Verse 46. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice
This ninth hour answers, as has been said, to our three in the
afternoon. S. Mark says: Exclamavit voce
magna. He increases the force of the cry by the addition of ex to the verb, and by the words magna voce, by epitasis. So S. Paul (Heb. 5:7). That Christ, when at the
point of death, could cry with a loud voice surpasses human nature. For the
voice of the dying, or even of those in dread of death, is apt to fail at the
outset. Christ, although He was dying as man, yet, as God, was able to cry with
a loud voice, supra hominem. His
having thus cried out cannot be thought void of a reason and mystery. Origen
thinks that it was to show that there was a great mystery in His death. This
would not have been without probability had he not turned the whole into an
allegory. He supposes the voice to have been great, not because it was loud and
strong, but because it was full of teaching and mystery. For every voice of
Christ is great. Euthymius thinks that Christ cried with a loud voice to show
that He truly suffered of His own free-will. But this would rather tend to
prove that He did not suffer at all, as He was able to cry out with so powerful
a voice. It may rather be thought that His reason was that all who were present
might recognise the words of Psalm
21, and see that He was the Christ of whom it was written: Eli, Eli, lama Sabacthani. S. Mark (15:34), by a slight alteration,
reads Eloi, but it is the same Hebrew word. They expressed Deus meus by both Eli and Eloi. It is easy to understand that
Christ might have used either expression; but as He was reciting the Psalm, we
must suppose that He did not say Eloi, but Eli, as written therein. The
bystanders, too, thought that He called for Elias, which they would not so
readily have done had He said Eloi,
instead of Eli, Eli, lama Sabacthani,
למה שבקתני. This is Syriac, which language was then
used by the Jews. The Hebrew is עזבתני.
They are the words of David in his complaint against God of being deserted by
Him in adversity. The words that follow are רחיק מישועתי דברי שאגתי longe a salute mea verba rugitus mei; that is, “my complaints before Thee are
far from bringing me any salvation and deliverance”. From the similarity of the
Hebrew word the LXX. have rendered rugitus
παραπτωμάτων, delictorum, that is, “I cry to Thee for
safety, but my sins cry to Thee against it, so that I am far from it”. But as
the whole psalm was written of Christ, as we see from verses 17, 19, which can
apply to no other, it cannot be doubted, that when David uttered these words,
he had regard to Christ. Christ, then, when dying uttered the beginning of the
psalm to show that He was the Christ of whom the psalm speaks.
But here arises another question. How could Christ say that He was
forsaken by God? Calvin is not to be listened to who says that He suffered all
the pains of the condemned, among which was utter despair. Christ’s own words
disprove this: “Into Thy hands I commend My spirit” (Ps. 30:6). Nor was it either necessary or possible that He should
suffer all the punishments of the lost, or He must have blasphemed God, and
done other things which these do, and which, although committed of their
free-will, are punishments of sin. Nor, again, was He required to undergo the
heavy punishments which many of His martyrs have endured for Him. For it was
not the greatness of His punishment, which, however great it was, could not
compare with the multitude and greatness of our sins, but the condition of His
Person which satisfied God; for whatever it was that God suffered, it was so
great that it satisfied even an angry God.
The ancient Fathers, although they explain the words in different
manners, yet all claim His own glory for Christ. Their most general explanation
is that He spoke them not in His own Person, but in ours—that is in the person
of all sinners. For when the Arians brought this passage forward in
depreciation of the Divinity of Christ, and said that He was so far from being
God, that He cried out that He was forsaken by God—all Catholic Fathers
answered that He cried out not for Himself, but for us whom He saw to be
deserted by God, and alienated from Him, and whom He desired to restore to His
favour. So say S. Athanasius (Orat.
i, ii, and Serm. iii, iv, cont. Arian., and Quod Dens de Deo); S. Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. iv. de Theolog.);
S. Cyril Alexandria (De Fid. ad Reg.);
S. Augustin (Ps. xxi); S. Leo (Serm. xvi. de Pass.); S. John Damascene (De
Fide, iii. 2, 24), and Euthymius (in
loc.). “Hence it is,” says S. Leo, “that our Head, the Lord Jesus Christ,
transforming all the members of His Body into Himself, what He had formerly
ejaculated in the psalm, that He repeated on the cross in the voice of their
Redeemer: ‘My God, My God, look upon me, why hast Thou forsaken me?’ ” He
confirms this opinion by the words of S. Augustin which immediately follow,
“Far from Thy salvation are the words of my sins,” which can apply to us, but
cannot to Christ.
Others think that Christ called Himself forsaken by the Father,
because when He was in the form of God, by the decree of the Father He “emptied
Himself and assumed the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man;
and being found in fashion as a man, when He had undergone so many and great
punishments, He, as it were, repented that He had been made man”. This is the
opinion of Origen, and one not apparently very tenable.
The opinion of those who say that Christ spoke those words as man, for
Himself, as He had said to the Father, “Father, if it be possible,” &c,
seems better. For as He was both God and man, so, as we have said before, God
permitted the manhood so to suffer (restraining, as it were, the Godhead) as if
He had been a mere man. Thus, although He was God, He prayed as a mere man.
Like a mere man He complained that He was deserted by God. Not that He thought
Himself so, for He soon after commended His spirit into His hands, but that He
felt Himself suffering as if He had been. Hence He cried out like a man
deserted by God, “My God, My God,” to express the person of a man suffering the
most extreme punishment and deserted by God. This is the opinion of Tertullian (Adv. Prax.), S. Hilary (Can. xxxiii. on S. Matt.), S. Epiphanius (Her.
lxix.), S. Cyril (Thesaurus, x. 2),
S. Ambrose (Comment. x. on S. Luke, and De Fide, i. 6), S. Jerome (in
loc.). But S. Hilary and S. Ambrose are to be received with caution; for
they explain it as if when Christ died His Godhead was separated from His soul
and body. “The man,” they say, “when on the point of death, cried out from the
separation of the Divinity.” They doubtless meant, not that His Godhead was
truly separated from the body and soul of Christ, but that He so suffered and
so died as if it had been. (John Maldonatus, A Commentary on the
Holy Gospels, 2 vols. [2d ed.; trans. George J. Davie; Catholic Standard
Library; London: John Hodges, 1888], 2:551-54)
