ELOI, ELOI LAMA SABACHTANI!

LORD, LORD – WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46).

“And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Mark 15:34).

WHY DID CHRIST SAY THIS?
– I BELIEVE “WINTERS OF THE HEART” – LIVING IN DARKNESS FROM GOD, A TIME APART

TIME AWAY FROM HIS NEARNESS ( WE ARE DISTANCED FROM GOD — WE ARE EMOTIONAL BEINGS )

IT IS A TIME TO FIND FAITH / PRACTICE / HABIT / SEARCH YOUR SOUL

CONTINUE TO LOOK FORWARD TO WHEN YOU’RE EMOTIONALLY CLOSE TO HIM AGAIN.

GOD NEVER CHANGES, HE IS NEVER NEARER OR FURTHER AWAY. OUR HEART HAS CHANGED, OUR CIRCUMSTANCE HAS CHANGED – WE SHOULD USE THIS TIME TO CONSIDER ANY SINS THAT ARE UNCONFESSED.

…
Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? (‘l?«, l?’m s?bk’thn?«; ?’l, l’m sbkh’thn) or Eloi, Eloi, lama sabach-thani? (‘loi; ?’loi) [Eli, Eloi: Heb. or Aramaic,=Lord; lama sabachthani?: Aramaic,=why hast thou forsaken me?], in the New Testament, words of Jesus on the cross. The Greek text retains and translates the original, which is seemingly a quotation of Psalm 22.

There are seven expressions traditionally attributed to Jesus during his crucifixion, gathered from the four Gospels.[1][2]

In Mark, Jesus cries out to God while on the cross. Matthew incorporates this same saying. In Luke, Jesus asks God to forgive those involved in his crucifixion, tells a crucified thief that they will be together in Paradise, and commends himself to the Father. In John, Jesus addresses his mother, says he’s thirsty, and finally declares “it is finished.” It is common to combine these four accounts into one account of Jesus saying all seven statements.

Physicians and scientists who have studied the medical aspects of the crucifixion concluded that the sayings had to be short because crucifixion causes asphyxia. This makes inhaling air to speak difficult and painful, especially as death approaches.[3][4][5][6]

The seven sayings tradition is an example of the devotional method of reading the Bible, in which material from different accounts is combined into a single account, which then differs from each original account.[7] James Dunn concludes that most of the sayings developed in Christian retelling of the Passion story, but that Jesus’ cry of dereliction (“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”) is probably authentic.[8]
Contents [hide]

* 1 Seven sayings
o 1.1 Father forgive them, for they know not what they do
o 1.2 Today you will be with me in paradise
o 1.3 Behold your son: behold your mother
o 1.4 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
o 1.5 I thirst
o 1.6 It is finished
o 1.7 Father, into your hands I commit my spirit
* 2 Theological interpretations
* 3 Authenticity
* 4 Musical settings
* 5 See also
* 6 Notes
* 7 References
* 8 External links

Seven sayings

The seven sayings form part of a Christian meditation that is often used during Lent, Holy Week and Good Friday. The traditional order of the sayings is:[9]

1. Father forgive them, for they know not what they do (Luke 23:34).
2. Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43).
3. Woman, behold your son: behold your mother (John 19:26-27).
4. My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?, (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34).
5. I thirst (John 19:28).
6. It is finished (John 19:30).
7. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Luke 23:46).

As can be seen from the above list, not all seven sayings can be found in any one account of Jesus’ crucifixion. The ordering is a harmonisation of the texts from each of the four canonical gospels. In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus is quoted in Aramaic, shouting the fourth phrase only, and cries out wordlessly before dying. In Luke’s Gospel, the first, second, and seventh sayings occur. The third, fifth and sixth sayings can only be found in John’s Gospel. In other words:

* According to Matthew:
o Eli Eli lama sabachthani
* According to Mark:
o Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani
* According to Luke:
o Father forgive them, for they know not what they do (in response to a mocking crowd)
o Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise (in response to one of the two thieves crucified next to him)
o Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (last words)
* According to John:
o Woman, behold your son: behold your mother (directed at Mary, the mother of Jesus, either as a self reference, or as a reference to the beloved disciple and an instruction to the disciple himself)
o I thirst (just before a wetted sponge, mentioned by all the Canonical Gospels, is offered)
o It is finished (last words)

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do

Luke 23:34
Then Jesus said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do”.

This first saying of Jesus upon the cross was Jesus’ prayer for forgiveness for those who were crucifying him: the Roman soldiers, and apparently for all others who were involved in his crucifixion.

Many early manuscripts omit Luke 23:34.[10]
Today you will be with me in paradise
This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2010)

Luke 23:43
And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise”.

