Then said he unto them,
My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death: tarry you here, and watch with me.
All Commentaries on Matthew 26:38 Go To Matthew 26
Jerome
AD 420
Gethsemane is interpreted, ‘The rich valley;’ and there He bade His disciples sit a little while, and wait His return whilst He prayed alone for all.
Hieron. non. occ: But we say that passible man was so taken by God the Son, that His Deity remained impassible. Indeed the Son of God suffered, not by imputation but actually, all that Scripture testifies, in respect of that part of Him which could suffer, viz. in respect of the substance that He had taken on Him.
The Lord therefore sorrowed not from fear of suffering, for for this cause Hehad come that He should suffer, and had rebuked Peter for his fearfulness; but for the wretched Judas, for the offence of therest of the Apostles, for the rejection and reprobation of the Jewish nation, and the overthrow of unhappy Jerusalem.
Our Lord therefore sorrowed to prove the reality of the Man which He had taken upon Him; but that passion might bear no sway in His mind, “He began to be sorrowful” by pro-passion ; for it is one thing to be sorrowful, and another to be very sorrowful.
He is sorrowful not because of death, but “unto death,” until He has set the Apostles free by His Passion. Let those who imagine Jesus to have taken an irrational soul, say how it is that He is thus sorrowful, and knows the season of His sorrow, for though the brute animals have sorrow, yet they know neither the causes of it, nor the time for which it must endure.
Or the sleep which He would have them forego is not bodily rest, for which at this critical time there was no room, but mental torpor, the sleep of unbelief.
