My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?

"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" is a phrase that appears both in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Psalms, as well as in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, where they appear as one of the sayings of Jesus on the cross, according to Matthew 27:46 and also Mark 15:34.

These words are the opening words of Psalm 22 – in the original Hebrew: אֵלִ֣י אֵ֖לִי לָמָ֣ה עֲזַבְתָּ֑נִי Eli, Eli, lama azavtani, meaning 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?'.

In the New Testament, the phrase is the only of the seven Sayings of Jesus on the cross that appears in more than one Gospel. It is given in slightly different version in the Gospel of Matthew, where it is transliterated into Greek as Ἠλί, Ἠλί, λεμὰ σαβαχθανί, whereas in the Gospel of Mark it is given as Ἐλωΐ, Ἐλωΐ, λαμὰ σαβαχθανί. The difference being the first two words being stated as Eli or as Eloi.

The Greek form σαβαχθανί in both accounts is the Greek transliteration of Aramaic שבקתני, transliterated: šəḇaqtani, meaning 'hast forsaken me'. It is a conjugated form of the verb šǝḇaq/šāḇaq, 'to allow, to permit, to forgive, and to forsake', with the perfect tense ending -t (2nd person singular: 'you'), and the object suffix -anī (1st person singular: 'me'). The Aramaic form שבק‎ (šbq) 'abandon' corresponds to the Hebrew עזב‎ (azav), also meaning 'leave, abandon'.