According to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus was crucified between two thieves, one of whom supports Jesus’ innocence and asks him to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. Jesus replies, “Truly, I say to you…” (½ ?»?­?³ , amn leg? soi), followed with the only appearance of the word “paradise” in the Gospels (±??±, paradeis?, from the Persian pairidaeza).[citation needed]
Behold your son: behold your mother
Crucifixion depicted as Stabat Mater with the Virgin Mary, Porto Alegre, Brasil, 19th century.

John 19:26-27
Jesus saw his own mother, and the disciple standing near whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold your son”. Then he said to the disciple, “Behold your mother”. And from that hour, he took his mother into his family.

Jesus entrusts Mary, his mother, into the care of a disciple.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Matthew 27:46
Around the ninth hour, Jesus shouted in a loud voice, saying “Eli Eli lama sabachthani?” which is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Mark 15:34
And at the ninth hour, Jesus shouted in a loud voice, “Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Of the seven sayings of Jesus from the cross, it is the only saying recorded in Matthew and Mark; it is the only one that appears in two, parallel accounts. This saying is given in Aramaic with a translation (originally in Greek) after it. This phrase also appears on the opening line of Psalm 21 (Psalm 22 in the Masoretic Text). In the verses immediately following this saying, in both Gospels, the onlookers who hear Jesus’ cry understand him to be calling for help from Elijah (Eliyy?). The slight differences between the two gospel accounts are most probably due to dialect. Matthew’s version seems to have been more influenced by Hebrew, whereas Mark’s is perhaps more colloquial.

The phrase could be either:

* ? ? -?  [l l lam? azavtan]; or
* ? ? ? ?©§  [l l lam? abaqtan]; or
* ? ? ? ?©§  [l?h l?h lam? abaqtan]

The Aramaic word abaqtan is based on the verb abaq, ‘to allow, to permit, to forgive, and to forsake’, with the perfect tense ending -t (2nd person singular: ‘you’), and the object suffix -an (1st person singular: ‘me’).[11]

A. T. Robertson noted that the “so-called Gospel of Peter 1.5 preserves this saying in a Docetic (Cerinthian) form: ‘My power, my power, thou hast forsaken me!'”[12] However, this could still be a mistaken or alternate rendering from a Semitic source, as ? [‘l] in Aramaic and Hebrew can both translate as “god” or “power.”
I thirst

John 19:28
He said, “I thirst”.

This section requires expansion.
It is finished
Diego Velzquez: Crucifixion of Christ, 1632.

John 19:30
Jesus said, “It is finished”.

This section requires expansion.
Father, into your hands I commit my spirit

Luke 23:46
And speaking in a loud voice, Jesus said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”.

This section requires expansion.

Theological interpretations

The last words of Jesus have been the subject of a wide range of Christian teachings and sermons, and a number of authors have written books specifically devoted to the last sayings of Christ.[13][14][15]

Priest and author Timothy Radcliffe states that in the Bible, seven is the number of perfection, and he views the seven last words as God’s completion of the circle of creation and performs analysis of the structure of the seven last words to obtain further insight.[16] John Ross Macduff views the last words of Jesus as highly significant and as a “parting legacy of peace” arising from free forgiveness.[17] Alexander Watson stated that:[18]

“We find that these last sayings of our dying Lord, set forth with minuteness His own mysterious attributes: that they contain, as it were in germ, the great mysteries of the faith: and that they are living lessons taught us in the example of our Incarnate God.”

In presenting a Gospel harmony of the Passion, John Edmunds commented that it is necessary to correlate the multiple Gospel accounts to achieve a complete view of them.[19]

Authenticity

The fact that the statements of the last words differ between the four canonical Gospels has caused some[citation needed] to doubt that any are genuine because they lack multiple attestation. James Dunn comments that “it is somewhat disturbing to have to acknowledge how weakly rooted these last words are in the tradition.”[8] Since the Matthew narrative is generally seen as heavily dependent on Mark, this means that each of the ‘last words’ is in effect dependent on a single source: “The uncomfortable conclusion probably has to be that most of the words from the cries are part of the elaboration in the diverse retellings of Jesus’ final hours”.[8] The statement from Mark / Matthew Gospels is a quotation from Psalm 22, and is therefore occasionally seen as a theological and literary device employed by the writers,[20] Dunn, while agreeing that this ‘raises suspicions’, still argues in favour of its authenticity that in presenting Jesus as seeing himself ‘forsaken’ it would have been an embarrassment to the early Church, and sees the fact that the words ‘were allowed to fall out’ in other traditions as supporting this.[8]

