weddings

• origin of presents

82:3.10Many tribes al­lowed mem­bers of the rul­ing group to have sex re­la­tions with the bride just be­fore she was to be given to her hus­band. Each of these men would give the girl a pres­ent, and this was the ori­gin of the cus­tom of giv­ing wed­ding pres­ents. Among some groups it was ex­pected that a young woman would earn her dowry, which con­sisted of the pres­ents re­ceived in re­ward for her sex ser­vice in the bride’s ex­hi­bi­tion hall.

• for ancients, children’s status required wide publicity

83:4.1The wed­ding cer­e­mony grew out of the fact that mar­riage was orig­i­nally a com­mu­nity af­fair, not just the cul­mi­na­tion of a de­ci­sion of two in­di­vid­u­als. Mat­ing was of group con­cern as well as a per­sonal func­tion.

83:4.2Magic, rit­ual, and cer­e­mony sur­rounded the en­tire life of the an­cients, and mar­riage was no ex­cep­tion. As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vanced, as mar­riage be­came more se­ri­ously re­garded, the wed­ding cer­e­mony be­came in­creas­ingly pre­ten­tious. Early mar­riage was a fac­tor in prop­erty in­ter­ests, even as it is to­day, and there­fore re­quired a le­gal cer­e­mony, while the so­cial sta­tus of sub­se­quent chil­dren de­manded the widest pos­si­ble pub­lic­ity. Prim­i­tive man had no rec­ords; there­fore must the mar­riage cer­e­mony be wit­nessed by many per­sons.

83:4.3At first the wed­ding cer­e­mony was more on the or­der of a be­trothal and con­sisted only in pub­lic no­ti­fi­ca­tion of in­ten­tion of liv­ing to­gether; later it con­sisted in for­mal eat­ing to­gether. Among some tribes the par­ents sim­ply took their daugh­ter to the hus­band; in other cases the only cer­e­mony was the for­mal ex­change of pres­ents, af­ter which the bride’s fa­ther would pre­sent her to the groom. Among many Lev­an­tine peo­ples it was the cus­tom to dis­pense with all for­mal­ity, mar­riage be­ing con­sum­mated by sex re­la­tions. The red man was the first to de­velop the more elab­o­rate cel­e­bra­tion of wed­dings.

• charms and superstitions among ancients

83:4.4Child­less­ness was greatly dreaded, and since bar­ren­ness was at­tributed to spirit machi­na­tions, ef­forts to in­sure fe­cun­dity also led to the as­so­ci­a­tion of mar­riage with cer­tain mag­i­cal or re­li­gious cer­e­mo­ni­als. And in this ef­fort to in­sure a happy and fer­tile mar­riage, many charms were em­ployed; even the as­trologers were con­sulted to as­cer­tain the birth stars of the con­tract­ing par­ties. At one time the hu­man sac­ri­fice was a reg­u­lar fea­ture of all wed­dings among well-to-do peo­ple.

83:4.5Lucky days were sought out, Thurs­day be­ing most fa­vor­ably re­garded, and wed­dings cel­e­brated at the full of the moon were thought to be ex­cep­tion­ally for­tu­nate. It was the cus­tom of many Near East­ern peo­ples to throw grain upon the new­ly­weds; this was a mag­i­cal rite which was sup­posed to in­sure fe­cun­dity. Cer­tain Ori­en­tal peo­ples used rice for this pur­pose.

83:4.6Fire and wa­ter were al­ways con­sid­ered the best means of re­sist­ing ghosts and evil spir­its; hence al­tar fires and lighted can­dles, as well as the bap­tismal sprin­kling of holy wa­ter, were usu­ally in ev­i­dence at wed­dings. For a long time it was cus­tom­ary to set a false wed­ding day and then sud­denly post­pone the event so as to put the ghosts and spir­its off the track.

83:4.7The teas­ing of new­ly­weds and the pranks played upon hon­ey­moon­ers are all relics of those far-dis­tant days when it was thought best to ap­pear mis­er­able and ill at ease in the sight of the spir­its so as to avoid arous­ing their envy. The wear­ing of the bridal veil is a relic of the times when it was con­sid­ered nec­es­sary to dis­guise the bride so that ghosts might not rec­og­nize her and also to hide her beauty from the gaze of the oth­er­wise jeal­ous and en­vi­ous spir­its. The bride’s feet must never touch the ground just prior to the cer­e­mony. Even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury it is still the cus­tom un­der the Chris­tian mores to stretch car­pets from the car­riage land­ing to the church al­tar.

