This week we are going to make good use of my last year spent studying laments in Hebrew scripture and culture. We’ll talk about the word Abba and what it does and does not mean, and whether or not Gethsemane was actually a garden or if the word points to something other than the traditional understanding.
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32 And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. 34 And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” 35 And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” 37 And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? 38 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 39 And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. 40 And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. 41 And he came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”
All this time, Yeshua/Jesus has been talking about a cup He must drink and baptism He must endure—the cup, in this case, referring back to so many references in the prophets about judgment coming by way of cups. Even in the Sotah examination of the woman suspected of adultery, she is compelled to drink a cup of judgment, and based on the outcome, her guilt or innocence was determined. Unlike the water ordeal of the ancient Near Eastern world where they would throw a person in deep water and if they drowned they were guilty, there was nothing harmful about what the woman would drink in the Sotah if she was innocent and thus the verdict was seen as divine. More and more, we will be getting closer to the cup that Yeshua must drink, the crucifixion, and it won’t be obvious right away what possible vindication there will be because, as the author tells us repeatedly, they are still without understanding. But to give them some credit, Yeshua has been making some claims that sound insane. The baptism, of course, is always symbolic of an alteration of status or state—changing from one thing to another. For us, of course, transferring allegiance from one Kingdom to another. And I struggled and perhaps you struggled too, in making that commitment. I really struggled hard. It was almost comical. But a baptism nowadays in the West isn’t much of anything dangerous. In other parts of the world, it is a death sentence and so I imagine that there are many of our brothers and sisters in Asia and Africa who go through their own version of Gethsemane before being baptized. For them, to turn away from Allah or the gods of their ancestors, or away from the dictatorships that rule over their lives is very dangerous business.
I imagine that people in countries whose governments are outright enemies of the Gospel have a lot of examples to think of, of what might await them. Imprisonment and torture, rape, being bludgeoned or maimed by machetes, being burned to death, losing their children—just like Yeshua had seen crucifixions all of His life under the sometimes brutal tyranny of the Augustan/Tiberian Roman Empire. Doing God’s will in places like those isn’t anything that most of us can identify with. People in the west often make mountains out of molehills because, in truth, we have it so easy but like to imagine ourselves as martyrs. But Yeshua knew that He was about to face every ounce of hatred that the Kingdoms of the world and the spirits directing those powers had to dish out. Evil was about to empty itself out on Yeshua in a mercilessly horrifying way. Yeshua was either going to stand firm or to buckle. And He knew it, and we are going to see Him praying about it in this third and final prayer narrative in the Gospel of Mark.
Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist, and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have six years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.
All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for Part two of this series at theancientbridge.com. This week we will mostly be in Mark 14.
You know, this is hard to read and it is going to get harder as the weeks go by. I am going to point something out. Mark’s entire audience, which we know was centered either in or nearer to Rome because of all the Latin loan words and concepts in this Gospel—his audience knew about crucifixions. They didn’t need one to be described to them. They knew what happened before, during, and after. They had seen crucifixions of slaves and rebels all their lives. And so it is interesting that Mark actually is going to go into such detail about the prayers, the arrest, the trials, the torture, and the crucifixion itself. It is not unlikely that Mark reported about it at length because it was worse than normal—a lot worse. There is shock value here. From Yeshua not going boldly and without a second thought toward death as we would expect from heroes of old—and remember that Yeshua has been portrayed this entire time as a warrior destroying the Kingdom of Satan—to being shamed and wronged by numerous groups, the key here is to focus on a few things. One, a lot of the detail highlights that Yeshua is living an acted-out parable here of, among other Scriptures, Isaiah 53. Two, we are going to see echoes of other lesser messianic figures such as Joseph, Samson, and David in their trials. Three, the author wants us to understand the utter and complete shaming and degrading of the new Passover Lamb so that we can better appreciate and celebrate His later vindication and exaltation. But right now, that seems like a million years away. Right now, we have to deal with the dread before the storm, and we can take comfort in the fact that Yeshua doesn’t bypass this aspect of the trials that are common to all of us. His trust in God didn’t just override and overwhelm the dread and anguish He experienced in contemplating His immediate fate.
