My soul is a typical Semitic way of referring to oneself, especially when deep emotions are involved. As indicated in verse 37, the adjective very sorrowful is derived from the same stem as the verb “to be sorrowful,” except that the adjective is a more intensive form. My soul is very sorrowful is translated “My heart is ready to break with grief” by New English Bible. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch uses an idiomatic expression: “On me there lies a burden, which has almost crushed me.” When the sorrow is even to death, the meaning is that it is so great it could even bring on the death of the person. Some translators then add the phrase “I could even die (from the sorrow),” but others use intense expressions such as “crushes” of Good News Translation and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, or sentences such as “the grief that I feel is so great it could overcome (or, destroy) me.”

Remain translates a verb which is used frequently in the Gospel of John (forty times), and often with a figurative sense; Matthew uses the verb only three times (elsewhere 10.11; 11.23), and the meaning is always obvious.

Watch (RSV footnote “keep awake”) is used twice again in the Gethsemane narrative (verses 40, 41); elsewhere in the Gospel it is used in an appeal for alertness for the coming of the Son of Man (24.42, 43; 25.13). Good News Translation has “keep watch with me,” and Barclay has “share my vigil.”

With me is not found in Mark (14.35). Throughout the Gethsemane account Matthew emphasizes the relationship between Jesus and his disciples in a way that Mark does not; note, for example, the phrase “to the disciples” (verses 40, 45), as well as “with them” of verse 36.

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .