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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
1. Gethsemane
a. THE CONFLICT OF PRAYER (Luk_22:39-46)
(Parallel with Mat_26:36-46; Mar_14:32-42.)
As He was wont.—Comp. Luk_21:37. That our Lord goes straight thither is a new proof that the time is now past when He still sought to go out of the way of His enemies, for according to Joh_18:2, this place is known also to Judas, who will, therefore, undoubtedly seek Him there with the band, if he no longer finds Him in the paschal hall. At the same time it is a proof of the heavenly composure and clearness of mind which our Lord continually maintained. Not in the city, in the midst of the joyful acclamations of the paschal night, but without it, in the bosom of open nature, after He had previously strengthened Himself in solitary prayer to His Father, will He surrender Himself over to the hands of His enemies.—At the place.—The before-mentioned place where He would be; perhaps Luke does not mention the name Gethsemane because this was already sufficiently known through the evangelical tradition.
Luk_22:40. He said unto them, Pray.—According to Luke it appears as if our Lord said this to all His disciples. From Matthew and Mark, however, we know that He took three of them with Himself deeper into the garden, and addressed them in about this manner. As is to be recognized by the infinitive, the ìÞ åἰóåëèåῖí åßò ðåéñáóìüí is to be the substance of their prayer. The ðåéñáóìüò can here, agreeably to the connection, be no other than the threatening danger of suffering shipwreck of their most holy faith by all that they were soon to experience.
Luk_22:41. And He Himself withdrew, ἀðå ἀðÜóèç ἀð ̓ áῦôῶí , Vulgate: “He was withdrawn from them.” Correctly Schöttgen: “Eleganter dicuntur ἀðïóðᾶóèáé vel ἀðïóðáóèῆíáé , qui ab amicissimorum amplexu vix divelli possunt ac discedere.” Of course we have not to understand the word as if our Lord almost against His will, as it were, impelled on by secret might, separated Himself from the circle of His disciples, but simply thus, that He, following the constraint of His agitation of soul, with visible intensity of feeling and rapid steps, sought the still solitude.—‘ Ùóåὶ ëßèïõ âïëÞí , the accusative of distance: since our Lord was not further removed than a stone’s throw from His three friends, He was still near enough to them to be seen and heard by them, especially in the bright moonlight.
Kneeled down.—Stronger yet in Matthew and Mark: He fell down on His face on the earth. He cannot now pray standing with head erect, as so lately in the paschal hall. Luke evidently condenses the substance of the three prayers into one, although he also (Luk_22:44) indicates that our Lord prayed at least more than once.—If Thou be willing, åἰ âïýëåé , equivalent to, “If it can consist with Thy counsel.” Grotius: “Si tua decreta ferunt, ut alio modo tuœ gloriœ atque hominum saluti œque consulatur.” Ðáñåíåãêåῖí not infinitive for imperative (Bengel), but an aposiopesis, by which is admirably expressed that the prayer is, as it were, already taken back before it is entirely uttered. Note the distinction between åἰ âïýëåé and ôὸ èÝëçìÜ óïõ ; respecting the sense and the purpose of the prayer, see below.