Before we start, I want to let you know that I see this passage very differently now than I did a year ago. Over the course of the past year, I have been focused heavily on the lamentations in Scripture and that makes up a lot of the Bible, a lot more than triumphalistic Western Christianity would have us believe. Forty percent of the Psalms are laments—crying out and complaining to God—and a sizeable chunk of the prophets, and an entire book of the Bible. I strongly encourage you to spend some time studying the lamentation theologians from the African American community, the African community, and the Asian community. Because they have known and do experience harsh tribulation, they have incredible insight into a reality of Scripture that most Westerners just don’t understand beyond a shallow level. Speaking from personal experience here. I will link some great books in the transcript. The way I read this now, better able to empathize with this rejected Jewish Rabbi living under an oppressive regime that was not very respectful of non-citizens or basic human rights in general, who could be merciless and downright vindictive beyond what most of us can even remotely imagine—it’s entirely different than how I skimmed over it in the past, only thinking about the physical pain. Anyway, let’s get started here and you will come to see why lament is something to be embraced by the faithful and not shunned.
32 And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”
Now, based on what time of year it was and how early it became dark, Yeshua and His disciples (and we don’t know how many went because back in verse 26, it gives us a generic “they” for those who left the dinner and went to the Mount of Olives, which was at least fifteen minutes away) probably arrived at Gethsemane somewhere between 10 and 11 that night, and we are on the fifteenth of Nisan/Aviv now. And just as an aside—there are people who shun the month name of Nisan because it is of Babylonian origin, but there is ample evidence to suggest that Aviv is a word that came from the Canaanites. Nisan comes from the Babylonian verb nisanu, which means “to move out” and aviv was the Canaanite word for barley. Neither word is pagan, they are simply descriptive and so both are fine.
Gethsemane comes from Gat Shemanim in Aramaic, where the noun gat means “winepress” and shemanim has various meanings related to oils. In later rabbinic use, gat came to mean specifically an oil press and so likely it already had that meaning in the first century when used by the Gospel authors. Given the orchard setting, an oil press is a suitable thing to find on the Mount of Olives. Although the current olive trees on the mount appear to be ancient, the truth is that the Romans camped on the Mt of Olives during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE and destroyed the trees for siege works and for kindling and whatever else they needed. In fact, if I remember correctly, there were no trees left standing for like a mile. That’s probably wrong but let’s just say that you had to walk a long way before you could find a tree. I gave an exact distance back when I was teaching chapter thirteen but I am way too lazy to look it up. John says that they met in a Garden here but the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) don’t mention it. There is a scholar named Joan Taylor who wrote a really great article for Biblical Archaeology Review called The Garden of Gethsemane: Not the Place of Jesus’ Arrest and in it she talks at length about the presence of a very large cave that was used during that time period as an oil press for olives.
Now, why her objection to the “Garden of Gethsemane”—well, this is one of those paradigms that we were all raised with. None of the Gospels specifically mention such a place and the closest is John, who in chapter 18 says that Yeshua and the disciples went across the Kidron wadi to a kepos. Now, a wadi is a riverbed that is dry during the summer but can become a raging river within a very short time in the winter once the early rains come. So, Yeshua and the disciples crossed this dry riverbed on the east side of Jerusalem, separating the Temple from the Mount of Olives. But a kepos is likely not a garden as we would know it and in fact, it merely means a cultivated area—which can mean a lot of things. Likely in this case it referred to the large orchard of olive trees. Backing that up is here in Mark where he says that they went to a place, a chorion, called Gethsemane. A chorion is simply a cultivated place, not specifically a garden and again, is more likely an orchard. But more than that, she does an amazing job of really supporting the idea that the disciples would have taken refuge from the cold night in the large oil press cave that still exists on the Mount. During the spring, it would not be in use. It would also be very dry and warm—and it certainly wasn’t either of those things outside because we will see Peter warming himself by the fire in the courtyard of the High Priest, something he would be unlikely to do if it were not quite chilly. Plus, we will see one of Yeshua’s disciples running from the scene stripped of the only clothing he had, a linen undergarment. Hardly the sort of outfit one would be wearing on a chilly hillside in March or April. Not only can it be rainy this time of year but high temperatures are only in the 40s and 50s so you can imagine the nights are much colder. She makes a very convincing case for them spending the night in the oil press cave. I am linking the article in the transcript which will be available on my blog on Friday. If you don’t know anything about oil presses in caves, you will want to look at that article—incredibly informative.
Yeshua says to His disciples, who have likely entered into the cave, “Sit here while I pray.” And remember I told you last week that they were full of protein, carbs, and wine. It was late. Besides the full moon, it was pretty danged dark and they had been out in the cold and now they were inside and warm and they were likely exhausted. This is a recipe for the perfect nap. And so it is not out of the question that they assumed they were spending the night—at which point they would have removed their cloaks in order to sleep on them. Full belly, full moon, lots of alcohol. Only a werewolf could stay awake under these kinds of conditions. Certainly not me.
33 And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled.
So, He leaves behind the disciples and goes elsewhere with the big three, Peter, James and John who are the only ones up to this point that He has been anything nearing transparent about what is about to happen. They are the only three who were in on all three of the Passion predictions and who had been told that Yeshua would be rejected, who would reject Him, that they would hand Him over to the Gentiles, and that He would be killed and that He would rise on the third day. The others were largely kept in the dark and it was only during the Passover seder that they were informed that one of the Twelve would betray Him and that they would all abandon Him and that Peter would personally deny Him three times before the end of the night. Remember from 3:14 the reason that Yeshua chose the Twelve—the primary reason was that they would be with Him. Yeshua wasn’t a loner and these weren’t just seminary candidates he was mentoring from a distance. These were His beloved companions in addition to simply being students. He loved them and we rarely see Him alone except when He would go aside to pray. But this time, He takes them along with Him—likely for two reasons which we will get to in a bit. Verse 33 says that Yeshua “began to be greatly distressed and troubled.” In Greek, these words are ekthambeo and ademoneo. Ekthambeo is only used four times in Scripture but it is a very intense word—it is the word used for when the women saw the angel at the tomb. And, I have to tell you that I saw an angel once and I was scared out of my mind and started shrieking, so, this is no casual word here. In Sirach, aka Ecclesiasticus, the word is actually translated as terrorized. Ademoneo comes up only three times in Scripture and is synonymous with deep anxiety, not just casual worry. Together, they have this sense that Yeshua was shaking with anxiety, barely holding it together.
He needs to pray and He needs His companions. Sometimes we like to forget how human Yeshua was because we prefer to think of His Passion as less horrible. His humanity made it all the more horrible and all the more a picture of ultimate love. I want to point something else out though—Yeshua is not showing the arrogant confidence of Peter and the others. Yeshua knows that He needs that communion of prayer with the Father. This is something that ought to knock all of us off our high horses. If Yeshua needs prayer, we need it a whole lot more than we can even begin to imagine.
34 And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.”
Before He leaves them to go a bit further on, He tells them that His soul is sorrowful, in Greek the word is perilypos, and this is another rare word, only popping up four times in the NT and five times in the Septuagint. It is a word used for a severe emotional state—either extraordinarily sad or heartbroken or enraged. And Yeshua says that the emotional burden is so bad that it is bad enough to result in His death. That is a horrible picture of a man so heartbroken, terrified, filled with abject dread, and bereft of hope that it feels like He is going to die from it. We don’t like for our Messiah to be this human—it is very threatening. And if He is this human, then it requires a response from us that goes beyond casual loyalty into the extreme.
He gives them the instruction to “remain here and watch.” In Greek, it has the sense of waiting and staying awake, as a doorkeeper would, and I have talked before about why the doorkeeper was such an important job and it is really the only reason I don’t hate my first name, Tyler, which means doorkeeper in old English. This isn’t just a directive to stay awake but to be on alert as well. The command to it directly relates to the original Passover night as we see in Ex 12:42– It was a night of watching by the Lord, to bring them out of the land of Egypt; so this same night is a night of watching kept to the Lord by all the people of Israel throughout their generations.
Yeshua here is giving them a Passover-based commandment to fulfill. He is really telling them to participate in an acted-out parable and not for the first time. He is showing them that this is the ultimate fulfillment of the Exodus vigil. And He is going to have to tell them to keep vigil three times. Remember that Yeshua is the ultimate fulfillment of the Passover and during the seder, He made it clear that the Passover itself was being redefined in His ministry, death, and resurrection. That they will fail to follow through makes them no different from their ancestors, who were forever rebellious—you know, just like us!
35 And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.
Let’s go back to Caesarea Philippi, at the base of Mt Hermon right before the transfiguration—toward the end of chapter eight and we have the first of the three Passion predictions. Right before that, Peter has identified Yeshua as the Messiah. And then the shocking prediction of His rejection by the powers that be among the Jewish elites, possibly talking about the Sanhedrin—and Peter rebukes Yeshua and says that this just can’t happen. Yeshua called Peter Satan, meaning adversary, and we get the sense that Yeshua is being tempted once more—first in the wilderness and then here and it is happening again at Gethsemane. And Yeshua falls to the ground—He doesn’t gingerly get down on His knees, all dignified and solemn and super spiritual, okay? This is just absolute submission and supplication, placing Himself at the mercy of the Father. As I mentioned before, this is the third time in this Gospel that Yeshua is portrayed as getting away by Himself to pray. This time, unlike the others, we know the content of His prayers. And what can we assume about these prayers from the rest of Scripture, being that this is a lamentation? How are lamentations carried out elsewhere? How would a Jewish Rabbi/Sage/Teacher cry out to God? He would lift His hands, He would cry out loudly, and He would lay prostrate in His anguish and distress. There was nothing dignified about this sort of thing—it is raw and honest and real.
And what is this hour? Yeshua is not only going to become the Passover to ransom Israel, as well as the world, but He is also going to fulfill the Akeida, the binding of Isaac by Abraham, when a ram caught in the thicket by its horns took the place of the son of Abraham as an ascending offering. I think I talked last week about how art depicts this ram standing on its back legs with its horns caught in the thicket much like a crown of thorns. As a ram in that situation would be greatly in distress and absolutely at the mercy of predators, so too is the Son of Man who will die as the perfect representative of Israel—fulfilling the function of Israel in the world where Israel failed.
36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
Abba doesn’t mean daddy—although I know that is popular and comforting after being really pushed so hard by Joaquim Jeremias back in 1971 in his New Testament Theology. And this, btw, is the first time that the word abba even shows up in Jewish literature. It actually pops up as the more formal father or esteemed teacher in the Targums and in Mishnaic times. It shows up only here and twice in Paul’s epistles. James Barr wrote a great article called Abba isn’t Daddy where he talks about the ancient usage of this word and how it would more reflect the respectful patriarchal norms of that time instead of the modern ideas about the word “daddy” and the casual over-familiarity that comes with that. Geza Vermes also debunked this idea back in 1983 in his own book Jesus and the World of Judaism. The theory had problems both linguistically and contextually and completely falls apart when we look at how the word abba is used throughout the Targums in ways that would be utterly ridiculous and inappropriate if the term was that babyish, but the level of knowledge of ancient languages to understand why it is wrong prevented all but a few to even challenge it for a very long time—and no one could reach a popular lay audience with that correction so it has remained popular. In the end, our Father is still God and not a human. It’s just another example of how anachronisms can enter into the way we view the Bible. But, why Abba? There’s a good reason for it.
Although it is wrong to make the term into a childish designation like “dada” or “daddy” it is still a term of intimate respect. We cannot forget the patriarchal reality of the ancient world when we think of parent-child relationships. It is not comparable to what we think of today as the ideal. Throughout the Scriptures, when people are in crisis and lamenting, there is a very real reaching out to God as a personal father. This is entirely a Hebraic way of looking at God, very unlike other nations who had no reason to trust in their gods or to expect preferential treatment as sons and daughters. And so laments in the Bible aren’t just crying out in sorrow, they are leveled as complaints to a patriarchal authority who can do something to change circumstances as well as to a maternal figure who listens to complaints with compassion. When we look at the traditional Jewish prayers in a daily siddur, it is filled with petitions to Avinu, our father, Malkenu, our King. Yeshua’s cry is heart-wrenching, and it is also a complaint.
