The Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus

183:2.1Af­ter Ju­das so abruptly left the ta­ble while eat­ing the Last Sup­per, he went di­rectly to the home of his cousin, and then did the two go straight to the cap­tain of the tem­ple guards. Ju­das re­quested the cap­tain to as­sem­ble the guards and in­formed him that he was ready to lead them to Je­sus. Ju­das hav­ing ap­peared on the scene a lit­tle be­fore he was ex­pected, there was some de­lay in get­ting started for the Mark home, where Ju­das ex­pected to find Je­sus still vis­it­ing with the apos­tles. The Mas­ter and the eleven left the home of Eli­jah Mark fully fif­teen min­utes be­fore the be­trayer and the guards ar­rived. By the time the ap­pre­hend­ers reached the Mark home, Je­sus and the eleven were well out­side the walls of the city and on their way to the Oli­vet camp.

183:2.2Ju­das was much per­turbed by this fail­ure to find Je­sus at the Mark res­i­dence and in the com­pany of eleven men, only two of whom were armed for re­sis­tance. He hap­pened to know that, in the af­ter­noon when they had left camp, only Si­mon Pe­ter and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes were girded with swords; Ju­das had hoped to take Je­sus when the city was quiet, and when there was lit­tle chance of re­sis­tance. The be­trayer feared that, if he waited for them to re­turn to their camp, more than three­score of de­voted dis­ci­ples would be en­coun­tered, and he also knew that Si­mon Ze­lo­tes had an am­ple store of arms in his pos­ses­sion. Ju­das was be­com­ing in­creas­ingly ner­vous as he med­i­tated how the eleven loyal apos­tles would de­test him, and he feared they would all seek to de­stroy him. He was not only dis­loyal, but he was a real cow­ard at heart.

183:2.3When they failed to find Je­sus in the up­per cham­ber, Ju­das asked the cap­tain of the guard to re­turn to the tem­ple. By this time the rulers had be­gun to as­sem­ble at the high priest’s home prepara­tory to re­ceiv­ing Je­sus, see­ing that their bar­gain with the traitor called for Je­sus’ ar­rest by mid­night of that day. Ju­das ex­plained to his as­so­ciates that they had missed Je­sus at the Mark home, and that it would be nec­es­sary to go to Geth­sem­ane to ar­rest him. The be­trayer then went on to state that more than three­score de­voted fol­low­ers were en­camped with him, and that they were all well armed. The rulers of the Jews re­minded Ju­das that Je­sus had al­ways preached non­re­sis­tance, but Ju­das replied that they could not de­pend upon all Je­sus’ fol­low­ers obey­ing such teach­ing. He re­ally feared for him­self and there­fore made bold to ask for a com­pany of forty armed sol­diers. Since the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties had no such force of armed men un­der their ju­ris­dic­tion, they went at once to the fortress of An­to­nia and re­quested the Ro­man com­man­der to give them this guard; but when he learned that they in­tended to ar­rest Je­sus, he promptly re­fused to ac­cede to their re­quest and re­ferred them to his su­pe­rior of­fi­cer. In this way more than an hour was con­sumed in go­ing from one au­thor­ity to an­other un­til they fi­nally were com­pelled to go to Pi­late him­self in or­der to ob­tain per­mis­sion to em­ploy the armed Ro­man guards. It was late when they ar­rived at Pi­late’s house, and he had re­tired to his pri­vate cham­bers with his wife. He hes­i­tated to have any­thing to do with the en­ter­prise, all the more so since his wife had asked him not to grant the re­quest. But inas­much as the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer of the Jew­ish San­hedrin was pres­ent and mak­ing per­sonal re­quest for this as­sis­tance, the gov­er­nor thought it wise to grant the pe­ti­tion, think­ing he could later on right any wrong they might be dis­posed to com­mit.

183:2.4Ac­cord­ingly, when Ju­das Is­car­iot started out from the tem­ple, about half af­ter eleven o’clock, he was ac­com­pa­nied by more than sixty per­sons—tem­ple guards, Ro­man sol­diers, and cu­ri­ous ser­vants of the chief priests and rulers.