hotcoffee
New Member
Matthew 26:39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
One of the commentaries explains the "cup".
Fell with His face to the ground... This was the ordinary posture of the supplicant when the favor was great which was asked, and deep humiliation required. The head was put between the knees, and the forehead brought to touch the earth - this was not only a humiliating, but a very painful posture also.
This cup - The word cup is frequently used in the Sacred Writings to point out sorrow, anguish, terror, death. It seems to be an allusion to a very ancient method of punishing criminals. A cup of poison was put into their hands, and they were obliged to drink it. Socrates was killed thus, being obliged by the magistrates of Athens to drink a cup of the juice of hemlock. To death, by the poisoned cup, there seems an allusion in Hebrews 2:9, Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, Tasted death for every man. The whole world are here represented as standing guilty and condemned before the tribunal of God; into every man's hand the deadly cup is put, and he is required to drink off the poison - Jesus enters, takes every man's cup out of his hand, and drinks off the poison, and thus tastes or suffers the death which every man otherwise must have undergone.
Pass from me - Perhaps there is an allusion here to several criminals standing in a row, who are all to drink of the same cup; but, the judge extending favor to a certain one, the cup passes by him to the next.
Another says this.
The cup didn't represent death, but judgment. Jesus was unafraid of death, and when He had finished His work on the cross - the work of receiving and bearing and satisfying the righteous judgment of God the Father upon our sin - when He finished that work, He simply yielded Himself to death as His choice.
Jesus knew what was going to happen. He didn't hide, He didn't run, and He didn't back away.
