Mark 14 Summary: The Night Jesus Was Handed Over

Up to the middle of this chapter Jesus is the one doing things: arranging a room, breaking bread, walking out to pray. Then He says the hour has come, and from that sentence on He is led, questioned, condemned and struck. This Mark 14 summary follows the night He was handed over.

Setting the Stage

Three times on the road to Jerusalem, Jesus had told the twelve men closest to Him exactly what was coming. The religious leaders would condemn Him, He would be handed over to be killed, and after three days He would rise (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34). They did not take it in.

The week that followed was one long argument in the temple, and it ended with Jesus warning those same men to stay awake, because they did not know the hour (Mark 13:33-37). Mark 14 opens two days before Passover, with the chief priests looking for a way to kill Him, and it ends with those watchful men asleep in a garden.

Concise Mark 14 Summary

One Word Summary

• Handed over: the whole chapter turns on Jesus being delivered into other men’s hands.
• Betrayal: by a friend at the table first, then by every one of them.
• Covenant: the one thing He established on the night He was taken.

In One Sentence

Judas sells Jesus to the chief priests, Jesus gives the bread and the cup to His disciples as His body and blood, He prays in Gethsemane while Peter, James and John sleep, and He is arrested and condemned by the high priest for saying who He is while Peter denies Him three times outside.

Theme of Mark 14

Mark 14 is about the Son of God being handed over on purpose. Nothing in this night takes Jesus by surprise: He names the betrayer, He predicts the scattering, He tells Peter how many times he will deny Him, and He walks out to meet the torches.

Running alongside that is a covenant made in His own blood for many, and, underneath both, the collapse of everybody near Him. Every man who promised to stand ran, and the only person who does anything for Him is a woman Mark never names.

Mark 14 Outline

• Mark 14:1-2: The chief priests and scribes look for a way to arrest Jesus without starting a riot.
• Mark 14:3-9: A woman anoints Jesus with costly ointment at Bethany and is criticised for it.
• Mark 14:10-11: Judas Iscariot goes to the chief priests and agrees to betray Him.
• Mark 14:12-16: Two disciples follow a prearranged sign into the city and prepare the Passover.
• Mark 14:17-21: At the table Jesus says one of the twelve will betray Him.
• Mark 14:22-26: Jesus gives the bread and the cup, then they sing and go out to the Mount of Olives.
• Mark 14:27-31: Jesus foretells the scattering and Peter’s three denials, and Peter argues.
• Mark 14:32-42: Jesus prays three times in Gethsemane and finds His disciples asleep three times.
• Mark 14:43-52: Judas arrives with an armed crowd, Jesus is seized, and everyone runs.
• Mark 14:53-65: The council tries Jesus at night, and He tells them plainly who He is.
• Mark 14:66-72: Peter denies Jesus three times in the courtyard and weeps.

Comprehensive Mark 14 Summary

The chief priests had a problem of timing. They wanted Jesus dead and they wanted it done away from the Passover crowds, because a public arrest during the feast could start a riot (Mark 14:1-2).

While they were working on that, Jesus was at a table in Bethany, and a woman broke open a jar of ointment worth close to a year’s wages and poured all of it over His head. The room called it waste.

Jesus called it a good work and told them what she had really done: “she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying” (Mark 14:8). Mark puts Judas going to the chief priests next, offering them the two things money alone could not buy, a private moment and a place, and they were glad to pay for it (Mark 14:10-11).

So Jesus arranged a room they could not be followed to. Two disciples were sent to look for a man carrying a pitcher of water, which was work usually done by women and therefore easy to pick out of a crowd, and everything was where He said it would be (Mark 14:13-16).

At that table He told them the betrayer was one of them, eating out of the same dish, and they went round asking one by one, “Is it I?” (Mark 14:19).

Then, knowing exactly who was in the room, He took the bread and the cup and gave them anyway, at the point in the Passover meal where the bread was shared and the cup of thanksgiving went round. They finished by singing the Hallel, the psalms of praise that closed every Passover.

On the walk out to the Mount of Olives He told them all they would scatter, quoting Zechariah’s struck shepherd, and added that He would go before them into Galilee after He rose (Mark 14:27-28). Peter argued with Him, and argued harder once Jesus named the hour and the number.

In Gethsemane, Jesus asked Peter, James and John to stay awake and pray so they would not fall into temptation, and went a little further to ask the Father for the hour to pass. Three times He came back and found them sleeping. The men He had told to watch met the torches half awake.

Judas kissed Him, a sword came out, an ear came off, and then, as He had said, “they all forsook him, and fled” (Mark 14:50). Peter followed the arresting party at a distance, got as far as the courtyard fire, and sat down among the servants.

