“Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?”

At multiple times in King David’s life, he had reason to feel abandoned by God. He captured that feeling of loneliness in a poem, now known as Psalm 22. Here is the opening of that psalm:

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?

O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.

Psalm 22:1-2

Faithful people trust God to deliver them. When painful circumstances persist, when rescue is not forthcoming, and especially when they seem to be walking alone, that trust can be sorely tested. In those circumstances, “Why?” is not merely a question, but a lamentation, an expression of a deep sense of abandonment and loss.

David goes on to describe some manifestations of that abandonment: people mocking him (v. 7-8), physical suffering and severe violence (v. 12-17), and humiliating loss of personal possessions (v. 18).

But David rallies, and like most lament psalms, he finds his hopeful voice. “[The Lord] hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard” (Psalm 22:24). Like Nephi’s psalm in the Book of Mormon, Psalm 22 opens with an expression of despair but ends with renewed hope (see 2 Nephi 4:15-35).

But David’s cry of anguish served a more meaningful purpose. As Jesus hung upon the cross, about a thousand years later, He quoted the first line of this psalm to express His agony.

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?

Matthew 27:46; see also Mark 15:34

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland explained what Jesus was experiencing at that moment:

For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone.

“None Were With Him,” April 2009 general conference

He felt that loss more fully than any of us, because He was sinless. He had never experienced the withdrawal of God’s Spirit that accompanies wrongdoing. How wonderful it is that David’s suffering enabled him to write the very words which would perfectly encapsulate the Savior’s unprecedented suffering on that day! David was blessed with the gift to convey deep loneliness in words which the Savior could draw upon in His moment of utter isolation. The words may not have dulled the pain, but in some way they did lessen the aloneness, because they connected Him with his ancestor, an ancestor who had never given up on God even when he felt completely forsaken.

oday, I will read Psalm 22 and remember the depth of sorrow the Savior was willing to endure for me.