Mark 14

³² And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” ³³ And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. ³⁴ And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” ³⁵ And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. ³⁶ And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” ³⁷ And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? ³⁸ Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” ³⁹ And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. ⁴⁰ And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. ⁴¹ And he came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. ⁴² Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”

I am fascinated by untranslatable words, those words from other cultures whose meanings we can approximate but whose meanings we can never quite capture in one of our own words.  Andrea Reisenauer has provided a fascinating list of what he calls “20 of the World’s Most Beautiful Untranslatable Words.”  Here are a few from his list:

Waldeinsamkeit – German – the feeling of being alone in the woods, solitude, and a connectedness to nature.

Iktsuarpok – Inuit – the feeling of anticipation when you’re expecting someone that leads you to constantly check to see if they’re coming.

Goya – Urdu – the transporting suspension of disbelief that happens when fantasy is so realistic that it temporarily becomes reality.

Mångata – Swedish – the road-like reflection of the moon on the water. It’s the long, wavy shape that appears across the water when the moon is shining on it.

Hiraeth – Welsh – homesickness mixed with grief and sadness over the lost or departed, or a type of longing for the homeland or the romanticized past.[1]

Untranslatable words.  How fascinating and how lovely!  Usually when we encounter a word like this it elicits feelings of admiration and a sense that a particular culture has found a way to capture in a single word something so powerful that it takes many words in our own language to capture.

In Mark 14:32-42 we find another such word.  It is found specifically in Mark 14:41. I am speaking of the Greek word apechei.  The American Standard Version, Darby Translation, Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition, English Standard Version, 1599 Geneva Bible, and King James Version translate it as, “It is enough!”  In point of fact, it is a very difficult word to translate at all.  For instance, the late New Testament scholar Raymond Brown called the word “untranslatable.”[2]  Vincent’s Word Studies says, “Expositors are utterly at sea as to its meaning.”[3]

Even so, there it is:  apechei.  Like other untranslatable words, I find this word fascinating, for when we begin to consider its possible meanings and how other forms of it have been used a multi-layered and powerful picture emerges.  I would like to propose further that, also like other untranslatable words, apechei hints at deep things that are hard for us to capture.  In fact, I believe Jesus was communicating a number of truths about what was happening in the Garden of Gethsemane and what was happening on the larger stage as He approached the cross.

It is a statement about the disciples’ weakness.

To begin, many see in this word a note of exasperation.  We are in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Jesus has foretold His coming crucifixion and resurrection.  He has also foretold that the disciples will abandon Him.

³² And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” ³³ And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. ³⁴ And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” ³⁵ And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. ³⁶ And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” ³⁷ And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? ³⁸ Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” ³⁹ And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. ⁴⁰ And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. ⁴¹ And he came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. ⁴² Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”

What a truly heartbreaking scene. Jesus returns to His disciples time and again only to find them sleeping.  His soul “is very sorrowful, even to death” and they cannot stay awake with him for even an hour.  What is more, this happens fast on the heels of Peter’s strong promise that he would never abandon Jesus, that he would never fall away.

For this reason, many English versions of the Bible translate the word apechei as a phrase of exasperation.  Here is how some translations render it:

“Enough!”: Christian Standard Bible, New International Version, New Revised Standard Version

“Enough of that!”: Amplified Bible, Contemporary English Version

“That’s enough!”: Common English Bible

It is as if Jesus is saying, “Ok!  Enough of this vacillating!  Enough of your continually missing what is happening!  It is time for the events of the cross to unfold.”  We have heard exasperation from Jesus before.  For instance, in Matthew 17 Jesus says to the doubting people:

¹⁷ And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.

In saying this, Jesus certainly did not sin.  This is not Jesus abandoning His people.  It is a heartbroken cry of exasperation over the long story of man’s self-destructive behavior.  It does not communicate that the disciples are beyond the reach of God’s love in Christ.  Rather, it is an acknowledgment that here in the falling-asleep disciples we find the whole sad story of man!  God is in our midst.  God is saving us.  God has come with power and love and faithfulness and life…and we sleep through it all!

Apechei!  Enough!  Enough of that!

It is a word we would do well to learn and to incorporate into our own lives.  What is it in your own life over which you need to say, “Apechei! Enough!”?  There are things within us over which an exclamation of exasperation is the right word!  Stand beside Jesus and call out the things within you of which you need to be rid!

It is a statement about Judas’ betrayal.

The technical meaning of the word as well as the words Jesus says immediately afterwards hint at another meaning.

⁴¹ And he came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. ⁴² Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”

It will be helpful at this point to see how two other translations render apechei.

“All right”: J.B. Phillips New Testament

“It is over.”: Young’s Literal Translation

Warner Holleran offers some very helpful background information on how the word was used in the ancient world.

