Hebrews 5:7

7. From the pinnacle of the Messiah’s exaltation our author now descends at once to the scene of his deepest agony in the garden of Gethsemane. He shows, with touches of deep pathos, that the woes there endured were a filial suffering undergone to give him a complete fitness for conferring salvation upon all obedient to him. His purpose is to show that this deep descent is the source and condition of his subsequent ascent as exalted giver of salvation to us.

In the days of his flesh As he is now in the days of his resurrection glory, on the throne of his divine royalty.

Prayers… supplications… crying… tears As profound in the depths of his sorrows then as exalted in the heights of his glory now. Evidently the scene of Gethsemane is here depicted, not with verbal quotation from either of the evangelists, but with something of the freshness of an original. It is not Luke here quoting himself, but Paul quoting what his attendant Luke narrates, and more.

Heard in that he feared A phrase ambiguous both in the Greek and the English. It may mean that he was heard in regard to the point about which he feared; or that he was heard because he submissively and reverently feared as a Son. This last is the more probable meaning, inasmuch as the word is ordinarily used to signify a reverent and holy fear. But the statement that he was heard, indicates that the object for which he prayed was granted. It was not, indeed, granted if fear of physical death were the motive, and rescue from it the object for which he prayed. It was granted, if, as we think, he prayed for a divine support to buoy him up above a fearful breakdown under the forces bearing upon him, and which, but for that divine support, might have taken place. Then he was heard, and divine sustaining strength was granted him, impersonated in the consoling angel. See our notes, Matthew 26:37-39. And by the death from which he was saved according to his prayer, we do not understand his mere bodily death, (from which, indeed, he was not saved,) but a fulness of woe at the depth and mystery of which his soul was “amazed.” And this, too, was the “cup” which he prayed might so “pass” from him as that not only he might not drink it, in which sense it did not pass from him, but that he might not drink it to its bottomless depths, in which sense it did pass from him. In the bottomless depths of that death and of that “cup” were destruction to himself and failure of his work and of his future. And his prayer and perfect submission were the means by which, through divine strength imparted, he was saved from failure and won immortal victory.