Jesus quotes Psalm 22 in Aramaic on the cross, using a verb that can mean forsake, abandon, or simply leave behind.
The verb behind "sabachthani" is the Aramaic root shbq. Its plain sense is to leave something where it is. In Daniel it does ordinary work: a stump left standing in a field, a kingdom not handed over to someone else. Nothing dramatic. It's the word for letting a thing remain, or letting it go.
But the same root carries a heavier register when the object is a person rather than a stump. To leave a person can shade into abandoning them, deserting them, cutting them off. Later Aramaic even uses it for divorce. So the verb sits on a spectrum from neutral "leave in place" to relational "cast off", and context alone tells you where on that spectrum a given use falls. On Jesus's lips, quoting Psalm 22:1, it falls at the darkest end.
About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Jesus cries out the Aramaic words directly, quoting Psalm 22:1 at the point of death.
At the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
The parallel account preserves the same Aramaic phrase almost word for word.
And you, O king, saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven and saying: ‘Cut down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump with its roots in the ground, with a band of iron and bronze around it, in the tender grass of the field. Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven, and graze with the beasts of the field till seven times pass him by.’
The root shbq used plainly for leaving a tree stump standing, showing its ordinary range.
In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will shatter all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself stand forever.
Same root applied to a kingdom not being left to another people, a political rather than personal sense.
Every major English version renders it "forsaken" — KJV, ESV, NIV all agree. That word carries covenant weight in English, echoing Old Testament language about God forsaking a people. "Left" or "abandoned" were both available and would have sounded plainer, closer to the word's everyday use in Daniel. "Forsaken" is the right choice for the moment, but it hides how ordinary the verb sounds elsewhere.
A popular claim is that Jesus was calmly reciting Psalm 22 to signal its triumphant ending, so the cry itself carries no real anguish. That reads later comfort back into a word that, in its own language, simply and starkly means being left. The cry is genuine desolation first. The trust in the Psalm's outcome comes after, not instead of it.
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