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Psalm 22 opens with the exact words Jesus quoted from the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" This was not a rhetorical opening. Jesus was in agony, physically dying, and the Father was silent. The most theologically significant event in human history — the death of the Son of God — included the felt experience of divine abandonment. This does not explain why God feels absent. It does mean you are not the first person who has been there.
Get These Verses Daily — Free“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?”
Jesus quoted this from the cross in Aramaic — 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani' (Matthew 27:46). The felt experience of divine abandonment is not a disqualifying spiritual failure. It is a cry with a three-thousand-year biblical precedent, shared by the Son of God himself.
“Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”
The Greek construction is a double negative — emphatic in a way English cannot fully capture. The promise is not 'I will try not to leave you.' It is an absolute: God's presence is not conditioned on whether it can be felt.
“Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”
Moses spoke these words to Israel before they entered a land full of enemies larger than them. The command to not be afraid is grounded specifically in the fact of God's presence — not in the circumstances being safe.
“Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.”
God reaches for the most instinctive human bond available — a nursing mother — as a comparison for his attachment, and then says his attachment exceeds even that. The image is deliberate: this is not a casual connection.
“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?”
The incarnate Son of God experienced the felt absence of the Father. Whatever divine abandonment feels like from the inside, Jesus went through it. He is not a distant God who observes suffering — he has been in it.
Hebrews 13:5 quotes God's promise from Deuteronomy: "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." The Greek uses a double negative construction — ou mē — which is emphatic beyond ordinary negation. It is closer to "I will absolutely, certainly never leave you." The promise is stated as a fact about God's character, not as something that depends on whether you can feel it. God's presence is not conditioned on your ability to perceive it.
Isaiah 49:15 makes one of the most striking comparisons in the Old Testament: "Can a woman forget her sucking child?" The expected answer is no. But then God says: even if she could, he cannot forget. The image chosen is the most visceral form of maternal attachment — a nursing mother and her infant. God's connection to his people exceeds even that.
Commentary is from a charismatic Protestant perspective, drawing on KJV text and public-domain sources including Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, and Matthew Henry.
The lament psalms — Psalm 13, 22, 44, 88 — are addressed directly to God in the second person, as complaint. They are in the Bible, which means they are sanctioned. Psalm 88 ends without resolution: "darkness is my closest friend." No neat answer. No sudden comfort. The darkness is still there at the close. This is not a failure of the psalmist's faith. It is an honest record that God keeps company with people in unresolved suffering, and that unresolved prayers are still directed toward someone who is listening.
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