saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
An angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him. Being in agony he prayed more earnestly. His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On v44 These do not only show that Christ was true…
These do not only show that Christ was true man, but other things also which the goodly have to consider of, wherein redemption of all mankind is contained in the son of God his debasing himself to the state of a servant: such things as no man can sufficiently declare.
This agony showeth that Christ strove much, and was in great distress: for Christ strove not only with the fears of death, as other men used to do, for so many martyrs might seem more constant than Christ, but with the fearful judgment of his angry Father, which is the fearfullest thing in the world: and the matter was, for that he took the burden of all our sins upon himself.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv42–44 42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this…
42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
Ver. 42. lf thou be willing] He was so astonished with the greatness of his present pressures, that he seems for a time to suffer some kind of forgetfulness of his office.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv42–43 We have a larger account given us of our…
We have a larger account given us of our Saviour’s prayer, See Poole on "Mat 26:39", and following verses to Mat 26:46. See Poole on "Mar 14:35", and following verses to Mar 14:42.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv42–44 And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven,....…
And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven,.... Whether this was Michael the archangel, as some have conjectured, or Gabriel, or what particular angel, is not for us to know, nor is it of any importance: it is certain, it was a good angel: "an angel of God", as the Ethiopic version reads; since he came from heaven, and was one of the angels of heaven, sent by God on this occasion; and it is clear also, that he was in a visible form, and was seen by Christ, since he is said to appear to him:
strengthening him; under his present distress, against the terrors of Satan, and the fears of death, by assuring him of the divine favour, as man, and of the fulfilment of the promises to him to stand by him, assist, strengthen, and carry him through what was before him; and by observing to him the glory and honour he should be crowned with, after his sufferings and death, find the complete salvation of his people, which would be obtained hereby, and which was the joy set before him; and which animated him, as man, to bear the cross, and despise the shame with a brave and heroic Spirit. Now, though God the Father could have strengthened the human nature of Christ, without making use of an angel; and Christ could have strengthened it himself, by his divine nature, to which it was united; but the human nature was to be brought into so low a condition, and to be left to itself, as to stand in need of the assistance of an angel: and this shows not only the ministration of angels to Christ, as man, but that he was at this present time made a little lower than the angels, who was the Creator and Lord of them; as he afterwards more apparently was, through the sufferings of death.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv43–44 Strengthening him - Lest his body should sink and…
Strengthening him - Lest his body should sink and die before the time.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv43–44 Verse 43. There appeared an angel - from heaven]…
Verse 43. There appeared an angel - from heaven] It was as necessary that the fullest evidence should be given, not only of our Lord's Divinity, but also of his humanity: his miracles sufficiently attested the former; his hunger, weariness, and agony in the garden, as well as his death and burial, were proofs of the latter. As man, he needs the assistance of an angel to support his body, worn down by fatigue and suffering. See Clarke on Lu 22:44.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv43–44 An angel ... strengthening him. Christ, our Redeemer, was…
An angel ... strengthening him. Christ, our Redeemer, was truly God and truly man. And being made man by a real union of his divine person and nature, to our weak and infirm human nature, he likewise took upon him our infirmities, sin excepted. We must consider him as man, when we read of his being tempted in the wilderness, (Matthew iv.) when he wept at the raising of Lazarus out of the grave, (John xi.) as often as we read of his praying; and here, when we read of his praying, and redoubling his prayer in the garden, when we find him seized with fear, sadness, and grief: for though, as God, he could prevent and hinder these passions and affections natural to man, yet he could also permit them to affect his human nature; as he permitted himself to be seized with hunger, after fasting forty days; and so he permitted his human nature to be seized with fear and grief in this garden of Gethsemani. As angels came and ministered to him after his fast in the wilderness, so an angel came as it were to propose to him the divine decree, that he was to suffer and die for the redemption of mankind; and as man, he is said to be strengthened and comforted by the angel: he, who as God, was Lord and maker of the angels, and so needed not to be strengthened by his creatures. Besides what happened to Christ as man, were ordained as instructions for us. We are taught by angels appearing, that they were not only ready to assist and wait upon Christ, but that, by the order of divine Providence, they are also ready to assist us in our temptations and afflictions. --- In an agony. This Greek word signifies, a strife, or combat; not that there could be any opposition or contrariety in the interior of Christ, whose human will was always perfectly subject to his divine will, and the sensitive part to reason: yet, inasmuch as he was truly man, his human nature dreaded all those sufferings which at that time were represented to his soul, and which in a few hours he was to undergo. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv43–44 43. An angel—The angel appeared
43. An angel—The angel appeared
to him. Strengthening him—So that, as appears in the following verse, he encountered a still greater agony, and prayed even a more earnest prayer, accompanied by the bloody sweat.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv42–44 42. if thou be willing] The principle of His…
42. if thou be willing] The principle of His whole life of suffering obedience, Joh_5:30; Joh_6:38.