83:4.8One of the most an­cient forms of the wed­ding cer­e­mony was to have a priest bless the wed­ding bed to in­sure the fer­til­ity of the union; this was done long be­fore any for­mal wed­ding rit­ual was es­tab­lished. Dur­ing this pe­riod in the evo­lu­tion of the mar­riage mores the wed­ding guests were ex­pected to file through the bed­cham­ber at night, thus con­sti­tut­ing le­gal wit­ness to the con­sum­ma­tion of mar­riage.

83:4.9The luck el­e­ment, that in spite of all pre­mar­i­tal tests cer­tain mar­riages turned out bad, led prim­i­tive man to seek in­sur­ance pro­tec­tion against mar­riage fail­ure; led him to go in quest of priests and magic. And this move­ment cul­mi­nated di­rectly in mod­ern church wed­dings. But for a long time mar­riage was gen­er­ally rec­og­nized as con­sist­ing in the de­ci­sions of the con­tract­ing par­ents—later of the pair—while for the last five hun­dred years church and state have as­sumed ju­ris­dic­tion and now pre­sume to make pro­nounce­ments of mar­riage.

• early w. held under trees

85:2.3The cults of tree wor­ship are among the old­est re­li­gious groups. All early mar­riages were held un­der the trees, and when women de­sired chil­dren, they would some­times be found out in the for­est af­fec­tion­ately em­brac­ing a sturdy oak. Many plants and trees were ven­er­ated be­cause of their real or fan­cied medic­i­nal pow­ers. The sav­age be­lieved that all chem­i­cal ef­fects were due to the di­rect ac­tiv­ity of super­nat­u­ral forces.

• of James, Miriam

128:7.10In Novem­ber a dou­ble wed­ding oc­curred. James and Esta, and Miriam and Ja­cob were mar­ried. It was truly a joy­ous oc­ca­sion. Even Mary was once more happy ex­cept ev­ery now and then when she re­al­ized that Je­sus was prepar­ing to go away. She suf­fered un­der the bur­den of a great un­cer­tainty: If Je­sus would only sit down and talk it all over freely with her as he had done when he was a boy, but he was con­sis­tently un­com­mu­nica­tive; he was pro­foundly silent about the fu­ture.

128:7.11James and his bride, Esta, moved into a neat lit­tle home on the west side of town, the gift of her fa­ther. While James con­tin­ued his sup­port of his mother’s home, his quota was cut in half be­cause of his mar­riage, and Joseph was for­mally in­stalled by Je­sus as head of the fam­ily. Jude was now very faith­fully send­ing his share of funds home each month. The wed­dings of James and Miriam had a very ben­e­fi­cial in­flu­ence on Jude, and when he left for the fish­ing grounds, the day af­ter the dou­ble wed­ding, he as­sured Joseph that he could de­pend on him “to do my full duty, and more if it is needed.” And he kept his prom­ise.

• of Martha, Simon, and Jude

129:1.6All this year Je­sus sent money each month to James. He re­turned to Naz­a­reth in Oc­to­ber to at­tend Martha’s wed­ding, and he was not again in Naz­a­reth for over two years, when he re­turned shortly be­fore the dou­ble wed­ding of Si­mon and Jude.

• of Martha, Simon, and Jude

134:1.4Both Si­mon and Jude had for some time wanted to get mar­ried, but they had dis­liked to do this with­out Je­sus’ con­sent; ac­cord­ingly they had post­poned these events, hop­ing for their el­dest brother’s re­turn. Though they all re­garded James as the head of the fam­ily in most mat­ters, when it came to get­ting mar­ried, they wanted the bless­ing of Je­sus. So Si­mon and Jude were mar­ried at a dou­ble wed­ding in early March of this year, A.D. 24. All the older chil­dren were now mar­ried; only Ruth, the young­est, re­mained at home with Mary.

• at Cana

137:3.6On the next day, Tues­day, they all jour­neyed over to Cana for the wed­ding of Naomi, which was to take place on the fol­low­ing day. And in spite of Je­sus’ re­peated warn­ings that they tell no man about him “un­til the Fa­ther’s hour shall come,” they in­sisted on qui­etly spread­ing the news abroad that they had found the De­liv­erer. They each con­fi­dently ex­pected that Je­sus would in­au­gu­rate his as­sump­tion of Mes­sianic au­thor­ity at the forth­com­ing wed­ding at Cana, and that he would do so with great power and sub­lime grandeur. They re­mem­bered what had been told them about the phe­nom­ena at­ten­dant upon his bap­tism, and they be­lieved that his fu­ture course on earth would be marked by in­creas­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions of super­nat­u­ral won­ders and mirac­u­lous demon­stra­tions. Ac­cord­ingly, the en­tire coun­try­side was prepar­ing to gather to­gether at Cana for the wed­ding feast of Naomi and Jo­hab the son of Nathan.

