<p>14:32- see on Mk. 5:1.</p><p><i>And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples- </i>The Lord often went to this garden (Jn. 18:2), but the record at this point emphasizes its name, meaning 'oil press', a common metaphor for judgment. There the Lord as it were passed through His judgment, and there the disciples had their judgment- and ran away into the darkness condemned. Even though through repentance they were later saved out of that condemnation.&nbsp;</p><p><i>Sit here while I pray</i>- The Greek can equally mean 'stay here'. The separation between the Lord and His people, to go away and pray with His senior followers with Him, clearly was based upon Moses going up into the mountain to pray to God, taking Joshua with him, leaving Israel behind. And like Israel, the disciples failed miserably, and were met with the Lord's rebuke on His return from prayer. The Lord is clearly making the point that He now replaces Moses, and that the new Israel were comprised of those 11 mixed up men of weak faith and very limited understanding. The Greek text here has the Lord saying to the disciples: &ldquo;Sit in this place <i>kathisate autou</i> until going away, I pray there&rdquo;, and then He takes along with him <i>paralambanein</i> Peter. These are the very words used in the Gen. 22 LXX account of Abraham taking Isaac to &lsquo;the cross&rsquo;. Jesus is seeking to encourage Peter to see himself as Isaac, being taken to share in the cross. Now whether Peter discerned this or not, we don&rsquo;t know. But the Lord gave him the potential possibility to be inspired like this. &nbsp;</p><p>He was seeking to help them perceive the similarity with Moses going away to pray, hence His warnings for them&nbsp;<i>not&nbsp;to</i> give way to temptation were asking them to consciously make the effort to not be like the Israel whom Moses left behind when he went away to pray. Of course the Lord could have baldly drawn the similarities between Himself and Moses, but He acted in this way in order to provoke in them the association with Moses, and to realize that they were as Israel, tempted to fall away. And this is His style to the present day. Instead of flashing red lights and words dropping from Heaven, instead we find ourselves set up in situations which recall Biblical situations, and appeal to us to perceive ourselves within that history. That is why daily Bible reading and continual familiarity with the recorded histories of the Bible is so essential, it is all part of the Lord's way of working with us.</p><p>The whole structure of Mark's Gospel seems designed for memorization- the material is arranged in triplets, and the sections have chiastic structures e.g. material arranged in the form ABA, ABCBA, ABCDCBA. Even within the triplets, themes often occur in triplets- the three experiences in Gethsemane (Mk. 14:32-42), Peter's three denials (Mk. 14:66-72), three wrong answers about the identity of Jesus (Mk. 6:14-16; 8:28). The use of triplets and tripilisms is common in folk stories- to aid memorization. We shouldn't be unduly phased by the idea of the early Christians memorizing the Gospels. Even today in the Islamic world, students in religious schools are expected to memorize the entire Koran, which is roughly the same size as the entire New Testament. There are reports of this even being achieved by a seven year old.</p>