this cup] Mat_20:22; comp. Eze_22:31; Psa_75:8. This prayer is an instance of the “strong crying and tears,” amid which He “learned obedience by the things which He suffered,” Heb_5:7-8.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv42–44 (42) Not my will, but thine, be done.—See Notes…
(42) Not my will, but thine, be done.—See Notes on Mat_26:39. Here there is a more distinct echo of the prayer which He had taught His disciples. He, too, could say, “Lead us not into temptation,” but that prayer was subject, now explicitly, as at all times implicitly, to the antecedent condition that it was in harmony with “Thy will be done.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv42–44 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup…
Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. The three synoptists give this prayer in slightly varying terms; "but the figure of the cup is common to all the three; "it was indelibly impressed on tradition. This cup, which Jesus entreats God to cause to pass from before (para) his lips, is the symbol of that terrible punishment, the dreadful and mournful picture of which is traced before him at this moment by a skillful painter with extraordinary vividness. The painter is the same who in the wilderness, using a like illusion, passed before his view the magical scene -f the glories belonging to the Messianic kingdom" (Godet). If thou be willing. He looked on in this supreme hour, just before "the Passion" really began, to the Crucifixion and all the horrors which preceded it and accompanied it to the treason of Judas; the denial of Peter; the desertion of the apostles; the cruel, relentless enmity of the priests and rulers; the heartless abandonment of the people; the insults; the scourging: and then the shameful and agonizing lingering death which was to close the Passion; and, more dreadful than all, the reason why he was here in Gethsemane; why he was to drink this dreadful cup of suffering; the memory of all the sin of man! To drink this cup of a suffering, measureless, inconceivable, the Redeemer for a moment shrank back, and asked the Father if the cross was the only means of gaining the glorious end in view the saving the souls of unnumbered millions. Could not God in his unlimited power find another way of reconciliation? And yet beneath this awful agony, the intensity of which we are utterly incapable of grasping beneath it there lay the intensest desire that his Father"s wish and will should be done. That wish and will were in reality his own. The prayer was made and answered. It was not the Father"s will that the cup should pass away, and the Son"s will was entirely the same; it was answered by the gift of strength strength from heaven being given to enable the Son to drink the cup of agony to its dregs. How this strength was given St. Luke relates in the next verse.
Self-surrender.
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"Not my will, but thine, be done." These words are suggestive as well as expressive. They suggest to us
I THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF SIN. Where shall we find the root of sin? Its manifold fruits we see around us in all forms of irreligion, of vice, of violence. But in what shall we find its root? In the preference of our own will to the will of God. If we trace human wrong-doing and wrong-being to its ultimate point, we arrived that conclusion. It is because men are not willing to be what God created them to be, not willing to do what he desires them to do; it is because they want to pursue those lines of thought and of action which he has forbidden, and to find their pleasure and their portion in things which he has disallowed, that they err from the strait path and begin the course which ends in condemnation and in death. The essence of all sin is in this assertion of our will against the will of God. We fail to recognize the foundation truth that we are his; that by every sacred tie that can bind one being to another we are bound, and we belong to him from whom we came and in whom we live, and move, and have our being. We assume to be the masters of our own lives and fortunes, the directors of our own selves, of our own will; we say, "My will, not thine, be done." Thus are we radically wrong; and being radically wrong, the issues of our hearts are evil. From this fountain of error and of evil the streams of sin are flowing; to that we trace their origin.
II THE HOUR AND ACT OF SPIRITUAL SURRENDER. When does the human spirit return to God, and by what act? That hour and that act, we reply, are not found at the time of any intellectual apprehension of the truth. A man may understand but little of Christian doctrine, and yet may be within the kingdom of heaven; or, on the other hand, he may know much, and yet remain outside that kingdom. Nor at the time of keen sensibility; for it is possible to be moved to deep and to fervent feeling, and yet to withhold the heart and life from the Supreme. Nor at the time of association with the visible Church of Christ. It is the hour at which and the act by which the soul cordially surrenders itself to God. When, in recognition of the paramount claims of God the Divine Father, the gracious Savior of mankind, we yield ourselves to God, that for all the future he may lead and guide us, may employ us in his holy service; when we have it in our heart to say, "Henceforth thy will, not ours, be done; then do we return unto the Lord our God, and then does he count us among the number of his own.
III THE HIGHEST ATTAINMENT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOUR. When do we reach our highest point? Not when we have fought our fiercest battle, or have done our most fruitful work, or have gained our clearest and brightest vision of Divine truth; but when we have reached the point in which we can most cheerfully and most habitually say, after Christ our Lord, "Not my will, but thine, be done;" when under serious discouragement or even sad defeat, when after exhausting pain or before terrible suffering, when under heavy loss or in long-continued loneliness, or in prospect of early death, we are perfectly willing that God should do with us as his own wisdom and love direct. C.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv42–43 (See Scofield "Mat 26:39").
cup
(See Scofield "Mat 26:39").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v43 appeared to him
appeared to him
"appeared to Jesus"
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strengthening him
"encouraging him"
Being in agony, he prayed
"He was suffering greatly, and so he prayed"
he prayed more earnestly
"he prayed more intensely"
his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down upon the ground
"his sweat was falling to the ground like large drops of blood"
translationWords
angel
heaven
pray
blood
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv42–44 22:42 please take this cup of suffering away: A…
22:42 please take this cup of suffering away: A cup is a metaphor for experiencing either judgment or blessing (see, e.g., Pss 23:5; 75:8; 116:13; Isa 51:17). Jesus felt all the emotions of his humanity, including fear and anxiety.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.