Luk_22:43. And there appeared unto Him an angel.—There are many questions to be asked here: 1. Respecting the genuineness of this statement. As is known, the words (Luk_22:43-44) are wanting in A., B., Sahid, and other authorities. Some have indicated their doubts by asterisks and obelisks. Lachmann has bracketed the words. The most of modern critics and exegetes, however, declare themselves in favor of their genuineness. It is assumed that they were, in all probability, omitted by the Orthodox, who found in this account something dishonoring to Jesus. See Epiph., Ancor. 31, and besides, Wetstein, ad loc. On the other hand, no tenable ground can be assigned why any one should have interpolated these verses into the text if they did not originally stand in the Gospel of Luke 2. Respecting the manner and purpose of this strengthening through an angel, there have been at all times the most exceedingly diverse opinions. Here also Dogmatics has evidently controlled Exegesis. Without reason has Olshausen here assumed a merely internal appearance, and spoken of the afflux of spiritual energies which were bestowed upon the Redeemer wrestling in the extremity of abandonment, although, on the other side, it is not to be denied that the possibility of perceiving the angelic manifestation at this moment was conditioned by the suffering and praying Redeemer’s state of inward agitation; the text says also ὤöèç áὐôῷ not ὤöèç áὐôïῖò . To make the strengthening a merely bodily strengthening (Hoffmann), is certainly quite as arbitrary as (De Wette) to understand a strengthening to prayer. We know not what unreasonableness there could be in the conception that here the holy øõ÷Þ of our Lord, which was now, seized by the intensest feeling of suffering, was strengthened by the brightening prospect of future joy, which was symbolized to Him by the friendly angelic appearance. With Bengel, however, we are disposed to believe that the strengthening mentioned took place non per cohortationem. 3. As respects the inquiry as to the time in which this appearance occurred, we can hardly believe that it (Dettinger) took place between the second and the third prayer of our Lord. If we attentively compare the evangelical accounts, we then see that the strengthening through the angel came in immediately after the first prayer—the most fervent and agonizing one—so that in consequence of it the anguish of soul had already at the second prayer in some measure subsided. It is true, Luke appears, considered entirely by himself, to lead us to another conception, but he has here also not wished so much to describe the course of the event in its different stages as to give a general view of the whole. The words, Luk_22:44, and being in an agony He prayed more earnestly, are not meant to denote what followed after the angelic manifestation, but that by which this manifestation was called forth and made necessary. With Meyer we take êáß in the sense of “namely,” and find not the consequence but the motive of the manifestation thereby intimated. 4. Finally, as respects the credibility of this account, this is not lessened by the silence of the other Evangelists, and the very brevity, mysteriousness, and apparently unsatisfactory character of the representation of Luke speaks for its credibility. Whoever upon dogmatic grounds denies the possibility of angelophanies, cannot possibly accept this one either, but whoever acknowledges our Lord as that which His believing church have at all times held Him to be, will soon feel that the light of an angelic manifestation can make scarcely anywhere a more beneficent impression than in the night of these sufferings.
More earnestly, ἐêôåíÝóôåñïí .—No wonder; He is in a veritable death-struggle ( ἀãùíßá ), and summons up, therefore, all His energies to an unremitting struggle of prayer. Comp. Hos_12:4-5. The most striking commentary on this expression is given undoubtedly by the Epistle to the Hebrews, which also bears a thoroughly Pauline coloring (Luk_5:7-9), where strong crying and tears are spoken of with which our Lord offered up His prayers and supplications to Him who was able to save Him from death. It is noteworthy that this last passage is brought up as proof, as well for the view that our Lord would deprecate the whole suffering of death, as also for the opinion that He would deprecate only this momentary anguish of soul. For the former view appeal is made especially to the ðñὸò ôὸí äõíÜìåíïí óþæåéí áὐôüí ἐê èáíÜôïõ ; for the other to the åἰòáêïõóèåὶò ἀðὸ ôῆò åὐëáâåßáò . [The former interpretation is better, as the prevailing usage of the conjugates of åὐëÜâåéá in the New Testament decidedly favors the translation: “heard on account of His reverent fear,” which, moreover, according to Robinson, is supported by all the Greek commentators—C. C. S.]
And His sweat.—The reading ὡóåß deserves the preference above ὡò , and expresses, even as Luk_3:23, a relative similarity. The question, answered sometimes negatively, sometimes positively, whether our Lord in Gethsemane really sweat blood, is primarily connected with another, namely, whether the weight of the comparison must be laid upon èñüìâïé or upon áἵìáôïò . The latter is unquestionably more probable, since otherwise it is hard to conceive why Luke speaks of áῖ ̔ õá at all if it is not meant to refer to the nature of the sweat. To understand actual drops of blood is, it is true, forbidden by ὡóåß , but, at all events, we must conceive them as heavy thick drops, which, mingled and colored for the most part with portions of blood, looked altogether like drops of blood. Comp. hereupon, the passages adduced by Ebrard, Evang. Kritik., ad loc., as well as also what Hug, Gutachten, ad loc., remarks on historical grounds upon this distinction between a thin and thick sweat, which latter appears also to show itself in the case of those in the agonies of death. If we add to these now the medically certified cases of actual blood-sweat, and if we keep in mind the complete peculiarity of the condition in which the suffering Saviour is here found, we shall account it as unnecessary to understand here poetical embellishment (Scheiermacher) as mythical invention (Strauss and others).
