Verse 42
And again a second time he went away, and prayed, saying, My Father, if this cannot pass away, except I drink it, thy will be done.
The words of Plummer are very perceptive regarding this prayer. He said:
Why did he repeat his prayer in Gethsemane? We may reverently suppose that he himself knew that the first utterance of the prayer had not been complete in its success. His human will was not yet in absolute unison with the will of his Father; and, in this way, we may trace progress between the first prayer and the second. In both cases, the prayer is made conditional; but in the first the condition is positive; in the second it is negative. "If it be possible" has become "If it be not possible"; and there is no longer any petition that the cup be removed. We may believe that in the third prayer, even if the same words were used, the "if" has become equivalent to "since": "since this cup cannot pass from me, thy will be done."[12]
Be the first to react on this!
