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Psalm 22 begins with the words Jesus quoted from the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" This was not rhetorical. Jesus was physically dying, the Father was silent, and he cried out using the language of the most honest lament psalm in the Bible. The most theologically significant event in human history — the atonement — included the felt experience of divine abandonment. Not as a failure of faith or a spiritual inadequacy. As the actual experience of the incarnate Son of God. You are not the first person who has been inside divine silence.
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 — the felt experience of divine absence at the center of the atonement. The most faithful act in history included the experience of divine silence. You are not the first to be inside this, and you are not failing by being here.
“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 uses a double negative — emphatic beyond ordinary negation. God's presence is not contingent on being felt. The promise is about God's character, not about the conditions under which it can be perceived. Silence is not the same as absence.
“Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.”
This is a declaration, not a complaint. The hiddenness of God is named as real and acknowledged as a characteristic. God hides himself and is nonetheless the Saviour — the two coexist. Hiddenness is not the same as not being there.
“I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.”
The Hebrew qavah — 'waited' — means to bind together, to be twisted into. The waiting is not passive. It is an intertwining with God during silence. David's testimony is that the silence ended — not immediately, but the inclining and hearing came after the waiting.
“For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.”
God acknowledges the tarrying explicitly: 'though it tarry.' The silence is not denied. The promise is about what the silence is preceding — an appointed time when what has been silent will speak. The silence is not permanent; it is a delay with a structure.
Hebrews 13:5 quotes God's promise in emphatic Greek construction: "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." The phrase uses a double negative — ou mē — which intensifies the negation beyond ordinary usage. It is closer to: "I will absolutely, certainly never leave you." This promise is stated as a fact about God's character, not as something conditioned on the ability to feel it. The silence is not evidence of absence. God's presence is not contingent on its own perceptibility.
Isaiah 45:15 contains one of the most honest theological admissions in the Old Testament: "Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour." This is not a complaint — it is a declaration. The hiddenness of God is named as a real characteristic, not denied. God is the one who hides himself and is nonetheless the Saviour. The hiddenness and the salvation coexist. The silence is not the same as the absence.
Commentary is from a charismatic Protestant perspective, drawing on KJV text and public-domain sources including Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, and Matthew Henry.
Psalm 88 ends without resolution: "darkness is my closest friend." The entire psalm is addressed to God — God of my salvation (v.1), Jehovah who is invoked throughout — in ongoing, unresolved complaint. It is in the Psalter. Unresolved experience of divine hiddenness, sustained over time, directed at God in complaint, is represented in Scripture as legitimate prayer that God receives. The silence on God's end does not mean the conversation has ended on his.
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