The Betrayal

From the height on which the garden of Gethsemane lay, one could already make out an approaching crowd, which, for all its caution, betrayed itself by several torches. In it were various people—for the most part Temple guards and the chief priests’ servants, given a warlike look by the various weapons they carried in their hands, weapons suited to violence and plunder. One might have thought that this crowd was setting out on some dishonorable errand, or had been forced to arm itself unexpectedly against some disturber of the night’s peace, had not several Roman soldiers and officers of the Temple, even of the Sanhedrin itself (Lk 22:52), shown by their presence that all this was being done by order of the highest authority. To send out such a wretched detachment was the last remnant of the power of the Jewish Sanhedrin, before whose leaders the generals and rulers of the East had once trembled; and the Sanhedrin now made use of that right, perhaps for the very last time—against its own Messiah! The gloomy picture of the torch-lit crowd was completed by the sight of one man, who walked ahead of them all on trembling feet and led them, though he carried no weapon, and by his movements involuntarily showed that he had lately done an evil deed and was now hastening to a still greater one. That was the wretched Judas…

The guards and servants (it seems) did not know against whom they had been sent. The chief priests had good reason not to tell them, knowing from experience that, for some of the servants, Jesus’s words carried more weight than their masters’ commands (Jn 7:46). All the more was some definite sign needed to point out the guilty one. The betrayer chose, for this, a kiss. «Whomever I kiss, he is the one; seize Him.» This sign was chosen by Judas not out of malice, as might at first be supposed, but rather, it seems, to cover his malice. From the circumstances of the betrayal, it is clear that the betrayer wished to draw apart from the crowd and approach the Teacher alone, as though returning from the city, and, having kissed Him as usual, to slip back into the crowd of disciples, leaving it to the guard to fall upon the Teacher some moments later on their own. That is, the wretched man still wished to give his crime the appearance of an unpremeditated act. But to choose, even without malice of heart, as the sign of betrayal that very act which served as an expression of friendship in Jesus’s small company, and so strikingly set it apart from the rabbinic schools (where disciples received a kiss from their rabbis, but did not dare give one themselves)—this was the height, if not of malice, then of senselessness, which seems to have astonished the very Searcher of Hearts Himself.

Jesus, «knowing» all that «would happen to Him», went to the disciples as the betrayer drew near, and roused from sleep not only the three, but also all the rest, who were even less able to overcome the weight of bodily weariness. «You are still sleeping and resting,—He said—but the matter is already finished: the hour has come! «Rise, let us go! Behold, My betrayer is at hand»; and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners» (Mt 26:45-46).

Together with these words, so as to give the disciples time to fully rouse themselves from sleep and prepare for danger, Jesus went alone out of the garden to meet the crowd. Such magnanimity made it easier for the betrayer to point out the Teacher to the guard, but at the same time destroyed his hope of covering his treachery under the appearance of a chance return from the city. In confusion of feeling, not knowing how to act, he nevertheless quickened his steps (Mk 14:45), to give the guard the promised sign at least before the disciples arrived. But the Teacher forestalled the betrayal, and, still wishing to bring the traitor to his senses, asked gently: «My friend, why are you here?» (Mt 26:50.) «Rabbi,—Judas answered, and the word died on his lips…—Rabbi,—he repeated, with an effort (Mk 14:45)—hail!» And at once he kissed Him. At this token of sincere brotherhood, now marking the basest of treacheries, Jesus’s heart could not help but be stirred with indignation. «Judas, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?» (Lk 22:48.) We shall see how strongly these words echoed in the wretched man’s soul…

Already betrayed by an impious kiss, the God-man wished to show His enemies that He was delivering Himself up to them, and that without His own will neither the betrayer nor they could do anything. Turning to the crowd (which had managed to draw near while the betrayer was carrying out his betrayal), Jesus asked aloud: «Whom do you seek?»

