Gethsemane and the Arrest

When they had sung a hymn after the supper, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city, across the Kidron valley, to the Mount of Olives (Mark 14:26; John 18:1). Mark and Matthew name the place: Gethsemane (Mark 14:32; Matthew 26:36). John calls it a garden and says that Jesus often met there with his disciples, so that Judas knew it (John 18:1–2).

In Mark’s account Jesus told the disciples to sit while he prayed, and took Peter, James and John further with him. He became greatly distressed and said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here, and watch” (Mark 14:32–34). He went a little further, fell on the ground and prayed: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Please remove this cup from me. However, not what I desire, but what you desire” (Mark 14:35–36). Three times he came back and found the three asleep (Mark 14:37–41). Luke’s account adds, in two verses that some ancient manuscripts lack, that an angel appeared and strengthened him, and that his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood (Luke 22:43–44).

While he was still speaking, Judas arrived with a crowd carrying swords and clubs, sent by the chief priests, scribes and elders (Mark 14:43). John speaks of a detachment of soldiers together with officers of the chief priests and Pharisees, carrying lanterns and torches (John 18:3). Judas had arranged a sign: he went up to Jesus, called him “Rabbi” and kissed him, and they seized him (Mark 14:44–46). In John, Jesus stepped forward himself, asked whom they were looking for, and answered, “I am he” (John 18:4–5).

One of those standing by drew a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant (Mark 14:47). John says that it was Peter and that the servant’s name was Malchus (John 18:10). In Matthew, Jesus told him to put the sword away, “for all those who take the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52), and in Luke he healed the man (Luke 22:51). Jesus asked the crowd why they had come for him with weapons as if for a robber, when he had taught daily in the temple (Mark 14:48–49). Then all the disciples left him and fled (Mark 14:50). He was bound and led to the high priest (John 18:12–13; Mark 14:53).

In the Gospels the prayer shows Jesus shrinking from death and accepting it, and the letter to the Hebrews recalls his “prayers and petitions with strong crying and tears” (Hebrews 5:7–8). By the 380s the pilgrim Egeria found a church at the place where he was said to have prayed. She describes the people of Jerusalem going down the mount by candlelight on the night before Good Friday to Gethsemane, where the account of the arrest was read aloud (Egeria, Itinerary 36.1–3).