The most debated statement in the crucifixion account is not a cry of abandonment. It is the sound of the covenant being sealed in the same structural aloneness in which it was first established.
Document 3 of 3
No statement in the entire gospel account has generated more theological argument, more pastoral discomfort, more attempted explanation, and more unresolved tension than the cry from the cross. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me. The words of Psalm 22, spoken by Yeshua at the moment of his death, asking in the plainest possible language why YHWH has abandoned him.
The tradition has offered three responses to this cry and none of them has ever fully satisfied. The first says Yeshua was quoting Psalm 22 in a way that pointed forward to the psalm’s eventual vindication, that by opening the psalm he was declaring its conclusion as well as its lament. The second says he was genuinely experiencing the full weight of human alienation from YHWH, feeling what every person outside the covenant has always felt. The third says the Father literally turned away from the Son because YHWH cannot look upon sin and the Son had taken sin upon himself. Each of these readings has been defended by serious theologians. Each carries problems that the defenders have never fully resolved. The first seems to diminish the rawness of the cry into liturgical gesture. The second leaves the Father absent from the cross at the moment that matters most. The third introduces a rupture in the divine unity that the rest of the covenant testimony does not support and that makes the nature of YHWH incoherent.
The first two documents in this series have established the foundation for a fourth reading. Not a reading that dismisses the rawness of the cry or removes its genuine human weight. A reading that grounds the cry in the covenant structure, the structure of Genesis 15, the structure of the sealing while Avraham slept, and shows that the aloneness of the cross is not the sign of the covenant breaking but of the covenant being kept in the only way it could be kept.
Three readings. None of them has ever fully resolved the tension. The fourth reading does not come from theology. It comes from the covenant structure of Genesis 15, and it resolves the cry not by explaining it away but by showing what the aloneness was always for.
Return to Genesis 15 with this question in mind. The covenant ritual required two parties to walk between the pieces together. YHWH caused Avraham to sleep. YHWH passed through alone. The question the text invites is: why? Why did YHWH not wake Avraham and let him walk through beside him? Why was the deep sleep necessary? Why did the sealing have to happen in Avraham’s absence?
The answer is in the nature of what was being established. If Avraham had walked through the pieces alongside YHWH, if Avraham had been a conscious, participating party to the covenant sealing, then the covenant would have been conditional on Avraham’s faithfulness to his side of it. Both parties would have bound themselves. Both parties would have been accountable. Both parties could fail. The covenant’s standing would depend on the human party’s ability to hold what he had walked through the pieces to ratify.
YHWH caused Avraham to sleep precisely to prevent this. The sleep was not incidental to the covenant. The sleep was the mechanism of the covenant’s unconditional nature. Avraham could not fail his side because Avraham never held his side. YHWH absorbed both sides into himself by passing through alone. The aloneness was required by the very nature of what was being established. A covenant sealed by one party alone holding both sides cannot be broken by the other party. The other party has no side to break.
Now bring this structure to Golgotha. The cross is the completion of the Genesis 15 covenant, Paul establishes this in Galatians 3, the seed for whom the covenant was sealed is Mashiach, and Mashiach at the cross is the covenant arriving at its promised destination. If the Genesis 15 sealing required YHWH to pass through the pieces alone, if the aloneness was the mechanism of the covenant’s unconditional nature, then the completion of that covenant at the cross required the same structural aloneness. The participatory presence of the Father had to withdraw at the moment of the sealing so that the completion, like the original establishment, would be held entirely by YHWH alone.
The sleep of Avraham was the mechanism of the covenant’s unconditional nature. If the Father’s participatory presence had remained at the cross, if a second party had been present in the passage, the completion would have been conditional. The aloneness at the cross is the same aloneness as Genesis 15. Required. Structural. The mechanism of the unconditional.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me, is the Son experiencing the structural aloneness that the covenant completion required. The Father was not absent from the cross. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:19 that God was in Mashiach reconciling the world to himself. The Father was in the Son. But the participatory presence, the presence that could intervene, that could say enough, that on a different mountain had said enough when Yitzchak (Isaac) lay on the altar and provided a ram instead, that presence withdrew. Not in abandonment. In covenant faithfulness. In the only way the sealing could be unconditional. The Father withdrew into the aloneness so that the Son could pass through the pieces alone, holding both sides, completing what YHWH had sworn by himself in Genesis 15 that he would complete.
The cry is real. The aloneness is real. The darkness is real. Yeshua experienced the full weight of the structural isolation that the covenant required, the condition of being the only one in the passage, with no other party present, with the pieces on either side and the darkness around and no second voice and no participatory companion. He experienced what the completion of an unconditional covenant costs the one who holds it. He experienced what YHWH had experienced in Genesis 15 when he passed through alone for the first time. And he cried out in that experience with the words of the psalm that begins in desolation and ends in the declaration that YHWH has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one, and has not hidden his face from him, but has heard his cry for help.
The psalm Yeshua was quoting from the cross does not end in abandonment. It ends in vindication. It ends in the declaration that YHWH’s faithfulness has been confirmed in the very moment that felt like desertion. The cry of desolation and the declaration of vindication are in the same psalm, because the aloneness and the faithfulness are in the same covenant structure. The aloneness is not the absence of YHWH. The aloneness is YHWH keeping the oath he swore by himself in the dark while Avraham slept. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me — is Yeshua, in the passage between the pieces, crying out in the aloneness that the covenant requires, and in doing so completing what YHWH began in Genesis 15 for all who slept, for all flesh, for the seed in whom all was always being sealed.
He was not forsaken. He was alone. And the aloneness was the faithfulness.
The Father withdrew not in abandonment but in covenant faithfulness. The aloneness at the cross is the aloneness of Genesis 15. Required. Structural. The sound of the oath being kept.
Genesis 15 — YHWH passed through alone. The aloneness sealed the covenant as unconditional.
Golgotha — the Father’s participatory presence withdrew. The aloneness completed the covenant as unconditional.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,
the cry of the one in the passage.
The sound of the covenant being kept.
He was not forsaken. He was alone. And the aloneness was the faithfulness.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams