What does “forsake” mean in the Bible?

To forsake someone is to leave them behind: to abandon, desert or give up on a person you were bound to stay with. It is a heavier word than “leave.” You can leave a room; you forsake a child, a covenant, a people. The Bible uses it two ways. Sometimes it is a sin against our Father, when His people turn their backs on Him. More often, and more tenderly, it is the fear of the abandoned: the cry of someone who feels left alone.

It can also mean giving something up on purpose. Isaiah calls the wicked to “abandon his way” and promises that “our Father’s heart will be moved with compassion for him.” Abandoning sin is repentance; being forsaken is the thing the Bible promises will never happen to you.

The main Hebrew verb is ‘azab. At its root it means to leave, to let go, to leave behind. It is the word in Deuteronomy 31:6 and, in the cry on the cross, in Psalm 22:1. It can describe a man leaving his father’s house, a people leaving their God, or our Father who will never leave His people.

The Greek word is egkataleipō, a compound of en, kata and leipō (to leave), meaning to leave behind, to desert, to give up on. It is the verb in Hebrews 13:5, in Matthew 27:46 and in 2 Corinthians 4:9. The writer of Hebrews quotes the Old Testament promise and stacks negatives on top of one another, so that the sentence says, in effect, never, no never. Greek can do in one breath what English can only imitate by repeating itself.

The phrase most people know is the promise. Moses speaks it over Israel before they cross into the land, and he says it twice: “Be strong and courageous. Don’t fear or dread them, for your Father goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Deuteronomy 31:6). Two verses later it is repeated to Joshua personally: “Our Father himself goes before you; he will be with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Hebrews takes that old promise and gives it to every believer: “for our Father himself has said, ‘I will never leave you, never abandon you.’” Notice the wording. Father’s Heart Bible says “abandon” here where Deuteronomy says “forsake,” because it is the same promise in a different century of English; the Greek verb is the same one used when Jesus cried out from the cross. The reason given is not that you are strong. It is who is speaking: our Father himself.

The hardest use of the word is also the best known. On the cross Jesus quoted the first line of a psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). The words are David’s, from Psalm 22:1: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Our Bible’s footnote on that verse says that “Jesus prayed the opening words of this psalm from the cross. The whole psalm is his,” and the psalm does not end in abandonment: it turns on the verse “he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.”

Christians have read the cry in more than one way, and it deserves care rather than a slogan. At the least, it is a real prayer, spoken to a Father the Son still calls “my God,” by someone who felt the full weight of being left alone. It is permission for anyone who has felt the same to pray the same words.

Scripture is honest about the feeling. “Our Father has forsaken me; the Sovereign Father has forgotten me.” says Zion in Isaiah 49:14, and the Father does not tell her to stop feeling it. He answers: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that her heart would not be moved with compassion for the son of her womb?” Even then He is not finished: “Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”

David names the worst case, a parent who walks away: “Though my father and my mother forsake me, my Father will take me in.” (Psalm 27:10). The footnote reads: “Even if the closest human love fails, our Father gathers the abandoned child into his own home.” And Paul, describing his own hard years, sets the two words side by side: “persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” Feeling forsaken and being forsaken are not the same thing, and the Bible keeps them carefully apart.