137:4.1By noon on Wednes­day al­most a thou­sand guests had ar­rived in Cana, more than four times the num­ber bid­den to the wed­ding feast. It was a Jew­ish cus­tom to cel­e­brate wed­dings on Wednes­day, and the in­vi­ta­tions had been sent abroad for the wed­ding one month pre­vi­ously. In the forenoon and early af­ter­noon it ap­peared more like a pub­lic re­cep­tion for Je­sus than a wed­ding. Ev­ery­body wanted to greet this near-fa­mous Galilean, and he was most cor­dial to all, young and old, Jew and gen­tile. And ev­ery­body re­joiced when Je­sus con­sented to lead the pre­lim­i­nary wed­ding pro­ces­sion.

137:4.2Je­sus was now thor­oughly self-con­scious re­gard­ing his hu­man ex­is­tence, his di­vine pre-ex­is­tence, and the sta­tus of his com­bined, or fused, hu­man and di­vine na­tures. With per­fect poise he could at one mo­ment en­act the hu­man role or im­me­di­ately as­sume the per­son­al­ity pre­rog­a­tives of the di­vine na­ture.

137:4.3As the day wore on, Je­sus be­came in­creas­ingly con­scious that the peo­ple were ex­pect­ing him to per­form some won­der; more es­pe­cially he rec­og­nized that his fam­ily and his six dis­ci­ple-apos­tles were look­ing for him ap­pro­pri­ately to an­nounce his forth­com­ing king­dom by some startling and super­nat­u­ral man­i­fes­ta­tion.

137:4.4Early in the af­ter­noon Mary sum­moned James, and to­gether they made bold to ap­proach Je­sus to in­quire if he would ad­mit them to his con­fi­dence to the ex­tent of in­form­ing them at what hour and at what point in con­nec­tion with the wed­ding cer­e­monies he had planned to man­i­fest him­self as the “super­nat­u­ral one.” No sooner had they spo­ken of these mat­ters to Je­sus than they saw they had aroused his char­ac­ter­is­tic in­dig­na­tion. He said only: “If you love me, then be will­ing to tarry with me while I wait upon the will of my Fa­ther who is in heaven.” But the elo­quence of his re­buke lay in the ex­pres­sion of his face.

137:4.5This move of his mother was a great dis­ap­point­ment to the hu­man Je­sus, and he was much sobered by his re­ac­tion to her sug­ges­tive pro­posal that he per­mit him­self to in­dulge in some out­ward dem­on­stra­tion of his di­vin­ity. That was one of the very things he had de­cided not to do when so re­cently iso­lated in the hills. For sev­eral hours Mary was much de­pressed. She said to James: “I can­not un­der­stand him; what can it all mean? Is there no end to his strange con­duct?” James and Jude tried to com­fort their mother, while Je­sus with­drew for an hour’s soli­tude. But he re­turned to the gath­er­ing and was once more light­hearted and joy­ous.

137:4.6The wed­ding pro­ceeded with a hush of ex­pectancy, but the en­tire cer­e­mony was fin­ished and not a move, not a word, from the hon­ored guest. Then it was whis­pered about that the car­pen­ter and boat­builder, an­nounced by John as “the De­liv­erer,” would show his hand dur­ing the evening fes­tiv­i­ties, per­haps at the wed­ding sup­per. But all ex­pectance of such a dem­on­stra­tion was ef­fec­tu­ally re­moved from the minds of his six dis­ci­ple-apos­tles when he called them to­gether just be­fore the wed­ding sup­per and, in great earnest­ness, said: “Think not that I have come to this place to work some won­der for the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of the cu­ri­ous or for the con­vic­tion of those who doubt. Rather are we here to wait upon the will of our Fa­ther who is in heaven.” But when Mary and the oth­ers saw him in con­sul­ta­tion with his as­so­ciates, they were fully per­suaded in their own minds that some­thing ex­traor­di­nary was about to hap­pen. And they all sat down to en­joy the wed­ding sup­per and the evening of fes­tive good fel­low­ship.