Inside, the witnesses could not agree, so the high priest asked Jesus outright whether He was the Christ, and Jesus said yes. They condemned Him for it. Outside, at the same hour, a servant girl asked Peter a far easier question, and he said he had never known the man.

The Lord’s Supper

Mark gives the words almost bare, and the church has repeated them ever since.

And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body. And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank of it. And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many. Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.

Mark 14:22-25

It happened inside a Passover meal, so the bread and the cup He picked up already carried meaning: Israel had eaten this meal every year to remember being brought out of Egypt. Jesus gave them a new one. The word He used for the cup, “my blood of the new testament”, reaches back to Exodus 24:8, where Moses sealed the old agreement between God and Israel by sprinkling blood on the people.

Verse 25 looks the other way. On the night He is arrested He talks about a day when He will drink again in the kingdom of God, which means He expects to be there.

Observations from Mark 14

Everything Jesus said would happen that night happened in the same chapter (Mark 14:18, 27, 30)

He said one of them eating with Him would betray Him, and Judas arrived with the crowd (Mark 14:43-45). He said they would all be scattered, and they all ran (Mark 14:50). He told Peter the number and the deadline, and Peter hit both (Mark 14:68-72). Jesus is the one being seized here, and He had already described the whole night before any of it started.

He hands them a cup, and then asks the Father to take one away (Mark 14:23, 14:36)

Forty verses apart on the same night, Jesus holds out a cup to His disciples and then asks God to remove a cup from Him. In the Old Testament a cup is often a picture of God’s anger against sin (Psalm 75:8; Isaiah 51:17), and many Bible teachers read the cup of Gethsemane that way.

The New Testament does not say the two cups in this chapter are the same cup, so nothing should be built on that. What stands on the page is that He gave one freely and asked to be spared the other, and then drank it.

Peter had already moved three times before his first denial (Mark 14:54)

Mark records the sequence in order: Peter “followed him afar off”, then he went into the palace of the high priest, then “he sat with the servants, and warmed himself at the fire”. None of those is a denial.

By the time the servant girl spoke, he was at a distance, in the wrong house, and warming his hands among the men who were about to strike Jesus, since Mark uses the same word for those servants and for the officers in verse 65.

Jesus borrows the words of a psalm to say how bad it is (Mark 14:34)

In Gethsemane He tells the three, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.” Psalm 42:5 asks, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me?” and the wording of Mark 14:34 sits very close to it.

If Jesus is drawing on that psalm, as many hold, then the man asking God to take the cup away is praying in the language Israel already used for grief, which is the same language available to anyone reading it.

Peter denies Jesus on both sides of Jesus saying who He is (Mark 14:54, 62, 66-72)

Mark puts Peter in the courtyard in verse 54, then leaves him there for eleven verses while the trial runs, then comes back to him in verse 66. In the middle, under oath and with nothing to gain, Jesus answers the question about His identity plainly.

On either side of that answer stands a man saying he never knew Him. The truest thing said in this chapter is said by the prisoner, and the man who loved Him most is denying it in the yard.

Christ Connection

The council condemned Jesus for blasphemy, and the sentence they condemned Him for was true. Asked directly whether He was the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, He said, “I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62). Through this Gospel He had held that back, silencing demons and telling people not to speak (Mark 1:34; 8:30; 9:9).

Here, with His life on it, He says it out loud. And He says it on the days when the Passover lambs were being killed in the temple, having just called His own blood “shed for many” (Mark 14:24), which is how Isaiah describes the servant who bears the sin of many (Isaiah 53:11-12) and what Paul means by calling Christ our passover (1 Corinthians 5:7).

The rest of the chapter keeps landing on passages written centuries earlier:

• Betrayed by a friend at the table (Mark 14:18). Psalm 41:9 says, “Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.” Jesus applies it to Judas in John 13:18.
• The struck shepherd and the scattered sheep (Mark 14:27). Jesus quotes Zechariah 13:7 Himself and tells them it is about that night.
• The silence before His accusers (Mark 14:61). Isaiah 53:7 says of the servant, “he opened not his mouth”, and 1 Peter 2:23 says Jesus did not answer back but trusted Himself to God who judges rightly.
• The spitting and the blows (Mark 14:65). Isaiah 50:6 says, “I hid not my face from shame and spitting.”
• The blood of the new covenant (Mark 14:24). Jeremiah 31:31-34 promised an agreement under which God would remember sin no more, and Hebrews 9:15 names Jesus as the one who made it.
• The prayer in the garden (Mark 14:35-36). Hebrews 5:7-8 describes Him offering up prayers with strong crying and tears, and learning obedience through what He suffered.

