Thy waves and Thy billows have gone over Me.”
CHARLES SIMEON: His sufferings were such as no finite imagination can conceive.
C. H. SPURGEON: Oh, Brothers and Sisters, you can have no thought—it is impossible you should—of the depth of the Saviour’s sufferings! The Greek liturgy, when it speaks of Christ’s sufferings as “Thy unknown sufferings” has just hit the mark. They were unknown—unknown to us and unknown, also, perhaps, to lost souls in Hell, so dire and so extreme were they! He was shut up in the darkness that He might there alone bear the whole of it…It is as much as if God had said to us, “You want to know what Christ had to suffer? You cannot know, but that black darkness is the emblem of it.”