137:4.7The fa­ther of the bride­groom had pro­vided plenty of wine for all the guests bid­den to the mar­riage feast, but how was he to know that the mar­riage of his son was to be­come an event so closely as­so­ci­ated with the ex­pected man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus as the Mes­sianic de­liv­erer? He was de­lighted to have the honor of num­ber­ing the cel­e­brated Galilean among his guests, but be­fore the wed­ding sup­per was over, the ser­vants brought him the dis­con­cert­ing news that the wine was run­ning short. By the time the for­mal sup­per had ended and the guests were strolling about in the gar­den, the mother of the bride­groom con­fided to Mary that the sup­ply of wine was ex­hausted. And Mary con­fi­dently said: “Have no worry—I will speak to my son. He will help us.” And thus did she pre­sume to speak, not­with­stand­ing the re­buke of but a few hours be­fore.

137:4.8Through­out a pe­riod of many years, Mary had al­ways turned to Je­sus for help in ev­ery cri­sis of their home life at Naz­a­reth so that it was only nat­u­ral for her to think of him at this time. But this am­bi­tious mother had still other mo­tives for ap­peal­ing to her el­dest son on this oc­ca­sion. As Je­sus was stand­ing alone in a cor­ner of the gar­den, his mother ap­proached him, say­ing, “My son, they have no wine.” And Je­sus an­swered, “My good woman, what have I to do with that?” Said Mary, “But I be­lieve your hour has come; can­not you help us?” Je­sus replied: “Again I de­clare that I have not come to do things in this wise. Why do you trou­ble me again with these mat­ters?” And then, break­ing down in tears, Mary en­treated him, “But, my son, I prom­ised them that you would help us; won’t you please do some­thing for me?” And then spoke Je­sus: “Woman, what have you to do with mak­ing such promises? See that you do it not again. We must in all things wait upon the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.”

137:4.9Mary the mother of Je­sus was crushed; she was stunned! As she stood there be­fore him mo­tion­less, with the tears stream­ing down her face, the hu­man heart of Je­sus was over­come with com­pas­sion for the woman who had borne him in the flesh; and bend­ing for­ward, he laid his hand ten­derly upon her head, say­ing: “Now, now, Mother Mary, grieve not over my ap­par­ently hard say­ings, for have I not many times told you that I have come only to do the will of my heav­enly Fa­ther? Most gladly would I do what you ask of me if it were a part of the Fa­ther’s will—” and Je­sus stopped short, he hes­i­tated. Mary seemed to sense that some­thing was hap­pen­ing. Leap­ing up, she threw her arms around Je­sus’ neck, kissed him, and rushed off to the ser­vants’ quar­ters, say­ing, “What­ever my son says, that do.” But Je­sus said noth­ing. He now re­al­ized that he had al­ready said—or rather de­sire­fully thought—too much.

137:4.10Mary was danc­ing with glee. She did not know how the wine would be pro­duced, but she con­fi­dently be­lieved that she had fi­nally per­suaded her first-born son to as­sert his au­thor­ity, to dare to step forth and claim his po­si­tion and ex­hibit his Mes­sianic power. And, be­cause of the pres­ence and as­so­ci­a­tion of cer­tain uni­verse pow­ers and per­son­al­i­ties, of which all those pres­ent were wholly ig­no­rant, she was not to be dis­ap­pointed. The wine Mary de­sired and which Je­sus, the God-man, hu­manly and sym­pa­thet­i­cally wished for, was forth­com­ing.

137:4.11Near at hand stood six wa­ter­pots of stone, filled with wa­ter, hold­ing about twenty gal­lons apiece. This wa­ter was in­tended for sub­se­quent use in the fi­nal pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies of the wed­ding cel­e­bra­tion. The com­mo­tion of the ser­vants about these huge stone ves­sels, un­der the busy di­rec­tion of his mother, at­tracted Je­sus’ at­ten­tion, and go­ing over, he ob­served that they were draw­ing wine out of them by the pitcher­ful.

