Agony

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AGONY (Luk_22:44) is not a translation but a transliteration of the Greek agônia, equivalent to St. Matthew’s ‘sorrowful and sore troubled’ (Mat_26:37) and St. Mark’s ‘greatly amazed and sore troubled’ (Mar_14:33). The word does not mean ‘agony’ in the English sense. Agôn was ‘a contest,’ and agônia the trepidation of a combatant about to enter the lists. Christ’s Agony in Gethsemane was the horror which overwhelmed Him as He faced the final ordeal.
David Smith.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909


(Greek conflict in wrestling; figuratively, a struggle with intense trials.) Used only in Luk_22:41. Jesus' agony in Gethsemane, "so that His sweat was as it were great clotted drops of blood" (thromboi), namely, blood mixing with the ordinary watery perspiration, medically termed diapedesis, resulting from agitation of the nervous system, turning the blood out of its natural course, and forcing the red particles into the skin excretories. The death of Charles IX. of France was attended with it. Many similar cases are recorded, as the bloody sweat of a Florentine youth, condemned to death unjustly by Sixtus V. (De Thou 82 4 44.) Compare Heb_5:7-8; Mat_26:36-46; Mar_14:32-42. Each complements the other, so that the full account is to be had only from all compared together. Luke alone records the bloody sweat and the appearance of all angel from heaven strengthening Him, Matthew and Mark the change in His countenance and manner, and His complaint of overwhelming soul sorrows even unto death, and His repetition of the same prayer.
The powers of darkness then returning with double force, after Satan's defeat in the temptation (Luk_4:13, "for a season," Greek "until the season," namely, in Gethsemane, Luk_22:53), the prospect of the darkness on Calvary, when He was to experience a horror never known before, the hiding of the Father's countenance, the climax of His vicarious sufferings for our sins, which wrung from Him the "Eli Eli lama sabacthani", apparently caused His agonizing, holy, instinctive shrinking from such a cup. Sin which He hated was to be girt fast to Him, though there was none in Him; and this, without the consolation which martyrs have, the Father's and the Savior's presence. He must tread the winepress of God's wrath against us alone. Hence the greater shrinking from His cup than that of martyrs from their cup (Joh_12:27; Luk_12:49-50).
The cup was not the then pressing agony; for in Joh_18:11 He speaks of it as still future. There is a beautiful progression in the subjecting of His will to the Father's: "O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me, nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt" (Mat_26:39): "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee," (lest His previous IF should harbor a doubt of the Father's power) "take away this cup from Me, nevertheless not what I will but what Thou wilt" (Mar_14:86): "Father, if Thou be willing" (marking His realizing the Father's will as defining the true limits of possibility), remove this cup from Me, nevertheless not My will, but Thine be done" (Luk_22:42): "Oh My Father, if (rather since) this cup may (can) not pass away from Me except I drink it, (now recognizing that it is not the Father's will to take the cup away), Thy will be done" (Mat_26:42): lastly, the language of final triumph of faith over the sinless infirmity of His flesh, "The cup which My Father hath given Me shall I not drink it?" (Joh_18:11.) A faultless pattern for us (Isa_50:5-10).
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.


