Jesus' Final Visit to JerusalemIsampula

The Arrest of Jesus

After saying these things, Jesus crossed the Kidron Valley with his disciples and entered a grove of olive trees called Gethsemane. There he told them, “Pray that you will not give in to temptation.” And he said, “Sit here while I go over there to pray.” He took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, and he became deeply troubled, anguished, and distressed. He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

He went on a little farther away, about a stone’s throw, knelt down to the ground, and bowed with his face to the ground, praying. He prayed that, if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting him might pass him by. “Abba, my Father,” he cried out, “everything is possible for you. If you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” Then an angel from heaven appeared and strengthened him. He prayed more fervently, and he was in such agony of spirit that his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood.

At last, he stood up again, and then he returned to the disciples, only to find them asleep, exhausted from grief. “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. He said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Couldn’t you watch with me even one hour? Get up, keep watch, and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak!”

Then Jesus left them a second time and prayed the same prayer as before: “My Father! If this cup cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will be done.” When he returned to them again, he found them sleeping, for they couldn’t keep their eyes open. And they didn’t know what to say.

So he went to pray a third time, saying the same things again. Then, when he returned to the disciples the third time, he said, “Go ahead and sleep. Have your rest. But no, look—the time has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Up, let’s be going. Look, my betrayer is here!”

And immediately, even as Jesus said this, Judas, one of the twelve disciples, arrived with a crowd of men armed with swords and clubs. They had been sent by the leading priests, the teachers of religious law, and the elders of the people. Judas, the betrayer, knew this place because Jesus had often gone there with his disciples. The leading priests and Pharisees had given Judas a contingent of Roman soldiers and Temple guards to accompany him. Now with blazing torches, lanterns, and weapons, they arrived at the olive grove.

Jesus fully realized all that was going to happen to him, so he stepped forward to meet them. “Who are you looking for?” he asked.

“Jesus the Nazarene,” they replied.

“I Am he,”29 Jesus said. (Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them.) As Jesus said “I Am he,” they all drew back and fell to the ground! Once more he asked them, “Who are you looking for?”

And again they replied, “Jesus the Nazarene.”

“I told you that I Am he,” Jesus said. “And since I am the one you want, let these others go.” He did this to fulfill his own statement: “I did not lose a single one of those you have given me.” 30

The traitor, Judas, had given them a prearranged signal: “You will know which one to arrest when I greet him with a kiss. Then you can take him away under guard.” So as soon as they arrived, Judas walked over to Jesus to greet him with a kiss. “Greetings, Rabbi!” he exclaimed and gave him the kiss. But Jesus said, “Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss? My friend, go ahead and do what you have come for.”

Then the soldiers, their commanding officer, and the Temple guards grabbed Jesus, tied him up, and arrested him.

When the other disciples saw what was about to happen, they exclaimed, “Lord, should we fight? We brought the swords!” Then one of the men with Jesus, Simon Peter, drew his sword and struck at Malchus, the high priest’s slave, slashing off his right ear.

But Jesus said to Peter, “No more of this. Put away your sword, back into its sheath. Those who use the sword will die by the sword. Don’t you realize that I could ask my Father for thousands of angels to protect us, and he would send them instantly? But if I did, how would the Scriptures be fulfilled that describe what must happen now? Shall I not drink from the cup of suffering the Father has given me?” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.

Then Jesus spoke to the leading priests, the captains of the Temple guard, and the elders who had come for him. “Am I some dangerous revolutionary,” he asked, “that you come with swords and clubs to arrest me? Why didn’t you arrest me in the Temple? I was there among you teaching every day. But this is your moment, the time when the power of darkness reigns. These things are all happening to fulfill what the words of the prophets, as recorded in the Scriptures, say about me.”

Then, at that point, all the disciples deserted him and ran away. One young man following behind was clothed only in a long linen shirt. When the mob tried to grab him, he slipped out of his shirt and ran away naked.

Footnotes:

29 Or “The ‘I Am’ is here”; or “I am the Lord”; Greek reads I am in John 18:6, 8. See Exod 3:14.

30 See John 6:39 and 17:12.