The following rendering will, it is believed, best show the meaning of these two important verses, and the connection of the several parts: Who, in the days of His flesh, having with a strong cry and tears offered up prayers and supplications unto Him that was able to save Him out of death, and having been heard for His reverent fear, though He was a son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered. The most noticeable change of rendering occurs at the close of the seventh verse; here the interpretation given by all the Greek Fathers, followed in most of our English versions (and in the margin of the Authorised itself), certainly deserves the preference over that which, through the influence of Calvin and Beza, found its way into the Genevan Testament, and hence into the Bishops' Bible and the translation of 1611. The word rendered "reverent fear" occurs in but one other place in the New Testament (Hebrews 12:28); but the kindred verb and adjective are found in Hebrews 11:7; Luke 2:25; Acts 2:5; Acts 8:2. It properly denotes, not terror, but a cautious foreseeing fear, opposed alike to rashness and to cowardice: the adjective, which is always rendered "devout," is fully explained in the Notes on Acts 2:5. No word could be more suitable where the relation of the Son of Man to His "God and Father" is expressed and it would be very difficult to find any other word which should be suitable to this relation and yet contain no implication of sin to be acknowledged with humility and shame. The object of the "prayers and supplications" thus heard and answered is implied in the words "unto Him that was able to save Him out of death." Not "from death:" the Greek words may have that meaning, but it is not their most natural sense, as a comparison of other passages would show. The prayer, we are persuaded, was not that death might be averted, but that there might be granted deliverance out of death. This prayer was answered: His death was the beginning of His glory (Hebrews 2:9). It may indeed be asked, Could such a prayer be offered by One who knew "the glory that should follow" His sufferings? In a matter so far beyond our reasoning it is most reverent to point to the mystery of another prayer (Matthew 26:39) offered by Him who had often taught His disciples that He must be put to death (Matthew 16:21). Mark the striking correspondence between the petition thus understood and St. Peter's quotation of Psalm 16:10 (Acts 2:24). Some of the expressions in this verse would lead us to believe that the writer's thought is resting on the Agony in the Garden; but the "strong cry" brings before us the Crucifixion (Matthew 27:46; Matthew 27:50), and the words of Psalm 22:1 lie very near the thought of this verse. It does not seem necessary to decide--we may doubt whether it is possible, and whether both should not be included. The opening words, "in the days of His flesh" (comp. Hebrews 2:14; John 1:14; 1Peter 3:18), would certainly seem to favour this latter view. The word "offered" must not be lightly passed over. Of frequent occurrence in this Epistle, in every case except one (which is not at all in point) it has a sacrificial sense; it seems certain, therefore, that these prayers--a token of His suffering, an example of His reverent fear--are included in the sacrifice which comprised His whole life and death. . . .

(1) How was such a prayer consistent with his distinct knowledge that death must be undergone, and his late strong rebuke to Peter for venturing to dissuade him from it?

(2) How can he be said to have been heard (εἰσακουσθείς), since he was not saved from death in the sense intended? To the first of these questions the answer is that the prayer expressed, not the deliberate desire of his Divine will, but only the inevitable shrinking of the human will from such an ordeal as was before him. As man, he experienced this shrinking to the full, and as man he craved deliverance, though with entire submission to the will of the Father. His human will did not oppose itself to the Divine will: it conformed itself in the end entirely to it; but this according to the necessary conditions of humanity, through the power of prayer. Had it not been so with him, his participation in human nature would have been incomplete; he would not have been such as to be "touched with a feeling of our infirmities, being in all things tempted like as we are;" nor would he have stood forth for ever as the great Example to mankind. St. John, who so deeply enters into and interprets the mind of Christ, records an utterance before the agony which anticipates its meaning (John 12): "The hour is come" (ver. 23); and then (ver. 27), "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour [cf. σώζειν ἐκ θανάτου]; but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy Name." The "hour" was that of the drinking of the cup (cf. Mark 14:35, "And prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him"). "Father, save me from this hour" was the human craving of the agony; but still, "Father, glorify thy Name" was the essence of the prayer; and perfect submission to the Divine will was the outcome of it, after this troubling of his human soul. The mystery surrounding the whole subject of the Divine and human in Christ remains still. What was said with regard to it about the temptation in the wilderness (Hebrews 4:15) is applicable also here. If it be further asked how it was that Christ, in his humanity, so shrank from the "cup" before him, seeing that mere men have been found to face death calmly in its most appalling forms, the answer may be found in the consideration of what this cup implied. It was more than physical death, more than physical pain, more than any sorrow that falls to the lot of man. Such expressions as Ἤρξατο λυπεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν... περίλυπος ἐστὶν ἡ ψυχή μου ἕως θανάτου (Matthew 26:37, 38); Ἤρξατο ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν (Mark 14:33); Γενόμενος ἐν ἀγωυίᾳ ἐκτενεστερον προσηύχετο (Luke 22:44); the bloody sweat, and the cry of "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" - convey in themselves the impression of a mysterious ordeal, beyond what we can fathom, undergone by the atoning Savior in that "hour" of the "power of darkness." Of the second difficulty mentioned above, as to how Christ was "heard," not having been saved "from death" in the apparent sense of his prayer, the solution may be that the prayer, conditioned as it was by εἰ δυνατὸν, was most truly answered by the angel sent to strengthen him, and the power thenceforth given him to "endure the cross, despising the shame." "Mortem ex qua Pater cum liberare posset, ne moreretur, tamen subiit, voluntati Patris obediens: ab horrore plane liberatus est per exauditionem Exauditus est, non ut ne biberet calicem, sed ut jam sine ullo horrore biberet: unde etiam per angelum corroboratus est" (Bengel). The example to us thus becomes the more apparent. For we, too, praying legitimately for release from excessive trial, may have our prayer best answered by grace given to endure the trial, and by "a happy issue" out of it; as was the case with Christ. For his bitter passion was made the path to eternal glory; and thus in the Resurrection too his prayer was answered. The exact meaning of εἰσακουσθεὶς ἀπὸ τῆς εὐλαβείας is not easy to determine. It is taken by a large proportion of commentators to mean "deliverance from his fear;" εἰσακουσθεὶς ἀπὸ being supposed to be a constructio praegnans in the sense of "heard so as to be delivered," and εὐλαβεία to denote the dread experienced in Gethsemane. So the old Italian Versions, and Ambrose, "exauditus a metu;" so Bengel, "ab hrr-rore liberatus per exauditlonem." This interpretation is upheld by Beza, Grotius, Tholuck, Hofmann, Ebrard, and many others; some of whom, less tenably (as Calvin, Hammond, Jackson), understand εὐλαβεία as meaning, not the fear felt, but the thing feted: "ab eo quod timebat" (Calvin). The objections to this view are

(1) the doubtfulness of the constructio praegnans (the instances adduced - ἐπήκουσέ μου εἰς πλατυσμόν, Psalm 118:5; ἐρραντισμένοι... ἀπὸ συνειδήσεας πονηρᾶς, Hebrews 10:22 - are not parallel); and . . .

Parallel Commentaries ...