ag?o-ni (ἀγονία, agōnı́a; Vulgate agonia): A word occurring only once in the New Testament (Luk_22:44), and used to describe the climax of the mysterious soul-conflict and unspeakable suffering of our Lord in the garden at Gethsemane. The term is derived from the Greek agō̇n ?contest? and this in turn from the Greek ágō ?to drive or lead,? as in a chariot race. Its root idea is the struggle and pain of the severest athletic contest or conflict. The wrestling of the athlete has its counterpart in the wrestling of the suffering soul of the Saviour in the garden. At the beginning of this struggle He speaks of His soul being exceeding sorrowful even unto death, and this tumult of emotion culminated in the agony. All that can be suggested by the exhausting struggles and sufferings of charioteers, runners, wrestlers and gladiators, in Grecian and Roman amphitheaters, is summed up in the pain and death-struggle of this solitary word ?agony.? The word was rendered by Wyclif (1382) ?maad in agonye? Tyndale (1534) and following translators use an agony. The record of Jesus' suffering in Gethsemane, in the Synoptic Gospels (Mat_26:36-46; Mar_14:32-42; Luk_22:39-46, and also in Heb_5:7, Heb_5:8) indicates that it was threefold:
1. Physical
The agony of His soul wrought its pain on His body, until ?his sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the ground? (Luk_22:44, omitted by some ancient authorities). He offered His prayers and supplications ?with strong crying and tears? (Heb_5:7). The intensity of His struggle so distressed and weakened Him that Luke says ?there appeared unto him an angel from heaven, strengthening him.? The threefold record of the evangelists conveys the idea of the intensest physical pain. As the wire carries the electric current, so every nerve in Jesus' physical being felt the anguish of His sensitive soul as He took upon Himself the burden of the world's sin and moral evil.
2. Mental
The crisis of Jesus' career as Messiah and Redeemer came in Gethsemane. The moral issue of His atoning work was intelligently and voluntarily met here. The Gospels exhaust language in attempting to portray the stress and struggle of this conflict. ?My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death.? ?Being in an agony he prayed more earnestly, saying, 'Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me.'? The mental clearness of Christ's vision of humanity's moral guilt and the energy of will necessary to meet the issue and take ?this cup? of being the world's sin-bearer, indicate the awful sorrow and anguish of His supernatural conflict. It is divinely significant that the word ?agony? appears but once in all Scripture. This solitary word records a solitary experience. Only One ever compassed the whole range of the world's sorrow and pain, anguish and agony. The shame of criminal arrest in the garden and of subsequent condemnation and death as a malefactor had to His innocent soul the horror of humanity's entire and ageless guilt. The mental and moral anguish of Jesus in Gethsemane interprets the meaning of Paul's description of the atonement, ?Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf? (2Co_5:21).
3. Spiritual
The agony of Jesus was supremely within the realm of His spirit. The effect of sin in separating the human soul from God was fathomed by the suffering Saviour in the fathomless mystery of His supernatural sorrow. Undoubtedly the anguish of Gethsemane surpassed the physical torture of Calvary. The whole conflict was wrought out here. Jesus' filial spirit, under the burden of the world's guilt, felt isolated from the Father. This awful, momentary seclusion from His Father's face constituted the ?cup? which He prayed might pass from Him, and the ?agony? of soul, experienced again on the cross, when He felt that God had forsaken Him.
No theory of the atonement can do justice to the threefold anguish of Jesus in Gethsemane and on Calvary, or to the entire trend of Scripture, that does not include the substitutionary element in His voluntary sacrifice, as stated by the prophet: ?Yahweh hath laid on him the iniquity of us all,? Isa_53:6; and by His apostles ?who was delivered up for our trespasses,? Rom_4:25; ?who his own self bare our sins,? 1Pe_2:24.
The word ?agony? also occurs in 2 Macc 3:14, 16, 21 the King James Version (the Revised Version (British and American) ?distress?) in describing the distress of the people at the attempt of Heliodorus to despoil the treasury of the temple in the days of Onias.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.


Agony, a word directly meaning contest, and especially the contests by wrestling, etc.in the public games; whence it is applied metaphorically to a severe struggle or conflict with pain and suffering. Agony is the actual struggle with present evil, and is thus distinguished from anguish, which arises from the reflection on evil that is past. In the New Testament the word is only used by Luke (Luk_20:44), and is employed by him with terrible significance to describe the fearful struggle which our Lord sustained in the garden of Gethsemane. The circumstances of this mysterious transaction are recorded in Mat_26:36-46; Mar_14:32-42; Luk_20:39-47; Heb_5:7-8. None of these passages, taken separately, contains a full history of our Savior's agony. Each of the three Evangelists has omitted some things which the others have recorded, and all are very brief. The passage in Hebrews is only an incidental notice. The three Evangelists appear to have had the same design, namely, to convey to their readers an idea of the intensity of the Lord's distress; but they compass it in different ways. Luke alone notices the agony, the bloody sweat, and the appearance of an angel from heaven strengthening him. Matthew and Mark alone record the change which appeared in his countenance and manner, the complaint which he uttered of the overpowering sorrows of his soul, and the repetition of the same prayer. All agree that he prayed for the removal of what he called 'this cup,' and are careful to note that he qualified this earnest petition by a preference of his Father's will to his own.