Luk_22:45. Sleeping for sorrow.—Not an excuse of the disciples, but an explanation of their seemingly strange condition, nor is there any ground to reject this explanation as unsatisfactory. Sorrow, it is true, makes men sleepless sometimes, but when it is very great it may so weary down the whole outer and inner man that one, as it were, sinks into a condition of stupor; nor do the Evangelists tell us that it was a common sound sleep. There may, moreover, unknown to the disciples, an influence on the side of the might of darkness have been exerted, which, while it in Gethsemane assaulted the Shepherd, is certainly not to be supposed to have left the sheep unassailed.
Luk_22:46. Why sleep ye?—The more exact statement of the words of our Lord to the sleepers we find in Matthew and Mark. The account of Luke is too brief for us to have been able to get from it alone a satisfactory explanation of the case. We must conceive that our Lord after the third prayer so entirely recovered His composure that the sight of the still sleeping disciples now no longer distressed and disquieted Him. He granted them, on the other hand, this refreshment, which on this whole terrible night was not again to fall to their lot, and Himself for some moments guards their last transient rest (Mat_26:45 a). Only when Judas approaches with the band does He bid them rise, knowing well that now not a instant more is to be lost, and admonishes them not only to expect the enemy in a waking condition, but also to go courageously forward to meet them. Only the spirit, not the form, of this last utterance is communicated by Luke, Luk_22:46, who here repeats the main substance of Luk_22:40. “We put this, therefore, in Luke to the account of the inexactness of the more remote observer.” Stier.
2. We cannot be surprised that often the anguish of our Lord in Gethsemane has been conceived as something entirely peculiar, and, therefore, it has been asserted that He by the ðïôÞñéïí , for the passing away of which He prayed, meant not the whole suffering of death, but especially this anguish, which, if it had not subsided, would have hindered Him from bearing the suffering of death worthily and courageously. (See Lange on Matthew and Mark; among the Dutch theologians, Heringa, Bouman, Vinke). On the other side, however, it cannot be denied that the former interpretation of the prayer finds a very powerful support in the grammatical exegesis, and it therefore cannot surprise us to see it already defended by Calvin. By the cup ( ðïôÞñéïí ) and the hour ( ἡ ὥñá ) our Lord designates commonly not a part, but the whole of His impending suffering. It is true, He here speaks definitely of ôὸ ðïôÞñéïí ôïῦôï , but so had He also, Joh_12:27, prayed for deliverance ἐê ôῆò ὥñáò ôáýôçò , which, however, certainly refers to nothing less than to the whole mortal passion. According to Mar_14:35, He prays in an entirely general way that ἡ ὥñá might pass over, by which we can hardly suppose anything else to be meant than the same ὥñá as in Mar_14:41; comp. Mat_26:45; Joh_2:4; Joh_7:30; Joh_8:20; Joh_13:1; Joh_18:11, not to speak of Mat_20:22-23; Mar_10:38. On the basis of all these passages we can do nothing else than, while submitting ourselves to better judgment, to subscribe to Bengel’s expression: ubi solus calix memoratur, passio intelligitur universa. We need not, however, forget that the key to the complete solution of the enigma cannot be sought in the sphere of grammar, and that in a certain sense, the whole distinction between the momentary and entire suffering of Jesus helps us little. For in that moment the terrifying image of His collective suffering already presented itself before the soul of our Lord, and this, therefore, already really begins in His consciousness; it fares with Him as at the first bitter draught of vinegar on the Cross, Mat_27:34. The question as to the possibility of such a condition, can only be answered by looking at the nature of the suffering, as well as, on the other hand, at the theanthropic personality of our Lord.
