Today’s Daily Word Study is an abridged excerpt from Chaim Bentorah’s newest book: Does The Bible Really Say That? 20 (Seeming) Biblical Contradictions Explained. Click here to learn more.

Seeming Contradictions in the Bible: Let this cup pass from me

Matthew 26:39: “And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

CONTRADICTION: Jesus came to this earth to die for our sins. That was his purpose and mission. Yet, when the time came to face his death for our sakes he wanted to avoid it. Yet, Christian history is filled with thousands upon thousands of believers who bravely and willingly faced death for the sake of Jesus.

I am not a theologian. I am far from being one. So, I fear I cannot explain the ins and outs of Christology, or the study of Christ, and all the mysteries behind God becoming a human being. I am, however, a student of biblical languages.

For me, one of the great mysteries of the story of Jesus is when He prayed in the garden on the night of His betrayal, and He asked that the cup would pass from Him. I have always been troubled by this passage of Scripture. Just what is the cup? I was taught, even as a child, that this was the greatest lesson in obedience. Here, Jesus is facing torture and death and is struggling against the will of His Father, not wanting to give up his life, not wanting to face the torments that lay ahead. But in the end, He submits and voluntarily gives up to the torture and death that awaits Him by saying: “Not my will but thine be done.”

I remember as a child being deeply impressed by a movie about the testimony of a young woman who had escaped from a Communist country. She was a Christian and talked about how the secret police had taken her as a teenage girl and demanded that she renounce her Jesus. Each time she refused, they beat her, demanding that she curse the name of Jesus. She refused until she was beaten unconscious and left to attend to her own wounds. The reporter interviewing her asked why she did not renounce Jesus in order to avoid the beatings. Her reply was simple: “I love Jesus.” There was no internal struggle over whether or not she would deny Jesus; it was a foregone conclusion that she would deny the Jesus she loved under the threat of being beaten to death.

Yet, Bible translators seem to be trying to say that where a young teenage girl who loved Jesus so much that she would not hesitate to be brutally beaten and left to die because she would not deny her love for Jesus that Jesus not only hesitates but even asks the Heavenly Father to find another way around this sin thing, so he would not have to suffer in our place?

I remember reading about a young mother praying over her dying child who suffered from cancer. She did not pray to let the cup pass from her child; she prayed that God would miraculously take the cancer and suffering from her child and put it on her and let her suffer and die in her child’s place.

If human beings are capable of such heroic acts, then how much more is the God who created them capable of? Which begs the question: If God is perfect in love and loves us with this perfect love, why did He hesitate to go to the cross in the way this passage suggests? Did He really face this time of indecision, worried about His own gizzard? Then finally after a long struggle, would He give up and say: “Alright, Father, you win. I’ll go. I’ll go if you order me.” Okay, maybe you read this differently, maybe this passage does not trouble you, but it does me. I have spent forty years of my life studying Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic. I have studied the Bible every day for a minimum of three to four hours a day in its original biblical languages, so I could come to some peace over passages such as this one. So please forgive me if I happen to read my own bias into this passage.

I am sorry, but I am not buying into this seeming contradiction that perfect love will hesitate when faced with a sacrifice for the object of that love. To me it is just a contradiction to the love that Jesus taught us. The Jesus I know and love would not hesitate to give his life and would do it all over again for me. If I were the only one He was dying for, He would do it without hesitation. I believe His love is that great. It has to be because He is perfect in love, and if His love is not that great then what hope is there for us?

So how did I find peace with this passage? Well, for starters, we must recognize that Jesus spoke an Old Galilean form of Aramaic (not Greek), which major biblical scholars are just now beginning to understand. When read from the Aramaic version of the Bible, the Peshittta, I come up with a little different rendering. First and foremost is the use of the word that is used for cup in Aramaic, which is the word kasa. It is identical to the Hebrew word kavas, which is also the word stork, which is found in other Semitic languages. The stork was noted for its tender loving care of its young. It has been observed that during the time of famine the mother stork would peck her breast until it bled. She would then feed her chicks with her own blood. This is the same word that Jesus used at the last supper when He said this cup. Read this carefully in Luke 22:20: “Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup [is] the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.” Jesus is saying the cup is the New Testament not the wine. In other words, this nurturing love is my blood. The Semitic mindset of the disciples would have allowed them to see a little play on the word kasa in this context. It would be His blood that would resurrect us and restore us to a rightful position with God. But it is his deep, affectionate, sacrificial lovingkindness—His kasa—that would be the testament, the witness to the sacrifice He was about to make.

Now, we come to the garden where Jesus is praying and once again, we see his use of the word kasa (cup) representing his nurturing and sacrificial love. He is praying that this intense love would pass from Him. In Greek, the word pass is parelthato, which means “to avert, avoid, or pass over.” But if this word for pass was spoken in Aramaic and later translated into Greek, it is possible the Aramaic might be closer to what Jesus said, which was avar. Now avar in Aramaic is the same word in Hebrew, which has a wide range of meanings. The word itself is “the picture of a river overflowing onto its banks.” You could say that it is passing over, but it is more correctly understood as being “overwhelming.” Yes, the human part of Jesus was not looking forward to the coming torture and pain, but Jesus was not praying to get out of this situation, but that this cup, or this nurturing, sacrificial love would overwhelm him just as the love of Jesus overwhelmed the martyrs when facing torture and death.

Note, in verse 37, that it says he became sorrowful. That word sorrowful in the Aramaic is kamar, which means “to burn or kindle” and is used for a burning love or compassion. As Jesus was about to make the sacrifice of His own life, His entire being was filled with a burning love and compassion for mankind such that He says: “If it is possible let this cup or this nurturing love (avar) or overwhelm me.” The words if possible in Aramaic are shekev, which literally means “if this happens.” In other words, Jesus is saying that if this is to happen tonight, then let this burning love, this nurturing love for mankind, just overwhelm me, so that all I will think about is this burning love that I have. It was also that sacrificial love that Jesus had for each one us that helped Him endure such horrendous pain and torture.

I don’t believe that Jesus perspired drops of blood over the fear of his impending torture and death, nor do I believe that the pressure of taking on our sins caused Him to sweat drops of blood. What I do believe is that He saw and knew at that moment the tremendous agony, pain and suffering of mankind. He was so filled with love for each one of us that he could not endure the knowledge of what our pain and suffering was like. As God, He could not understand human suffering until he took on human flesh. Just like that mother who prayed that the suffering and pain of her child somehow be removed from that child and placed upon her, so she would suffer rather than her child. So too our Heavenly Parent, Jesus, at that moment, understood our suffering and pain and knew He could take it on. It was that knowledge and understanding of what sin had done to us and His empathy for our suffering that caused Him to suffer drops of blood. Being sinless, Jesus could not understand the torment of sin. In that moment, by taking on the sin of the world, Jesus understood what the torment of guilt was really like.

“Yet, not my will but thine be done.” I believe He said that at the height of His experience of the weight of sin and its consequences that caused Him to sweat drops of blood that maybe made Him momentarily regret taking on the torment of our sins, but certainly, in my mind, not the torment of the cross.