A Band of Men – Part 1

Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons.  John 18:3 KJV 

And immediately, while He yet spake, cometh Judas, one of the twelve, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders.  Mark 14:43 KJV 

Over the past year or so, I have added a new name to my list of favorite Christian authors. Oh, I still love to read anything Max Lucado writes and I still enjoy the writings of Dr. David Jeremiah and Rabbi Jonathan Cahn but my new favorite Christian author is Rick Renner, ThD.

According to his biography, Pastor Renner spent a good portion of his life pastoring a church in Moscow. He also refers to his extensive travels in the Holy Land. He teaches and writes from the Greek text and much to my delight he is very detail oriented. I love those stories that make the names on the pages of scripture come to life.

After 80+ years of reading the Bible and listening to some of the stories in the Gospels over and over, it is refreshing to hear a new word here and there that is different from the status quo. 

It seems that the more often you hear a story, the less you really listen and you’re just hearing it the same old way with the same old mental pictures. So, when Pastor Rick wrote the story of Judas’ betrayal and Jesus’ arrest, I heard something new when I read that Judas brought a ‘cohort’ (Greek text) of Roman Soldiers. I had always read/heard it was just “a band of men.”  In my mind’s eye, that meant maybe 15-25 soldiers, but how many soldiers are in a cohort?  A cohort can contain 300-600 men, and they were accompanied by officers (Temple Police) of the chief priests and Pharisees. So, on the night of Jesus’ arrest, the hillside near the Garden of Gethsemane was “swarming” with Roman soldiers and police from the Temple Mount. 

Now this sounds like quite a different story to me from the one I thought I knew, and it makes me wonder why the Roman authorities thought they needed so many armed men to arrest just one man – Jesus the Christ! 

Prayer: Father, we praise you for the many ways teachers of “The Word” present the scriptures so that we might get the full meaning of the amazing earthly life story of your Son, Jesus. Amen. 

Judy Welch