With regard to the cause of his overwhelming distress, Jesus himself points it out in the prayer, 'If it be possible, let this cup pass from me;' the cup which his Father had appointed for him; and the question is, what does he mean by 'this cup.' Doddridge and others think that he means the instant agony, the trouble that he then actually endured. But this is satisfactorily answered by Dr. Mayer, who shows by reference to Joh_18:18, that the cup respecting which he prayed was one that was then before him, which he had not yet taken up to drink, and which he desired, if possible, that the Father should remove. It could, therefore, be no other than the scene of suffering upon which he was about to enter. It was the death which the Father had appointed for him?the death of the cross?with all the attending circumstances which aggravated its horror; that scene of woe which began with his arrest in the garden, and was consummated by his death on Calvary. Jesus had long been familiar with this prospect, and had looked to it as the appointed termination of his ministry (Mat_16:21; Mat_17:9-12; Mat_20:17; Mat_20:19; Mat_20:28; Mar_10:32-34; Joh_10:18; Joh_12:32-33). But when he looked forward to this destination, as the hour approached, a chill of horror sometimes came over him, and found expression in external signs of distress (Joh_12:27; comp. Luk_12:49-50). It is manifest, therefore, that something more than the cross was now before him, and that he was now placed in a new and hitherto untried situation. Dr. Mayer says: 'I have no hesitation in believing that He was here put upon the trial of His obedience. It was the purpose of God to subject the obedience of Jesus to a severe ordeal, in order that, like gold tried in the furnace, it might be an act of more perfect and illustrious virtue; and for this end He permitted Him to be assailed: by the fiercest temptation to disobey His will and to refuse the appointed cup. In pursuance of this purpose, the mind of Jesus was left to pass under a dark cloud, His views lost their clearness, the Father's will was shrouded in obscurity, the cross appeared in ten-fold horror, and nature was left to indulge her feelings, and to put forth her reluctance.'
Under another head [BLOODY SWEAT] will be found the considerations suggested by one of the remarkable circumstances of this event.
The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.


Agony
(ἀγωνία), a word generally denoting contest, and especially the contests by wrestling, etc., in the public games; whence it is applied metaphorically to a severe struggle or conflict with pain and suffering (Robinson's Lex. of the N.T. s.v.). Agony is the actual struggle with present evil, and is thus distinguished from anguish, which arises from the reflection on evil that is past (Crabb's Eng. Synonymes, s.v.). In the New Testament the word is only used by Luke (20:44) to describe the fearful struggle which our Lord sustained in the garden of Gethsemane (q.v.). The circumstances of this mysterious transaction are recorded in Mat_26:36-46; Mar_14:32-42; Luk_20:39-47; Hebrew 5:7, 8. Luke alone notices the agony, the bloody sweat, and the appearance of an angel from heaven strengthening him. Matthew and Mark alone record the change which appeared in his countenance and manner, the complaint which he uttered of the overpowering sorrows of his soul, and his repetition of the same prayer. SEE BLOODY SWEAT. All agree that he prayed for the removal of what he called “this cup," and are careful to note that he qualified this earnest petition by a preference of his Father's will to his own; the question is, what does he mean by "this cup?" Doddridge and others think that he means the instant agony, the trouble that he then actually endured. But Dr. Mayer (of York, Pa.) argues (in the Am. Bibl. Repos. April 1841, p. 294-317), from Joh_18:11, that the cup respecting which he prayed was one that was then before him, which he had not yet taken up to drink, and which he desired, if possible, that the Father should remove. It could, therefore, be no other than the death which the Father had appointed for him — the death of the cross — with all the attending circumstances which aggravated