A cry from Psalm 22 at the cross

Traditions: Jewish lament psalm; Christian Gospel of Mark Motif: Words of abandonment voiced amid suffering Connection verdict: Explicit quotation in a Passion narrative Article status: Expanded Date: 2026-10-29

Summary

Psalm 22 opens with a desperate address to God. Mark 15:34 places its opening words on Jesus’s lips during crucifixion.

Read the two scenes

Psalm 22 begins with an anguished question from a sufferer who still addresses God. Its later movement toward communal praise should not erase the force of the opening cry. Mark preserves the cry in an Aramaic form and then translates it for readers while the crucifixion scene unfolds. This is distinct from the same psalm’s garment imagery used elsewhere in Passion interpretation. The link is unmistakable at the level of words, yet the psalm’s whole arc and Mark’s narrative purpose require separate attention.

What connects—and what does not

The psalm continues through complaint toward praise; Mark narrates a particular death and does not simply reproduce every turn of the poem.

The shared opening is direct textual reuse. Whether the whole psalm is meant to frame the scene is an interpretive question, not a fact proved by one quotation.

Why read them side by side?

The comparison keeps pain visible even when later readers place a lament within a larger hope-filled story.

Sources and reading notes

• Psalm 22:1-24 — Named passage in the NRSVUE; compare its surrounding literary context and other translations.
• Mark 15:33-39 — Named passage in the NRSVUE; compare its surrounding literary context and other translations.

Research limit

A named parallel can establish literary reuse or related tradition; a general resemblance alone cannot prove borrowing. Linked editions and translations vary. Where a source is identified as secondary orientation, the comparison does not claim direct close reading of that tradition’s primary text.