3. The suffering impending over our Lord was, on the one hand, the most terrible revelation of the might of sin, on the other hand, the great means to the atonement for sin. Jews and heathen, friends and foes, Judas and Peter, the whole might of the world with its prince unite against Him, and in this whole might He is at the same time to feel the whole curse of sin: as Representative of sinful, mankind, He is to place Himself before the judgment of God: He is to be made sin that yet knew no sin. Must not this prospect fill the holy soul of our Lord with an inconceivable horror? He was the Word that was with God and was God, but this Word had become flesh, like to His brethren in all things, except sin, on which account also one would seek in vain to form a correct conception of that which for such a theanthropic personality the approach of such suffering and dying must have been! If even for the purely human sense, the thought of death has something fearful, for Him who had life in Himself, dying was in addition something entirely preternatural. If for us death is only the end of a life which may with right be called a daily dying; on the other hand, for the sinless and immaculate Saviour, the destruction of the bodily organism was as entirely in antagonism with His being as for us, for instance, the annihilation of our immortality would be. His delicately sensitive humanity shrinks from death; His holy humanity from the might of darkness; His loving humanity from the hatred that now is about to reach its most fearful culmination. Nay, if His humanity was of a finite nature, He might, standing over against the burden of the sin of millions, conceive, as we believe, even the possibility of sinking under His fearful burden; certainly even His utterance: ἡ äὲ óὰñî ἀóèåíÞò , was the fruit of His own agonizing experience; sin and death show themselves now to His eye in an entirely different light from before His Incarnation, when death stood already, it is true, before Him, without however having dared to essay any direct assault upon Himself. Now is the God-man to become the victim of powers which the Logos in His preëxistence had seen before Him as powerless rebels. Indeed we comprehend and subscribe to the remark: “We, for our part, speaking as fools, could at least, if psychological and Christological ideas formed on the plane of our conceptions are here of any value, easier doubt the elevation of consciousness which the Intercessory Prayer exhibits to us than the depression of the same in Gethsemane.” Stier. Of a change of essential purpose respecting His suffering we find here no trace; but we do seem to find trace of an alternation of moods, in which the feeling of anguish first obtains the upper hand, and the thought rises in Him for a moment whether it might not be even possible for Him that the cup should pass by. Here also Luther has hit the right view when he in his sermon on this Passion-text says: “We men, conceived and born in sin, have an impure hard flesh, that is not quick to feel. The fresher, the sounder the man, the more he feels what is contrary to him. Because now, Christ’s body was pure and without sin, and our body impure, therefore we scarcely feel the terrors of death in two degrees where Christ felt them in ten, since He is to be the greatest martyr and to feel the utmost terror of death.” Comp. Ullmann, Sündlosigkeit Jesu, 5th ed. p. 164. In this we are not to forget how to our Lord His certain and exact knowledge of all that which should come upon Him must have so much the more heightened His suffering, Joh_18:4. But that He was in Gethsemane itself abandoned by His Father, and that such a special mysterious suffering, even besides the suffering of death, was necessary for atonement for sins, is nowhere taught us in the New Testament. Nothing, however, hinders us from assuming that an indescribable feeling of abandonment here seized upon Him, which upon Calvary reached its culmination, as, indeed, the first rushing of this storm of sorrow of the soul had already previously been perceived, Luk_12:49-51; Joh_12:27-28. Nor are we by any means to forget that the kingdom of darkness now least of all remained inactive (Joh_14:30); although no one will be able to decide how far this hostile might acted directly upon the body and upon the soul of our Lord.
4. Gethsemane, therefore, leads us spontaneously back to the wilderness of the Temptation; as there, so also here is our Lord tempted, yet this time also without sin. Unbelief, it is true, has here too, as it were, out of the dust of the garden raked up stones against Him; “He”—thus scoffed Vanini, when the sentence of death was executed upon him—“in the agony of death, sweat: I die without the least fear.” But if it would have been sin to pray as He did, then it was already sin that He was a true and holy Man. Such an one cannot do otherwise than shrink from such a death-agony. God’s Incarnate Son might have a wish—the word will is almost too strong for a prayer which was uttered with so great a restriction—which, according to the Father’s eternal purpose, could not be fulfilled; but difference is not of itself at all a strife, and in reality He also wills nothing else than the Father, although He naturally for Himself might wish that the Father’s counsel could be fulfilled in another way. Moreover, His obedience and His holiness are as little obscured by this prayer as His love and His foreknowledge. There is no more incongruous comparison than with the courage of martyrs in death, who had only by beholding Him obtained the strength to endure a suffering of a wholly different kind. “No martyr has ever been in His position, least of all, Socrates.” As well in His prayer to His Father as in His discourse with His disciples, our Lord shows Himself in adorable greatness, even in the midst of the deepest humiliation.