He wants the hour to pass from Him. He reminds Yahweh that anything is possible for Him. He requests that Yahweh do what He is absolutely able to do. He wants the cup of wrath, spoken of repeatedly by the prophets against Israel’s rebellion, removed. This is a complaint—Yahweh can do something and Yeshua doesn’t want to go through it. And yet, as in the other laments of the Bible, there is resignation and submission. If this is Yahweh’s choice for Yeshua, if this is the best way or the only way, Yeshua is resigned to obey and endure it. But this is not a case of “going quietly into that good night”[1]—Yeshua is fighting against this as much as He can before simply giving in. He has faith. He loves His Father. But He doesn’t want to go through this. Yeshua is incredibly human in addition to being incredibly divine. And if He can approach God with this sort of wrestling, then so can we. That is what the family relationship gains us. This is entirely biblical in approach and in scope.
One more thing—we have an echo of the Avinu here, the Lord’s Prayer. It begins with “Abba, Father” and ends with “not what I will, but what you will.” Very much similar to the opening lines of the Lord’s prayer which begins with “Our Father” and ends with “Your will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
37 And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour?
Three things of note here. One, they are sleeping when it is traditional to stay up late on Passover night. Remember we just talked about it being a vigil feast, hearkening back to Ex 12:42—a night of watching and this is our second reference to watching in this section. Two, He addresses Peter as Simon again. Peter hasn’t been referred to as Simon since chapter three when he was called to be a member of the Twelve. Really, you have to go back to chapter one to see him going by that name. Why is Yeshua regressing away from the name He gave to Simon? Let’s go back to Leah in Genesis—she named her second son Simeon because Yahweh heard that she was unloved. Simeon is related to being heard, which also plays into shema, which means to hear and obey. Peter isn’t hearing Yeshua, again, none of them are but Peter is likely the oldest and clearly the leader even among the three. Peter is not behaving like a rock, the meaning of Petros, but instead like Israel in being deaf (as they are described repeatedly in Isaiah). Not like us, right? Yeah, we’re always listening. Yeah, right. Three, Yeshua rebukes Peter for not watching one hour. Yeshua is wanting this hour to pass from Him, this horrific hour of crucifixion, and Peter and the others can’t even keep vigil for one literal hour.
38 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
We have our third mention of the need to keep vigil, to watch. And now we have the reason for their need to pray—not for Yeshua but for their own sakes. Yeshua has told them that they will all abandon Him and that Peter will even deny Him three times before the night is over. But, you know, the amazing thing is that even with that prediction, delivered in oath formula (“truly I say to you”) He is still telling them that they can petition God so that they will stand strong, that they won’t cut and run and crumble. That’s trust in God, that’s hope in us despite our failures. I find that incredible, that He can predict our failings while still having this amazing faith and hope. What can we learn from that sort of hope that can actually co-exist with our being utterly weak and ridiculous? For one thing, maybe we can give ourselves a bit more credit and give Yahweh more credit. Because, you know, maybe our sin natures really aren’t as strong as we like to imagine when we are giving in to it. God’s mercy is always stronger. And this isn’t about being hard on ourselves but about trusting Him and knowing ourselves.
Yeshua tells him that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak and we tend to equate that with the Holy Spirit but this usage of pneuma is talking about their intentions. You know, all those things they promised and assured Him of that they would never fall away and especially Peter? When they were saying it, they weren’t lying. They were absolutely willing to die and not run away when they said that, and totally confident—but the flesh rules over the moment. That’s why they needed to keep vigil and pray for the strength not to succumb to their flesh instead of just assuming that they were all that and a bag of chips.
