“If it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” (Matt 26:39)

What does Jesus have in mind as he prays to the Father in Gethsemane? I think it is reasonable to assume that Jesus is meditating on Scripture in this moment. The Gospel authors repeatedly show Jesus speaking and acting in light of Scripture during his final days. For example, Jesus enacts Jeremiah 7 as a prophetic sign-act in Matthew 21, he quotes Daniel in Matthew 26, and in Matthew 27, on the cross, Jesus quotes Psalm 22. These are just a few examples of how saturated with Scripture Jesus’s final days were. Let me explain why I think it’s helpful to imagine Jesus’s words in Gethsemane as an overflow of his meditation on Isaiah 51.

Two Options for the Cup

In Isaiah 51, the prophet uses the same cup metaphor that Jesus uses when he prays. Jesus prays to the Father that he would “let this cup pass from me,” but he also recognizes that it could be the Father’s will for him to drink the cup — “Nevertheless, not what I want, but what you want” (Matt 26:39). Isaiah makes clear that “cup” is a way of talking about God’s judgment. Isaiah speaks about “the cup of God’s wrath” and “the cup of staggering” (Is 51:17 [2x], 22).

What’s especially noteworthy is that both of the options that Jesus prays about are present in Isaiah 51: drinking the cup and letting the cup pass. Isaiah speaks about how Israel “drank from the hand of Yahweh the cup of his wrath” (Is 51:17) and also “Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering” (Is 51:22). Perhaps this is what is on Jesus’s mind. Is it possible that the cup of staggering can be taken from his hand, as Isaiah 51:22 says, or is it necessary to drink the cup (Isaiah 51:17) “for the many”?¹

This is just the beginning of the connections between Jesus’s situation in Gethsemane and Isaiah 51. Let’s look at a few more.

“The Oppressor Set to Destroy”

Matthew 26 opens with Jesus saying this:

“You know that the Passover is in two days, and the Son of Man is being handed over to be crucified.” At that time, the chief priests and the elders of the people were gathered together in the court of the chief priest, named Caiaphas. They made a plan to deceitfully arrest Jesus and kill him. (Matthew 26:1–3)

In Gethsemane, Jesus is fully aware that people are plotting to kill him. Isaiah 51 addresses a similar situation. Isaiah speaks about “the oppressor who has set himself to destroy.”

You have forgotten Yahweh who made you, the one who stretched out the heavens and founded the land. All day long you have feared the wrath of the oppressor who has set himself to destroy. Where is the wrath of the oppressor? (Isaiah 51:13)

Here in Isaiah 51, we have a text that speaks directly to facing those who plot to kill. Even more fitting is the next verse:

The one who is made to suffer will quickly be released. He will not die in the pit … (Isaiah 51:14)

Jesus will be “made to suffer” in the next chapter, but he will not be left in the pit (לשׁחת). The distinction between death and “being left in the realm of the dead” is one that Peter makes at Pentecost:

According to the determined plan and foreknowledge of God, this man whom you hung up and killed through the hands of lawless men, God raised by freeing him from the pains of deaths because it was not possible for him to be held by death. David said about him … “You did not let your holy one see corruption.” (Acts 2:23–27, citing Psalm 15:8–11)

Isaiah repeatedly—in chapter 51 and throughout the book—grounds Yahweh’s ability to save, even from death, in his power as creator.

The Creator Can Save

In the first three verses, Isaiah 51 describes Yahweh as the one who called Abraham “as one man” and “blessed him and multiplied him” (Is 51:2). Yahweh is one who can make the wildernesses into Eden (Is 51:3), just like he did in Genesis 2. The prophet speaks about God’s power to create and overcome the mythological forces of chaos: Yahweh pierced Rahab and the Tanin (Is 51:9, the “great sea creature,” cf. Gen 1:21). Reflecting God’s work in creation and the Exodus, the prophet speaks about God drying up “the deep waters” (תהום, cf. Gen 1:2) and making space for the dry land and his people (Is 51:10).

As Jesus faces the destruction of his body, how fitting it would be to focus on the Father’s ability to bring new creation from un-creation and de-creation. If God can create order and flourishing from the “formless and void” of Genesis 1:2, he can deliver Jesus from the grave. This is biblical reasoning.