its horror; that scene of woe which began with his arrest in the garden, and was consummated by his death on Calvary. Jesus had long been familiar with this prospect, and had looked to it as the appointed termination of his ministry (Mat_16:21; Mat_17:9-12; Mat_20:17; Mat_20:19; Mat_20:28; Mar_10:32-34; Joh_10:18; Joh_12:32-33). But when he looked forward to this destination, as the hour approached, a chill of horror sometimes came over him, and found expression in external signs of distress (Joh_12:27; comp. Luk_12:49-50). But on no occasion did he exhibit any very striking evidence of perplexity or anguish. He was usually calm and collected; and if at any time he gave utterance to feelings of distress and horror, he still preserved his self-possession, and quickly checked the desire which nature put forth to be spared so dreadful a death. It is, therefore, hardly to be supposed that the near approach of his sufferings, awful as they were, apart from every thing else, could alone have wrought so great a change in the mind of Jesus and in his whole demeanor, as soon as he had entered the garden. It is manifest that something more than the cross was now before him, and that he was now placed in a new and hitherto untried situation. Dr. Mayer says: "I have no hesitation in believing that he was here put upon the trial of his obedience. It was the purpose of God to subject the obedience of Jesus to a severe ordeal, in order that, like gold tried in the furnace, it might be an act of more perfect and illustrious virtue; and for this end he permitted him to be assailed by the fiercest temptation to disobey his will and to refuse the appointed cup. In pursuance of this purpose, the mind of Jesus was left to pass under a dark cloud, his views lost their clearness, the Father's will was shrouded in obscurity, the cross appeared in tenfold horror, and nature was left to indulge her feelings, and to put forth her reluctance." SEE JESUS (CHRIST).
Dr. Mayer admits that the sacred writers have not explained what that was, connected in the mind of Jesus with the death of the cross, which at this time excited in him so distressing a fear. “Pious and holy men have looked calmly upon death in its most terrific forms. But the pious and holy man has not had a world's salvation laid upon him; he has not been required to be absolutely perfect before God; he has known that, if he sinned, there was an advocate and a ransom for him. But nothing of this consolation could be presented to the mind of Jesus. He knew that he must die, as he had lived, without sin; but if the extremity of suffering should so far prevail as to provoke him into impatience or murmuring, or into a desire for revenge, this would be sin; and if he sinned, all would be lost, for there was no other Savior, In such considerations may probably be found the remote source of the agonies and fears which deepened the gloom of that dreadful night."
This, however, is not entirely satisfactory. Doubtless there was much of this obscuration of our Savior's mind, SEE CRUCIFIXION; but it would appear to have had reference to another point, and one connected with his condition and circumstances at the time, rather than with any future act or consequences. The apostle's inspired remark in Hebrew 5:7, has not been sufficiently attended to by interpreters, "Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears, unto Him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that [i.e. as to what] he feared." We are here distinctly informed, respecting this agony of Christ, that he was delivered from the object of dread, whatever it was; but this was not true in any sense of his future passion, which he suffered, and could not consistently have expected to have avoided, in its full extent. The mission of the angels, also, shows that some relief was administered to him on the spot: "There appeared an angel unto him from heaven strengthening him" (Luk_22:43). The strength imparted appears to have been physical, thus, as the passage in Hebrew intimates, saving him from the death which would otherwise have instantly supervened from the force of his emotions. This death Jesus was anxious to avoid just at that time; his work