It’s a little late, but since it’s still Easter season I was thinking about languages and in particular the language of Jesus. The gospels of course record different versions of what exactly Jesus said when he died on the cross. But Matthew and Mark record a version that sounds like it could be historical.

Matthew and Mark both record Jesus’s final sentence as “Eli, Eli, lema Sabachthani,” which means “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Although they differ slightly in their spelling. Now, Jesus’s native language was Aramaic, but I’ve always been intrigued by how similar this phrase sounds to the Arabic I learned in school.

To start with “Eli” is almost identical to how you would say “My God” in modern Arabic, El = God and the noun ending -i makes it possessive for “my.” Sabach isn’t a verb I ever learned in Arabic, but if it does mean “to forsake,” then Sabachthani is also very close to how you would conjugate it in Arabic for this sentence.

But the part I’ve always been most interested in is “lema.” Now the Arabic word for “why” is “lematha,” but it’s made up of two pieces: “le” means “for” and “matha” means “what.” So “lematha” = “for what” = “why.” But there’s another word for “what” in Arabic, you can say “ma” instead of “matha” in many cases. So can you also say “lema” = “for what” = “why” in Arabic as well? I don’t know for sure, but it sounds like a likely etymology for the Aramaic word as well.

The bible gives us very few direct quotes in Aramaic, the native language of Jesus and many people in his day. It’s good to hear what we can from in their own tongue.

Happy Easter