A Salvation more Permanent than Creation

Isaiah 51 contrasts the short-lived nature of creation with the eternal salvation of Yahweh. As Jesus faces death, how fitting it would be to focus on these words of Isaiah:

The sky will fade away like smoke, and the land will wear out like a piece of clothing. Those who live in the land will likewise die, but my salvation will be eternal. My righteousness will not fail. (Isaiah 51:6)

There is a permanence that extends beyond creation, and the prophet here speaks of it as God’s salvation and righteousness.

Facing Mockery

In Matthew 27, Jesus will be mocked as he’s tortured.

Having twisted together a “crown” of thorns they placed it on his head and put a stick in his right hand. They bowed before him and mocked, “Hail! King of the Jews! They spit at him and took the stick and hit his [thorn-crowned] head with the stick. (Matthew 26:29–30)

Isaiah 51 has words for this, too.

Listen to me, you who know what is right, people who have my Torah in their hearts. Do not fear the insults of man! Don’t be shaken by their mocking! For moth will eat them like a piece of clothing. Worm will eat them like wool, but my righteousness will be eternal. My salvation will be throughout the generations. (Isaiah 51:7–8)

Haunting Images of Suffering

Isaiah 51 has haunting images of suffering. Two of these images stand out to me as particularly relevant for Jesus’s situation. In Isaiah 51:18–20, the prophet describes the way the way the people’s oppressors have slaughtered their sons. The images in Isaiah are graphic, but so is the portrait of the Son of God’s suffering in Matthew 27. In fact, as Jesus hangs on the cross, bleeding and suffocating, they mock him precisely on the basis of his supposed sonship.

Save yourself! If you are the son of God come down from the cross! (Matthew 27:40)

There’s another relevant image. The final verses of Isaiah 51 describe how the people’s tormentors made them lie down so they could walk or ride their carts over the people’s backs “like a street.” Before Jesus was crucified, his back was abused, too:

Pilate “released to them Barabbas, but he flogged Jesus and handed him over to be crucified” (Matt 27:26).

RT France explains “flogging” (φραγελλόω):

The preliminary flogging was an accepted part of the process leading to crucifixion; it was done with leather whips sometimes weighted with pieces of metal or bone, and was a brutal process which inflicted serious injury and could itself sometimes prove fatal. The gospel narratives, both at this point and at the point of crucifixion, make no attempt to draw out the sheer physical horror of the procedure, though Matthew’s first readers would have known, as modern readers do not, that Roman “flogging” was something far more serious and obscene than a few strokes with a whip.²

What could possibly comfort Jesus when facing such horrors?

The Only Comforter

There are many ways that Jesus could have sought comfort on the night he was arrested. Jesus told his closest friends that he was sorrowful to the point of death (Matt 26:38). Remember what he did next: He went away from his friends by himself, fell down, and prayed. Why would he choose to be alone?

Isaiah 51:12 provides a rationale:

I, I am the one who comforts you! Who are you that you fear man who will die, the son of man who will be made like grass. (Isaiah 51:12)

It is striking to me the repeated I-statements. Yahweh says, “I, I am the one who comforts you.” Jesus leans into the Father’s comfort because he knows this is the only thing that will help.

Conclusion

I don’t know that Jesus was thinking about Isaiah 51 in Gethsemane, but I found the idea helpful to think through. It’s striking how Isaiah mentions drinking the cup of suffering and also the cup of suffering being taken away because these are both of the options that Jesus is praying about in Gethsemane. But these are just the beginning of the similarities between Matthew 26 and Isaiah 51.

Isaiah calls his readers to hope in Yahweh as one who can create life from death, one who can give strength to withstand mocking, slander, and suffering. Whether Jesus thought of this text or not, he certainly walked the line of Isaiah 51. I hope and pray I can do the same. I especially want to remember the repeated “I’s” of Isaiah 51:12: “I, I am the one who comforts you.”

1. There’s a lot to say about what it means for Jesus to experience God’s wrath, but that is not the focus of this post. Suffice it to say that the biblical authors envision God’s judgment upon rebellious humans as turning rebellious humans over to their own desires. When people stiff-arm God, he withdraws his protective presence, and humans are left to the consequences of their own actions. Jesus experiences “God’s wrath” as the overflow of rebellious humans left to act out their own twisted desires. In this post, I explain more about the organic connection between human rebellion and divine judgment. ↩
2. R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publication Co., 2007), 1058–1059. ↩