Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.
Ver. 38. My soul is exceeding sorrowful] He had a true human soul then, neither was his deity to him for a soul, as some heretics fancied; for then our bodies only had been redeemed by him, and not our souls (το γαρ απροσληπτον αθεραπευτον, as that Father hath it), if he had not in soul also suffered, and so descended into hell. The sufferings of his body were but the body of his sufferings; the soul of his sufferings were the sufferings of his soul, whch was now undequaque tristis, beset with sorrows, and heavy as a heart could hold, περιλυπος. The "sorrows of death compassed him, the cords of hell surrounded him,"Psalms 18:4,5, the pain whereof he certainly suffered, non specie et loco sed αναλογον τι και ανεκλαλητον, something answerable to hell, and altogether unspeakable. Hence the Greek Litany, "By thine unknown sufferings (δι ' αγνωστων σου παθηματων), good Lord, deliver us." Faninus, an Italian martyr, being asked by one why he was so merry at his death, since Christ himself was so sorrowful? Christ, said he, sustained in his soul all the sorrows and conflicts with hell and death due to us; by whose sufferings we are delivered from sorrow and fear of them all.
Tarry ye here, and watch with me] Yet not for my sake so much as for your own, that ye enter not into temptation,Luke 22:40 .