39 And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words.
So again, He leaves them and cycles through His lament again. And it is important that He said the exact same thing because when we determine to do God’s will and submit to His plans, we still succumb to our grief and anxiety and our complaints again before we steel ourselves to God’s will.
40 And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him.
Their eyes are heavy. Remember the reference to Peter being referred to as Simon again, the one who needs to hear, and that being a reference back to deaf Israel in Isaiah. Well, here we have them unable to even keep their eyes open, making them blind as well. And we can all stand amazed that the three are speechless for the first time ever. Are they beginning to doubt themselves and their claims to standing courageously by their teacher’s side or are they just embarrassed and still not understanding the beginnings of their complete failure? These are the three who are always saying something ridiculous whenever Yeshua has something important to reveal to them—either in the form of protests, or delusions of grandeur and power-seeking, or wanting to commit genocide, there’s that gem as well in Luke nine. But now, they have nothing to say. Probably just as well. Listening to the three of them has been excruciating up to this point. And it’s about to get worse in the case of Peter. But, deaf, blind, and speechless—not only does that hearken back to the prophetic description of Israel but also to my favorite teaching Psalm, Psalm 115 (which they had sung earlier at the seder). Speaking of all who put their trust in idols, it reads: 5 They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. 6 They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. 7 They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. And Isaiah uses that same language to describe apostate Israel pre-exile. This is important because it is contrasting the disciples, who are representatives of Israel as it is, and the perfect Israel represented by Yeshua. Yes they have heard Him teach and watched His life and have even worked miracles but they are still not inheritors of the New Creation life that will be inaugurated at the Cross and witnessed at the empty Tomb. This is why John the Baptist was less than those who belonged to the Kingdom of Heaven—as anointed as He was, He was still living as part of the old Creation reality. I am not talking about favor or salvation or obedience here—I am just saying that things changed radically and so people were able to change radically.
41 And he came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Yeshua goes off and laments, complains, and submits a third time and again finds them incapacitated by their flesh. (I am not dissing them, I probably wouldn’t have made it through the seder itself—the reason I decided not to go to med school is that I knew I couldn’t survive residency. I need sleep. I am a wimp.). They have failed to pray, to see, to understand, and even to speak. And I believe it is because they have been very much enslaved to their fleshy desires all this time—they wanted position, power, and wealth. Let’s just be plain with it, they were acting the part of mammon worshipers—they were behaving like idolaters biding their time until the Messiah finally got his act together and started kicking butt and taking names. They still have their eyes on worldly ambitions and it has rendered them all but senseless. It’s going to take a miracle, literally, to shake them out of it.
“You’re sleeping? Okay, that’s it. No more time. You couldn’t keep vigil for an hour and now my hour of suffering is here. The Son of Man (Yeshua’s preferred self-designation) is betrayed,”–paradidomi—which remember means to be handed over for judgment throughout the Septuagint, into the hands of sinners. And this word sinners, hamartolos, is a very harsh word—showing up in the Septuagint to describe the truly wicked. This isn’t chattat or asham kinds of sinning where there is a mistake or at least regret afterward—this is the word used to translate the Hebrew rasha, the word describing the ones who are so reprobate that God will not pardon them.
42 Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”
The word for rise here is eigero, the resurrection word, and it is absolutely what they will need to do in order to recover from this failure. They will need to be reborn. And they are directed to notice that the betrayer, again paradidomi, is approaching. In this Gospel, these are the last recorded words of Yeshua to His disciples. And so we leave with a cliffhanger for the disciples. Next week, we will talk about who the sinners are, and about the arrest.
Joan F. Taylor, “The Garden of Gethsemane Not the Place of Jesus’ Arrest,” BAR 21 (1995): 26–35, 62.
James Barr, “Abba Isn’t Daddy” Journal of Theological Studies , vol. 39 no. 1, (1988) pp 28-47
[1] Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Persecution-related books
Katongole, Emmanuel Born from Lament: The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa
Powery, Emerson B The Genesis of Liberation: Biblical Interpretation in the Antebellum Narratives of the Enslaved
Thurman, Howard Jesus and the Disinherited
Rah, Soong-Chan Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times