was not yet done, and the "cup" of sacrificial atonement would have been premature. His heavenly Father, in answer to his prayer, removed it for the time from his lips, by miraculously sustaining his bodily powers, and his mind soon recovered its usual tone of equanimity. The emotions themselves under which he labored were evidently the same as those that oppressed him while hanging on the cross, and on other occasions in a less degree, namely, a peculiar sense of abandonment by God. This distress and perplexity cannot be attributed to a mere dread of death in however horrid a form, without degrading Christ's magnanimity below heathen fortitude, and contradicting his usually calm allusions to that event, as well as his collected endurance of the crucifixion tortures. Neither can they well be attributed (as above) to any uncertainty as to whether he had thus far fulfilled the will of God perfectly, and would be enabled in any future emergency to fulfill it as perfectly, without a gratuitous contradiction of all his former experience, and statements, and assigning him a degree of faith unworthy of his character. The position thus assigned him is incompatible with every thing hitherto in his history. Some other explanation must be sought. The state of mind indicated in his expiring cry upon the cross, "My God, my God, why hast THOU forsaken me ?" seems to betray the secret ingredient that gave the atoning cup its poignant bitterness. This appears to have been the consciousness of enduring the frown of God in the place of sinful man; without which sense of the divine displeasure, by a temporary withholding of his benign complacency, personally experienced by the Redeemer, although in others' behalf, the full penalty of transgression could not have been paid. SEE ATONEMENT. Jesus must suffer (in character) what the sinner would have suffered, and this with the concentrated intensity of a world's infinite guilt. The sacrifice of his human body could only have redeemed man's body; his soul's beclouded anguish alone could represent the sentence passed ,upon men's souls. This view essentially agrees with that taken by Olshausen (Comment. in loc.).
See Posner, De sudore Chr. sanguineo (Jen. 1665); Bethem, id. (ib. 1697); Clota. De doloribus animae J. C. (Hamb. 1670); Hasseus, De Jesu patiente in horto (Brem. 1703); Hekel, Iter Christi trans Cedron (Cygn. 1676); Hoffman, Jesu anxietas ante mortem (Lips. 1830); Koepken, De Servatore dolente (Rost. 1723); Krackewitz, De Sponsoris animi doloribus (Rost. 1716); Lange, De Christi angoribus (Lips. 1666); Nitzsche, De horto Gethsemane (Viteb. 1750); Voetius, De agonia Christi, in his Disputt. Theol. 2, 164 sq.; Wolfflin, Christus agonizans (Tubing. 1668); Ziebich, In hist. Servatoris ἀγωνιζομένου (Viteb. 1744); Zorn, Opusc. 2, 530 sq., 300 sq.; Buddensieg, Matth. (in loc.) enarratus et defensus (Lips. 1818); Gurlitt, Explicatio (in loc.) Matth. (Magdeb. 1800); Schuster, in Eichhorn's Bibl. 9, 1012 sq.; Baumgarten, De precatione Ch. pro avertendo calice (Hal. 1785); Kraft, De Ch. calicem deprecante (Erlang. 1770); Neunhofer, De precibus Chr. Gethsemaniticis (Altenb. 1760); Quenstedt, De deprecatione calicis Christi (Viteb. 1675, and in Ikenii Thes. dispp. 2, 204 sq.); Scepseophilus, Christus in Gethsemane precans (Essl. 1743); Schmid, De Chr. calicem passionis deprecante (Lips. 1713); Nehring, De precatione Chr. pro avertendo calice (Hal. 1735); Cyprian, De sudariis Christi (Helmst. 1698, 1726, also in his Pent. Diss. 2); Gabler, Ueber d. Engel der Jesum gestarkt haben soil (in his Theol. Journ. 12, 109 sq.); Hilscher, De angelo luctante cum Christo (Lips. 1731); Huhn, De apparitione angeli Chr. confortantis (Lips. 1747); Pries, Modus confortationis angelicam illustratus (Rost. 1754); Rosa, Chr. in horto Geths. afflictissimus (Rudolphop. 1744); Carpzov, Spicileg. ad verba (in loc.) Luc. (Helmst. 1784); Bossuet, Reflexions sur l'agonie de J. C. (in his Euvres, 14, 240); Moore, The Nature and Causes of the Agony in the Garden (Lond. 1757); Mayer, De confortatione angelica agonizantis Jesu (Viteb. 1674, 1735).

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.





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