Then cometh Jesus ... — In the interval between Matthew 26:35-36, we have probably to place the discourses in John 15 (the reference to the vine, probably suggested by one which was putting forth its leaves in the early spring), John 16, and the great prayer of intercession in John 17. As St. John alone has recorded them, it is probable that he alone entered into their meaning, while others either did not hear them, or listened to them as above their reach, and asked their child-like questions (John 16:18-19; John 16:29-30). St. Luke records what we may look on as the germ of the great intercession, in our Lord’s words to Peter, “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” (Luke 22:32).
A place called Gethsemane. — The word means “oil-press,” and was obviously connected with the culture of the trees from which the Mount took its name. St. John’s description implies that it was but a little way beyond the brook Kidron (John 18:1), on the lower western slope of the mount. There was, a garden (or rather, orchard) there which was the wonted resort of our Lord and the disciples when they sought retirement. The olive-trees now growing in the place shown as Gethsemane, venerable as their age is, can hardly have been those that then grew there, as Josephus expressly records that Titus ordered all the trees in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem to be cut down, and the Tenth Legion was actually encamped on the Mount of Olives (Jos. Wars, v. 2, § 3). They probably represent the devotion of pilgrims of the fourth or some later century, who replanted the hallowed site.
Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. — Partly in compassion to the weakness and weariness of the disciples, partly from the sense of the need of solitude in the highest acts of communing with His Father, the Son of Man withdraws for a little while from converse with those whom, up to this time, He had been strengthening. He had been (as in John 17) praying for them; He now needs to pray for Himself.
(38) Exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. — The infinite sadness of that hour leads the Master to crave for sympathy from the three who were, most of all, His brothers. If they may not see, or fully hear, the throes of that agony, as though the pangs of death had already fallen on Him, it will be something to know that they are at least watching with Him, sharers in that awful vigil.