The Psalm Jesus Quoted While Dying

There is a moment near the end of the crucifixion that most people misread. Jesus, hours into dying, cries out in Aramaic "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And for centuries, people have heard that as a question. As despair. As the moment God's own Son felt abandoned and broke under the weight of it.

Passage I

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

But here's the thing almost everyone misses. Jesus wasn't composing a sentence. He was quoting. Those words are the opening line of Psalm 22. Word for word. And in first-century Judaism, when you cited the first line of a psalm, you were invoking the entire psalm. Everyone within earshot who knew the Scriptures and most of them did would have recognized the reference immediately. It would be like someone today saying, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." You don't need to finish the sentence. The whole document lands.

So the question becomes what does the rest of Psalm 22 actually say? Because if Jesus was pointing to the whole psalm, then we need to read the whole psalm. And when you do, it changes everything about that moment on the cross.

Passage II

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.

David wrote this psalm roughly a thousand years before Jesus was born. A thousand years. And it begins exactly where you'd expect a lament to begin with pain, with the feeling of God's absence, with the raw human experience of crying out and hearing nothing back. But then David starts describing something. And the descriptions get specific. Unnervingly specific.

Passage III

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.

Read that again slowly. Bones out of joint. That's what happens when a body hangs suspended from outstretched arms. Heart like wax, melted within the breast. We now know that crucifixion often caused pericardial effusion, fluid accumulating around the heart. Tongue sticking to the jaws. Severe dehydration, which is one of the primary physical agonies of crucifixion. David is describing, with clinical precision, a form of execution that didn't exist in his world. The Persians wouldn't invent crucifixion for another five hundred years. The Romans wouldn't refine it for another eight hundred.

Passage IV

For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet.

That word "pierced" has caused more scholarly debate than almost any word in the Hebrew Bible. The Masoretic text, the standard Hebrew manuscript tradition, reads ka'ari, which could mean "like a lion" at my hands and feet. But the Septuagint, the Greek translation made by Jewish scholars two centuries before Jesus, translates it as oryxan "they pierced." The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947, include a copy of this psalm, and the reading there is ka'aru "they dug through" or "they pierced." So the oldest manuscripts we have support the reading that David described pierced hands and feet a millennium before anyone was dying that way.

Passage V

I can count all my bones; they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

They divide my garments. They cast lots for my clothing. And then you open the Gospel of John and read the crucifixion narrative.

Passage VI

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom, so they said to one another, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be."

John is the only Gospel writer who mentions the seamless tunic and the decision to cast lots rather than tear it. And John explicitly tells you he knows this fulfills Psalm 22. He's not being subtle about the connection. But here's what matters the soldiers didn't know the psalm. They weren't trying to fulfill prophecy. They were just doing what soldiers did. The psalm described their behavior a thousand years in advance, down to the detail of the lots.

So Psalm 22 opens with agony. It describes, in extraordinary detail, a scene of suffering that maps onto the crucifixion. But the psalm doesn't end there. And this is the part that changes the whole reading of what Jesus was doing when he cried out from the cross.

Around verse 19, the psalm turns. The tone shifts. The language changes from despair to something else entirely. David stops describing what is being done to him and starts calling on God to act. And then God answers.

Passage VII

But you, O Lord, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid! Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog!

And then the psalm opens up wide. The rescue comes. And what follows is not a private sigh of relief. It's a declaration to the entire world.

Passage VIII

I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!

The psalm moves from one man suffering alone to the nations of the earth turning to God. From isolation to congregation. From a body in the dust of death to a proclamation that reaches the ends of the earth. This is not a psalm about defeat. The opening line is a cry of pain, yes. But it's the first line of a much longer story, and that story ends in victory.

Passage IX

All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.

And then there's the last line. The very end of Psalm 22, verse 31. In Hebrew, the psalm closes with two words ki asah. It means "he has done it." Some translations say "for he has done it" or "it is finished." The work is accomplished. The suffering has produced something. And it is complete.

Passage X

They shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it.

Now hold that phrase. "He has done it." Ki asah. And then remember what Jesus said just before he died, according to John's Gospel. One word in Greek. Tetelestai.

Passage XI

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, "It is finished," and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Tetelestai. It is finished. It is accomplished. It is done. The final word of Psalm 22 and the final word of Jesus on the cross are saying the same thing. The psalm that begins with "My God, why have you forsaken me?" ends with "He has done it." And Jesus, who opened his mouth on the cross with the first line of that psalm, closed his life with its last line.

So was Jesus in despair? Was he experiencing genuine abandonment? Scholars will continue to disagree about that, and honestly, both things can be true at once. You can feel the full weight of suffering and still know how the story ends. Those aren't contradictions. Ask anyone who has grieved something and held onto hope at the same time you can carry both.

But what you cannot say, if you take the text seriously, is that Jesus was surprised by what was happening to him. He wasn't groping for words and landing on a psalm by accident. He chose this text. He pointed the people standing at the foot of that cross to a psalm that described exactly what they were watching and then told them how it would end. Not in death. Not in abandonment. In completion.

A thousand years before the nails. Before the lots were cast. Before the soldiers divided the garments. Before the darkness. Before the cry. David wrote it down. And Jesus, with his last breaths, said yes. This one. Read this one. Read all of it.

Passage XII

For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.