Musical settings
Main article: Musical settings of The Seven Last Words of Christ

See also
* Aramaic of Jesus
* Crucifixion of Jesus

…

Question:
I believe that Matthew’s account lists Jesus’s cry from the ancient texts when he wrote “Eli, Eli lama sabachthani”. This is not a quote from Psalm 22. The Hebrew in Psalm 22 is ‘azab, not sabachthani. I’ve seen some stretches that try to link sabachthani with ‘azab, but I believe it is a bit of a stretch. While I don’t necessarily believe he was referring to the sabach plant, as do some who take the strictly Chaldean approach, the lamb of Genesis 22 was caught in a plant with thistles. Jesus could have easily had that occurrence (Isaac’s offering) in mind as well as Psalm 22 when he called out from the cross. I also find it interesting that Mark records the words of Jesus as “Eloi, eloi…”, a slight difference from Matthew’s record. If we were to take a position that the Greek text as we have it was inspired by God, it begs the question, which Greek text?
Answer:

The answer would be the entire Greek text of the New Testament.

Before digging into difficulty you have between Matthew and Mark’s record of Jesus’ death, we need to first point that both agree as to meaning of what Jesus cried out.

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46).

“And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Mark 15:34).

Thus the only difference is in the spelling of “My God” in the transliteration of what Jesus cried out. First, we need to determine what language Jesus was speaking. An English transliteration of the beginning of Psalms 22:1 is ‘eli ‘eli lamah ‘azavtani. An Aramaic translation of the same phrase transliterated into English would be elahi elahi lama shabachtani.

Noting that neither transliteration matches what is in our Bibles points out a difficulty in transliteration. Different language sometimes have sounds that can’t be directly represented in a letters of another language. What we are reading is a transliteration of the original language into Greek and then from Greek into English.

The last word, sabachtani shows us that Jesus was speaking Aramaic. shabach is the equivalent word to the Hebrew word ‘azab. The thing, Greek doesn’t have an sh sound (the letter shin in Aramaic), so the nearest sound s of the Greek letter sigma is used. This was then transliterated into English as sabachtani.

Perhaps you wonder why two letters aren’t used in Greek, like the English. The thing is that Greek has no h sound at all. That is why lamah becomes lama in a Greek transliteration. By the way, Hebrew and Aramaic are very similar languages. In both languages the word lamah have the same meaning. Even more difficult is that both Hebrew and Aramaic have two h sounds. One, from the letter he sounds like the English h, but the other from the letter chet has no English equivalent. The nearest we have is the sound you get at the end of the word “loch.” The problem is that in English we pronounce ch with various sounds depending on its position in a word and the vowels that are next to it. The Greek does have a letter that sounds close to chet, which is the letter chi.

Next, we need to understand that dictionaries did not exist in those days. People generally spelled words as they sounded. Some letters, especially vowels can be debated as to which is the closest sound in another language, so though we might assume that elahi would be spelled elai in Greek (remember there is no h sound in Greek), we don’t know exactly how the ah sound was pronounced in those days. Omega could well be the closest approximation as rendered in Mark.

Finally, we must realize that people don’t always pronounce their words distinctly. This causes dialects to appear. For example, in the English word herb is pronounced erb in America even though in England the leading h is sounded. Greek, for instance, commonly drops a vowel when one word ends in a vowel and the next word begins with a vowel. The process is called “elided.” We don’t know the dialect that Jesus spoke. It is possible, and even likely that center vowel in elahi was weak or even dropped in his dialect. One reason to suspect this is because it was a Jewish region and the Hebrew word for “my God” is eli. So people who spoke both Hebrew and Aramaic would naturally have a tendency to blend toward a similar sound.

We must also note that Jesus was hanging on a cross. It is difficult to breathe while on a cross. That alone could cause some blurring of the way words are pronounced.

It is an assumption, but not a far fetched one. If we grant it, then Matthew recorded the words as they were pronounced giving his readers understanding as to how people misunderstood Jesus to be calling for Elijah. In other words, Matthew showed the dialect. Mark recorded the words as they were commonly transliterated in his day. In other words, Mark showed the language used. But both give us the same statement with the same meaning.

On this day...

• Isaiah 5 - 2023
• Isaiah 4 - 2023
• Hebrews 1:14 - 2011
• THE FEAR OF GOD, AND THE PRIDE OF MAN - 2010
• CONSECRATION - 2010
• CREATION - 2010
• ARMINIANISM, CALVINISM, and the TRUTH - 2010
• NAVIGATING THE EMERGING CHURCH HIGHWAY-Driscoll - 2010
• Faith in progress - 2010
• Separation from God - 2009