5. The momentousness of the suffering of Jesus in Gethsemane, can hardly be estimated high enough. As well over the Person as over the Work of our Lord, there is diffused from this point a satisfying light. He Himself stands here before us not only as the true and deeply-feeling Man, who through suffering must learn obedience and be perfected (Heb_2:10; Heb_5:7-9), but also in His unspotted holiness and untroubled unity with the Father, which is raised above all doubt. At the same time it is here shown that the Monophysite, as well as the Monothelitic error has been condemned with reason by the Christian church, as also that it is possible to ascribe to the God-man a limited humanly susceptible nature, without in the least throwing His sinlessness into the shade. As respects the severity of His suffering, we can nowhere gain a juster conception of it than here; Gethsemane opens to us the understanding of Calvary; for we now know that the elevated nature of His person, instead of making the burden of His suffering less oppressive for Him, on the contrary increases this in terrible wise. The necessity of His sacrifice becomes clear to us if we give heed to this: that the Father, even after such a prayer, does not let the cup pass by for His beloved Son. The completeness of the redemption brought in by Him is convincingly established for us when we see to how high a degree His obedience and His love raised Him; and the crown which this combatant there gained in the strife is to us so dear, for the reason that we know that He through this suffering has become the merciful High-priest, who can have compassion on our weakness. Heb_2:16-18; Heb_4:15.
6. It is known that the olive garden has also borne its fruits for the extension of the kingdom of God. The first Greenlander who was converted, Kajarnak, owed his conversion to the preaching upon our Lord’s Passion in Gethsemane. See Kranz, Geschichte von Grönland, p. 490. The representations of “Christ in Gethsemane,” by Retout and Ary Scheffer, deserve attention.
Starke:—He that will talk with God does well to repair to solitude.—Brentius:—Let us learn to pray the third prayer aright (Mat_6:10).—Cramer:—So soon as man surrenders himself to God, he will find strength and refreshment therein.—Quesnel:—God knows how at the right time to send an angel for our strengthening, should it be only an humble brother or sister.—J. Hall:—Even the comfort that comes from an humble hand we must not contemn.—Litany:—By Thine agony and bloody sweat, Good Lord, deliver us!—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—Let no one jest concerning death and devil; they have hunted from the Son of God bloody sweat.—Alas that we sleep, where we should watch!—Heubner:—A wonder it is how an angel—a creature, could strengthen the God-man; but it is a great consolation for us.—Near us also are there angels.—God will also strengthen us the more the heavier the temptations are.—Of certain formulas of prayer the saint never becomes weary.—His prayer hindered Jesus not from the exhibition of love, as it indeed should nowhere disturb a duty.—Arndt:—Jesus’ conflict in Gethsemane: 1. His anguish; 2. His prayer; 3. His
strengthening.—Krummacher:—Christ’s conflict and victory in Gethsemane.—Significance and fruit of the suffering on the Mount of Olives.—(On Luk_22:44): —The blood of the Lamb.—(Sabb. Gl. 1852):—1. Its nature and its significance; 2. its might and wonder-working.—Staudt:—The threefold way of our Lord in Gethsemane: 1. What it brought upon our Lord; 2. what it brings upon us.—Tholuck.:—The heart of our Lord in Gethsemane.—We hear here: 1. A human Nay; 2. a Divine Yea; 3. a Divine decision.—Lange:—The suffering of Jesus’ soul in Gethsemane (Langenberger Sammlung, 1852): 1. The nature of this suffering of soul; 2. our suffering of soul in the light of it.—J. J. L. Ten Kate:—Jesus’ Passion in Gethsemane: 1. The nature of this suffering; a. an unspeakable, b. a holy, c. an incomparable suffering; 2. the causes: I point you a. to the brooding treason, b. the impending suffering, c. the present temptation; 3. the value of the suffering; Gethsemane remains for us a. a joyful token of accomplished redemption, b. a holy school of Christian suffering and conflict, c. a consoling pledge of God’s fatherly compassion.
Footnotes:
Luk_22:39.—Without adequate authority the Recepta has ìáèçôáὶ áὐôïῦ .
Luk_22:44.—Respecting the state of the case critically with respect to Luk_22:43-44, see Exegetical and Critical remarks.
[They are found in Cod. Sin.—C. C. S.]