            Adolf Deissmann has documented from the papyri and ostraca a personal use of apechein as a technical term in commercial receipts and contracts meaning “to have received.”  Developing this lead, J. de Zwaan notes further that nowhere in the papyri is apechein used impersonally or with the sense “it is enough.”  And so, turning to Mk 14:41, he appeals to the context…and concludes that Judas must be the subject of apechei and so translates v.41: “Judas did receive the promised money.  The hour is come, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.”  G.H. Boobyer is carrying this line of interpretation only one step further when he observes that, among the six N.T. occurrences of apechein in the meaning of “to have received” or “to receive”…the last mentioned signifies the receiving of one person by another.  He argues that apechei…is logically connected with the following betrayal and arrest, and that it therefore has the same subject:  namely, Judas…Thus he translates vv.41-42: “You are still asleep?  Still resting?  He is taking possession of (me)! The hour has come!…”[4]

What is more, in Matthew 6: 2, 5, and 16, Jesus gives the word a largely negative connotation when He uses it to refer to the temporal payment of satisfaction that religious hypocrites received.  In other words, when hypocrites do righteous deeds in order to be seen, Jesus says of them, “Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.”

All of this lends some credence to the idea that the word has, in one sense, a negative thrust.  It clearly also has a transactional meaning. It is therefore reasonable to think that something is indeed being said about Judas here.  In short, apechei, in one sense, is an acknowledgment that the price was paid to Judas in full, that his dastardly transaction was complete, that he had paid to betray the Lord Jesus Christ.

Behind Jesus lay His fickle disciples.  Ahead of Him approaches Judas.  It is enough.  Apechei.  Everybody has their part to play, though woe to Judas for the part he played!

It is a statement about Jesus’ complete work.

Yet the transactional angle is given another turn by Jesus’ connecting it with the idea of “the hour.”

^41c It is enough; the hour has come.

Jesus had a keen sense of His mission and of His time.  He had spoken before of His “hour.”  In John 2, at the wedding of Cana, Jesus’ mother called upon Him to help with the problem of the wine that had run out.  Jesus’ response strikes us as surprising in its curtness.

⁴ And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”

My hour has not yet come!  What can this mean?  What was Jesus’ hour?  Surely it refers to His revelation of Himself in His saving work on the cross and empty tomb.  It refers, in other words, to the completion of His mission, to the reason why He came.  We have also seen Jesus avoid death before, not, certainly, because of any cowardice on His part, but rather because His hour had not yet come.  Paul, in Galatians 4, links the fulfillment of God’s time with Christ’s saving work.

⁴ But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, ⁵ to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

Thus, apechei is connected with the coming of Jesus’ hour.  How interesting is it, then, to think of the transactional nature of the word in connection with the hour of Christ’s saving work!  David Garland writes of the word:

The verb translated “Enough!” (apechei, 14:41) is difficult.  Jesus seems to refer to the disciples’ sleep, but little evidence supports this usage of apechei.  More frequently the verb is used in a commercial sense, to mean “paid in full,” “the account is closed” (see Matt. 6:2, 5, 16; Luke 6:24; Phil. 4:18).[5]

Holleran likewise writes that “the suggestion has also been made that it be taken in its technical commercial sense, but impersonally: “it is receipted in full,” “the account is closed.”[6]

Ah!  The account is closed!  How beautiful!  Jesus, enigmatically, is saying many things, but this reference to full payment in connection with the hour of His saving work speaks of the payment that His hour would make for lost humanity!  Nobody put this truth more beautifully than Paul in Colossians 2 when he wrote:

¹³ And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, ¹⁴ by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

All sin is debt.  In violating God’s eternal law, sin creates a debt that we can never get out from under.  We suffocate beneath its demands.  We stand before God as debtors because of our own willing participation in our crimes against Him, our sins.  But when His hour had come, Christ laid down His life on the cross and, in doing so, he nailed “the record of debt that stood against us” to the cross and made satisfaction before the Father for it and us.

Apechei!

The account is closed!

Payment has been made!

All praise the lamb who was slain!

Apechei, this word that cannot be translated…but this word we so desperately need!  It is enough.  He is enough!

 

[1] https://www.rocketlanguages.com/blog/20-of-the-worlds-most-beautiful-untranslatable-words/

[2] Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament. Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=MqpJCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT272&dq=%22apechei%22+%22Mark+14:41%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjxhZnxtcTYAhUBLyYKHbupBtIQ6AEIQzAE#v=onepage&q=%22apechei%22%20%22Mark%2014%3A41%22&f=false

[3] Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament. (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901), p.228.

[4] J. Warren Holleran, The Synoptic Gethsemane. Analecta Gregoriana. Vol. 191, Sectio B, n.61 (Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1973), p.55-56.

[5] David E. Garland, Mark. The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998), Logos.

[6] J. Warren Holleran, p.56.