137:4.12It was grad­u­ally dawn­ing upon Je­sus what had hap­pened. Of all per­sons pres­ent at the mar­riage feast of Cana, Je­sus was the most sur­prised. Oth­ers had ex­pected him to work a won­der, but that was just what he had pur­posed not to do. And then the Son of Man re­called the ad­mo­ni­tion of his Per­son­al­ized Thought Ad­juster in the hills. He re­counted how the Ad­juster had warned him about the in­abil­ity of any power or per­son­al­ity to de­prive him of the cre­ator pre­rog­a­tive of in­de­pen­dence of time. On this oc­ca­sion power trans­form­ers, mid­way­ers, and all other re­quired per­son­al­i­ties were as­sem­bled near the wa­ter and other nec­es­sary el­e­ments, and in the face of the ex­pressed wish of the Uni­verse Cre­ator Sov­er­eign, there was no es­cap­ing the in­stan­ta­neous ap­pear­ance of wine. And this oc­cur­rence was made dou­bly cer­tain since the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster had sig­ni­fied that the ex­e­cu­tion of the Son’s de­sire was in no way a con­tra­ven­tion of the Fa­ther’s will.

137:4.13But this was in no sense a mir­a­cle. No law of na­ture was mod­i­fied, ab­ro­gated, or even tran­scended. Noth­ing hap­pened but the ab­ro­ga­tion of time in as­so­ci­a­tion with the ce­les­tial as­sem­bly of the chem­i­cal el­e­ments req­ui­site for the elab­o­ra­tion of the wine. At Cana on this oc­ca­sion the agents of the Cre­ator made wine just as they do by the or­di­nary nat­u­ral pro­cesses ex­cept that they did it in­de­pen­dently of time and with the in­ter­ven­tion of super­hu­man agen­cies in the mat­ter of the space as­sem­bly of the nec­es­sary chem­i­cal in­gre­di­ents.

137:4.14Fur­ther­more it was ev­i­dent that the en­act­ment of this so-called mir­a­cle was not con­trary to the will of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, else it would not have tran­spired, since Je­sus had al­ready sub­jected him­self in all things to the Fa­ther’s will.

137:4.15When the ser­vants drew this new wine and car­ried it to the best man, the “ruler of the feast,” and when he had tasted it, he called to the bride­groom, say­ing: “It is the cus­tom to set out first the good wine and, when the guests have well drunk, to bring forth the in­fe­rior fruit of the vine; but you have kept the best of the wine un­til the last of the feast.”

137:4.16Mary and the dis­ci­ples of Je­sus were greatly re­joiced at the sup­posed mir­a­cle which they thought Je­sus had in­ten­tion­ally per­formed, but Je­sus with­drew to a shel­tered nook of the gar­den and en­gaged in se­ri­ous thought for a few brief mo­ments. He fi­nally de­cided that the episode was be­yond his per­sonal con­trol un­der the cir­cum­stances and, not be­ing ad­verse to his Fa­ther’s will, was in­ev­i­ta­ble. When he re­turned to the peo­ple, they re­garded him with awe; they all be­lieved in him as the Mes­siah. But Je­sus was sorely per­plexed, know­ing that they be­lieved in him only be­cause of the un­usual oc­cur­rence which they had just in­ad­ver­tently be­held. Again Je­sus re­tired for a sea­son to the house­top that he might think it all over.

137:4.17Je­sus now fully com­pre­hended that he must con­stantly be on guard lest his in­dul­gence of sym­pa­thy and pity be­come re­spon­si­ble for re­peated episodes of this sort. Nev­er­the­less, many sim­i­lar events oc­curred be­fore the Son of Man took fi­nal leave of his mor­tal life in the flesh.

173:5.1Af­ter the scribes and rulers had with­drawn, Je­sus ad­dressed him­self again to the as­sem­bled crowd and spoke the para­ble of the wed­ding feast. He said:

173:5.2“The king­dom of heaven may be likened to a cer­tain king who made a mar­riage feast for his son and dis­patched mes­sen­gers to call those who had pre­vi­ously been in­vited to the feast to come, say­ing, ‘Ev­ery­thing is ready for the mar­riage sup­per at the king’s palace.’ Now, many of those who had once prom­ised to at­tend, at this time re­fused to come. When the king heard of these re­jec­tions of his in­vi­ta­tion, he sent other ser­vants and mes­sen­gers, say­ing: ‘Tell all those who were bid­den, to come, for, be­hold, my din­ner is ready. My oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all is in readi­ness for the cel­e­bra­tion of the forth­com­ing mar­riage of my son.’ But again did the thought­less make light of this call of their king, and they went their ways, one to the farm, an­other to the pot­tery, and oth­ers to their mer­chan­dise. Still oth­ers were not con­tent thus to slight the king’s call, but in open re­bel­lion they laid hands on the king’s mes­sen­gers and shame­fully mis­treated them, even killing some of them. And when the king per­ceived that his cho­sen guests, even those who had ac­cepted his pre­lim­i­nary in­vi­ta­tion and had prom­ised to at­tend the wed­ding feast, had fi­nally re­jected his call and in re­bel­lion had as­saulted and slain his cho­sen mes­sen­gers, he was ex­ceed­ingly wroth. And then this in­sulted king or­dered out his armies and the armies of his al­lies and in­structed them to de­stroy these re­bel­lious mur­der­ers and to burn down their city.

