Most Christians know Yeshua’s cry from the cross:
“My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?”
And depending on what church you grew up in, that line was usually explained in one of two ways. Either Jesus was expressing emotional agony, or God had turned His face away from Him.
Both explanations sound dramatic. Both make for powerful Good Friday services. And both miss what actually happened.
That cry wasn’t a moment of emotional collapse or divine separation. It was spoken with purpose, shaped by Scripture, and meant to be understood in context.
It was a deliberate, purposeful, rabbinic way of directing the crowd to an entire psalm.
Yeshua was quoting Psalm 22, and that moment carries far more meaning than most sermons ever slow down long enough to explore.
Yeshua Was Using a Remez, Not Crying in Despair
In Jewish teaching, there is a long-established interpretive method called remez, which means hint or allusion. A remez occurs when a teacher quotes a small portion of Scripture in order to point listeners toward a much larger passage they are expected to know.
Think of an actor rehearsing on stage and they forget their line. A stage manager may give them a few words and that reminds them of the entire line. That is a modern example of how a remez operates.
This was not subtle in the first century. It was common. It assumed a shared familiarity with the Scriptures. When a rabbi quoted the opening line of a psalm, he was not isolating a sentence. He was bringing to peopele’s mind the entire text.
And that’s exactly what Yeshua was doing on the cross.
Read on to see what most sermons never slow down long enough to explain.