After Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared to the disciples and reminded them that he fulfilled the writings of the Law, Prophets, and Psalms. In Psalm 22:1, we have a prophecy that the Messiah would be forsaken by God. For many Christians today, this is a well-known and familiar idea. But how might the ancient Israelites have understood this prophecy?

The Israelites were familiar with the idea of being forsaken by God. When they were about to enter the Promised Land, the LORD predicted their rebellion:

And the LORD said to Moses…”These people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. And in that day I will become angry with them and forsake them; I will hide my face from them, and they will be destroyed” (Deuteronomy 31:16-17). God even had Moses teach the Israelites a song about this to serve as a witness against the people.

God had warned them of the consequences of their sin: God would turn his back on them. What a scary thought! Yet, they were forsaken justly. It was deserved. In 2 Kings 17, we read that the Israelites were exiled to Assyria because they had sinned against the LORD their God. They despised his statutes and his covenant and warnings. They worshipped false gods.

King David, the author of Psalm 22, was not perfect, but he tried to live a God-pleasing life. He faced many hardships in his early life while running away from King Saul’s death threats. Perhaps that’s why he cried out to God, “Why have you forsaken me?”

Though David was not actually forsaken by God, David’s greater son—the Messiah—would be. This concept was unfathomable to Jesus’ disciples. According to their understanding, only the guilty would be punished by God. They believed that if a person experienced suffering, it was somehow deserved. When Jesus began to tell his disciples that he must suffer and die, Peter was bewildered. More than that, he was totally against the idea. How could this perfect Messiah be punished? After all, only the disobedient get punished. This made no sense.

And yet, this is exactly what happened with our Lord Jesus Christ. His cry from the cross—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—is the cry of an innocent man being treated as guilty. Jesus was forsaken in our place.

Why? One reason is for joy—the joy of reconciling the world to God and making us a part of his family. Therefore, “let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).