What Did Jesus’ Last Words Really Mean?
When Jesus cried from the cross: “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” — “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”
He was speaking the opening words of Psalm 22.
To us, the sentence can sound like an isolated cry of despair. But Jesus’ Jewish hearers knew the Psalms. Hearing the opening line could call to mind the larger psalm—a text that begins in anguish but moves through suffering toward trust, vindication, and the proclamation of God’s rule.
That does not make Jesus’ suffering any less real. But it gives His words a much larger biblical context. His cry from the cross does not stand alone: it places His suffering within the language and story of Psalm 22.
And That Was Not the Only Psalm Jesus Quoted
Luke records another prayer from the cross: “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” (Luke 23:46)
These words come from Psalm 31:5: “Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God.”
Here the Hebrew gives us another detail worth noticing. The verb translated “I commit” is אַפְקִיד (afqid), from the root פקד (p-q-d), which can carry the sense of entrusting something to another’s care or custody.
Jesus’ final prayer in Luke is therefore not simply a statement about death. It is an act of entrusting Himself to the Father, spoken in the words of Israel’s Scriptures.
What We Miss in Translation
Within only a few words from the cross, the Gospels take us back into the Psalms again and again. For readers who recognize these biblical echoes, familiar passages suddenly reveal connections that are easy to miss in translation.
And this is only one example. The Hebrew Bible, Jewish history and culture, and the world in which Jesus and His earliest followers lived can open familiar biblical texts in remarkable ways.
At Israel Bible Center, we explore these connections every day—helping students read the Bible in its original languages, Jewish context, and ancient world.
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