173:5.3“And when he had pun­ished those who spurned his in­vi­ta­tion, he ap­pointed yet an­other day for the wed­ding feast and said to his mes­sen­gers: ‘They who were first bid­den to the wed­ding were not wor­thy; so go now into the part­ing of the ways and into the high­ways and even be­yond the bor­ders of the city, and as many as you shall find, bid even these strangers to come in and at­tend this wed­ding feast.’ And then these ser­vants went out into the high­ways and the out-of-the-way places, and they gath­ered to­gether as many as they found, good and bad, rich and poor, so that at last the wed­ding cham­ber was filled with will­ing guests. When all was ready, the king came in to view his guests, and much to his sur­prise he saw there a man with­out a wed­ding gar­ment. The king, since he had freely pro­vided wed­ding gar­ments for all his guests, ad­dress­ing this man, said: ‘Friend, how is it that you come into my guest cham­ber on this oc­ca­sion with­out a wed­ding gar­ment?’ And this un­pre­pared man was speech­less. Then said the king to his ser­vants: ‘Cast out this thought­less guest from my house to share the lot of all the oth­ers who have spurned my hos­pi­tal­ity and re­jected my call. I will have none here ex­cept those who de­light to ac­cept my in­vi­ta­tion, and who do me the honor to wear those guest gar­ments so freely pro­vided for all.’”

173:5.4Af­ter speak­ing this para­ble, Je­sus was about to dis­miss the mul­ti­tude when a sym­pa­thetic be­liever, mak­ing his way through the crowds to­ward him, asked: “But, Mas­ter, how shall we know about these things? how shall we be ready for the king’s in­vi­ta­tion? what sign will you give us whereby we shall know that you are the Son of God?” And when the Mas­ter heard this, he said, “Only one sign shall be given you.” And then, point­ing to his own body, he con­tin­ued, “De­stroy this tem­ple, and in three days I will raise it up.” But they did not un­der­stand him, and as they dis­persed, they talked among them­selves, say­ing, “Al­most fifty years has this tem­ple been in build­ing, and yet he says he will de­stroy it and raise it up in three days.” Even his own apos­tles did not com­pre­hend the sig­nif­i­cance of this ut­ter­ance, but sub­se­quently, af­ter his res­ur­rec­tion, they re­called what he had said.

173:5.5About four o’clock this af­ter­noon Je­sus beck­oned to his apos­tles and in­di­cated that he de­sired to leave the tem­ple and to go to Beth­any for their evening meal and a night of rest. On the way up Oli­vet Je­sus in­structed An­drew, Philip, and Thomas that, on the mor­row, they should es­tab­lish a camp nearer the city which they could oc­cupy dur­ing the re­main­der of the Pass­over week. In com­pli­ance with this in­struc­tion the fol­low­ing morn­ing they pitched their tents in the hill­side ravine over­look­ing the pub­lic camp­ing park of Geth­sem­ane, on a plot of ground be­long­ing to Si­mon of Beth­any.

173:5.6Again it was a silent group of Jews who made their way up the west­ern slope of Oli­vet on this Mon­day night. These twelve men, as never be­fore, were be­gin­ning to sense that some­thing tragic was about to hap­pen. While the dra­matic cleans­ing of the tem­ple dur­ing the early morn­ing had aroused their hopes of see­ing the Mas­ter as­sert him­self and man­i­fest his mighty pow­ers, the events of the en­tire af­ter­noon only op­er­ated as an an­ti­cli­max in that they all pointed to the cer­tain re­jec­tion of Je­sus’ teach­ing by the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties. The apos­tles were gripped by sus­pense and were held in the firm grasp of a ter­ri­ble un­cer­tainty. They re­al­ized that only a few short days could in­ter­vene be­tween the events of the day just passed and the crash of an im­pend­ing doom. They all felt that some­thing tremen­dous was about to hap­pen, but they knew not what to ex­pect. They went to their var­i­ous places for rest, but they slept very lit­tle. Even the Al­pheus twins were at last aroused to the re­al­iza­tion that the events of the Mas­ter’s life were mov­ing swiftly to­ward their fi­nal cul­mi­na­tion.