«Jesus of Nazareth,» answered the leaders of the detachment—either not recognizing, in the dark, who was speaking to them, or wishing to test what He, once recognized, would do… «I am he,» Jesus answered. Hearing these words, the guard, as though struck by an extraordinary thunderbolt, fell into the greatest confusion; most of them involuntarily stepped back, and many, from fear, fell to the ground (Jn 18:6). In the brief word that came from Jesus’s lips there seemed to lie some secret force, irresistible, all-powerful. Whence did it come? Though the name of Jesus was, in the guards’ minds, bound up with everything astonishing and miraculous, so that the very thought of being sent to seize a Wonderworker, perhaps even the Messiah, might of itself trouble the mind, bind the hands, take away courage, and drain the strength (for everyone knew that the ancient prophets sometimes called down, on such occasions, fire from heaven or other supernatural means in their own defense — 2 Kings 1:19)—yet none of this, it seems, could have made the guard draw back, still less fall to the ground, without some especial, mysterious power in the words Jesus spoke; for all this was done at the Sanhedrin’s own order, and the Roman soldiers did not share the Jews’ way of thinking about the Messiah, and were not even acquainted with Him. On the other hand, since the God-man, in setting out upon the field of the cross, had renounced every means of defense—natural and supernatural alike—the guard’s overthrow by terror and its falling to the ground could not have been a deliberate act of wonder-working power, but arose from the extraordinary strength of spirit with which His holy resolve to go to the cross was expressed—a kind of direct reflection, so to speak, of the Godhead dwelling in Jesus Christ «bodily».

In what confusion of feeling must Judas have found himself at this! Now, perhaps, he himself would have agreed to give up everything, only to undo his betrayal—but the dark deed had already taken flight to hell.

The Lord remained in the same place, waiting for the guard to be able to take Him. Meanwhile the disciples, one after another, came out of the garden and joined Him. When the servants, encouraged by the Pharisees’ example, and still more by Jesus’s own gentleness, recovered from their first fright, Jesus went up to them and asked again: «Whom do you seek?»

The ignorant crowd now answered more boldly that they sought Jesus. Some of the servants (the bolder ones) even began taking steps to seize all the disciples as well.

«Have I not told you,» the Lord answered, «that it is I? So then, if you seek Me, let these men go their way.» The guard, involuntarily obedient to this voice, still dreadful to them, at once let the disciples go, concerning whom, it seems, they had received no definite order. In all likelihood, Judas himself had promised to betray the Teacher alone. Yet in this, as St. John observes, the prophetic words of Jesus also had to be fulfilled: «of those whom You have given Me, I have lost not one of them». Indeed, the disciples, as Peter’s example will show, were still so little able to share the cup of temptation and suffering with their Teacher, that the seizing of any one of them, and his being given over to torment, might have separated him from Jesus forever, and exposed him to utter ruin. «Because of their weakness,» St. Chrysostom observes, «He keeps them free from trials.»

In these decisive moments, this special care for the disciples touched the hearts of some of them so much that it woke the thought of defending the Teacher, and the guard’s timidity and His own extraordinary composure of spirit seemed to some of them occasion enough to use force. «Shall we strike with the sword?» they asked. But while the others were still asking, Peter had already acted. To draw his knife and strike one of the servants (the first who dared to lay a hand on Jesus?) on the right ear was, for him, the work of a single instant. The blow was not dangerous; but even the slightest show of resistance to authority was wholly foreign to Jesus’s holy company. «Stop,—He said to the disciples ready to support Peter—put your sword back into its sheath,—the Lord continued, turning to Peter—all who take up the sword (against lawful authority, whatever it may be) will perish by the sword. Or do you suppose that I cannot now appeal to My Father, and that He would not provide Me at once with more than twelve legions of angels? But» (in that case) «how would the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus?» (Mt 26:53.) «Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given Me?» (Jn 18:11.)

In rebuking the disciples’ untimely zeal in this way, Jesus at the same time erased its traces. Before the servants bound His hands, He touched Malchus’s ear (such was the name of the servant Peter had wounded) and healed it. Such a union of majesty and meekness, of power and defenselessness, held back the unruly crowd for a few moments more. Meanwhile, the disciples, taking advantage of its confusion and hesitation, began one after another to withdraw, with such haste and such disregard for their Teacher’s plight, that one of them, later describing this circumstance, thought it his duty to say: «then they all forsook Him and fled» (Mt 26:56). For once they saw that the God-man had no wish to defend Himself by either supernatural or natural means, fear at once overwhelmed every other feeling, and made them think only of their own safety, which was possible only by immediate flight. The last words the disciples heard from their Teacher’s lips were spoken in rebuke of the officers of the guard and the Pharisees. «Have you come out with swords and clubs to seize Me, as though against a robber,—the Lord said to them, with the same authority as always—was I not with you every day in the Temple, sitting there and teaching, and you did not seize Me? But this is your hour, and the power of darkness!.. Let the Scripture be fulfilled» (Mk 14:49)… This rebuke was not only entirely just, but very necessary. The officers of the guard, and especially the members of the Sanhedrin (Lk 22:52), were meant to understand from these words that they themselves had brought about the unfortunate action of one of Jesus’s disciples, by allowing themselves to treat a defenseless and universally respected man as though he were a robber and a criminal.

It was not without purpose that a fresh reference was made to the great truth that everything now taking place had happened in accordance with the prophecies: the lamp of prophecy was especially needed now, at the onset of the reign of darkness.

When Jesus was left alone, the guards bound Him and led Him to Jerusalem by the same road along which He had recently walked with His disciples.

Following the divine Prisoner, according to St. Mark’s account (Mk 14:51-53), was a young man whose clothing (a linen cloth wrapped about his bare body) showed that he had come out suddenly at the noise of the crowd, no doubt from the very house to which the garden belonged. Such zeal seemed suspicious to the guard, who, freed now from a fear foreign to their nature, grew, as was their custom, insolent and rough; and the poor youth could save his freedom only by leaving in the hands of the chief priests’ servants the last of his linen garment.

Since St. Mark does not name this young man, and yet, despite his usual brevity, alone relates this incident, and in fairly full detail, the opinion arose even in ancient times that the young man in question was Mark himself. In that case, it would have been hard for him not to mention this event, which, touching him so closely, is at the same time of value to everyone, since it shows the danger to which Jesus’s disciples would have been exposed, had they wished to follow Him.

The supposition that the young man was St. Mark himself sheds light on one further circumstance, which in turn confirms it. In the book of Acts we read that a certain Mark’s family also owned a house in Jerusalem (Acts 12:12), which, after the Lord’s Ascension, during the persecution of Christians, served as a place for their secret gatherings. With this family St. Peter was on the most friendly terms, and in his epistles calls Mark his own son (1 Pet 5:13).

Thus the garden of Gethsemane and the house in which the Passover was kept probably belonged to one and the same family—a family well disposed toward Jesus and the apostles, and from which came St. Mark, who accompanied the apostle Peter and later wrote one of the four Gospels.

At some distance behind the crowd leading Jesus, two more men followed unnoticed, both loving Him equally, but in unequal positions: for one was known to the high priest, and so had no particular cause to fear pursuit by his servants, while the other knew no one but fishermen, from among whose ranks Jesus had chosen him, and so trembled at the very name of the Sanhedrin. The latter was Peter, and the former—called by St. John simply the disciple known to the high priest—was, as all suppose, John himself.

Why, then, did he conceal his name? «Out of humility,» St. Chrysostom answers. «Since he wishes to confess his own struggle—that while the others fled, he followed—for this reason he hides himself, and mentions Peter first. And if he does mention himself, he mentions himself for this reason: that we may know that he can testify more precisely than the others to what happened in the courtyard, and within. See, too, how he even cuts short his own praise? So that, on hearing that John went in with Jesus, you should not think too highly of him, he says that he was known to the high priest—not that he was bolder than the rest. But of Peter he tells that he followed out of love.»

It is not known how the beloved disciple of Jesus came to be acquainted with the head of the Sanhedrin, nor how he could reconcile Caiaphas’s good will toward him with his own friendship for the Teacher, unless this was helped by John’s prior acquaintance with two other members of the Sanhedrin, Joseph and Nicodemus, whose secret conversations with Jesus he alone mentions in his Gospel. However that may be, John, relying on his acquaintance with the chief authority, hoped that he would be able to enter the high priest’s house without great danger, and learn what further fate awaited his Teacher. It was this very hope that drew him and Peter now toward Jerusalem.