When, Where, and Why

• When: The last two days before the crucifixion, during Passover week, approximately AD 30 to 33. The events from verse 12 to the end run from Thursday evening into the early hours of Friday morning.
• Where: Bethany, a village about two miles from Jerusalem, for the anointing. An upper room inside the city for the Passover meal. Gethsemane, an olive press on the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives, for the prayer and the arrest. The high priest’s house and its open courtyard for the trial and the denials.
• Why: Mark has already told his readers three times that the Son of man would be delivered up (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34). This is the chapter where he shows it happening, and shows that Jesus walked into every part of it already knowing.

Key Verses

This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.

Mark 14:24

The words that carry the weight are “my blood of the new testament”. Jesus is not describing His death as something about to be done to Him; He is calling it the founding of an agreement between God and people, and He says it hours early, at a meal, to the men who are about to run.

And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.

Mark 14:36

Abba is the Aramaic word a child used for their father. In the worst hour of His life Jesus does not address God as a distant judge but by the closest name available, and then asks for the thing He wants without pretending He does not want it, and submits anyway.

And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.

Mark 14:62

This is the plainest thing Jesus says about Himself in the whole of Mark, and He says it to men who are looking for a reason to kill Him. He adds two pictures from the Old Testament, the one seated at God’s right hand in Psalm 110:1 and the Son of man coming with the clouds in Daniel 7:13, and tells the court that they will see it.

Key Lessons from Mark 14

• Jesus measured the woman at Bethany by what she was able to give rather than by what the jar cost (Mark 14:8).
• The men who promised loudest that night are the same men who ran (Mark 14:31, 50).
• Jesus told them to watch and pray before the testing arrived, not during it (Mark 14:38).
• Jesus promised to meet His disciples in Galilee before a single one of them had failed Him (Mark 14:28).

For a fuller study of what this chapter teaches, read our companion article: 32 Life-Changing Lessons from Mark 14.

Bible Study Questions

1. In Mark 14:8, what does Jesus say the woman has actually done, and how is that different from what the people in the room thought she was doing?
2. Jesus calls the cup “my blood of the new testament” in Mark 14:24. What earlier agreement between God and Israel does that language point back to, and what has changed?
3. Mark 14:38 tells the disciples to watch and pray so they will not enter into temptation. Where in your week would obeying that command before the pressure arrives make a difference?
4. Read Mark 14:28 and Mark 14:72 together. What had Jesus already promised before Peter denied Him?
5. Judas and Peter both turn on Jesus in this chapter, and Mark records the two differently. What does the text say about each of them, and what does it not say?
6. In Mark 14:62 Jesus answers a question He had been avoiding all through this Gospel. Why do you think He answered it here?

Mark 14 Paraphrased

Passover was two days away. The chief priests wanted Jesus dead. They did not want to take Him during the feast in case the crowds rioted.

Jesus was eating at a house in Bethany. A woman came in with a jar of very costly perfume. She broke it open and poured it on His head.

Some people there were angry. They said the perfume could have been sold for a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.

Jesus told them to leave her alone. She had done a good thing. She had got His body ready for burial, and people would tell her story wherever the good news was preached.

Then Judas went to the chief priests. He offered to hand Jesus over. They were pleased and promised him money.

It was time to get the Passover meal ready. Jesus sent two disciples into the city. He told them to follow a man carrying a jar of water.

That man would lead them to a house with a large upstairs room. It happened just as He said.

That evening Jesus sat down with the twelve. He told them one of them would hand Him over. They were upset.

Each one asked, “Is it me?” Jesus said it was one of the twelve, one eating from the same bowl.

While they ate, Jesus took bread. He gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them. He said it was His body. Then He took a cup.

He gave thanks and passed it round, and they all drank. He said it was His blood, poured out for many. He said He would not drink wine again until He drank it in God’s kingdom.

They sang a song and walked out to the Mount of Olives. Jesus said they would all leave Him that night. But He would rise, and He would go ahead of them to Galilee.

Peter said he never would leave. Jesus told him that before the rooster crowed twice, Peter would say three times that he did not know Him. Peter argued. So did the others.

They came to a garden called Gethsemane. Jesus took Peter, James and John with Him. He was in great distress.

He told them He was so sad He could die, and asked them to stay awake. He went a little way off and fell on the ground.

He asked His Father to take the cup away, but said He wanted God’s will and not His own. He came back and found them asleep. He told Peter to stay awake and pray.

He went and prayed the same words again. Twice more He came back, and twice more they were sleeping. The third time He said the hour had come.

Judas arrived with a crowd carrying swords and clubs. He had told them the man he kissed was the one. He kissed Jesus, and they grabbed Him. Someone pulled out a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant.

Jesus asked them why they came armed, when He had taught in the temple every day. Then all His friends ran away. A young man was following in a linen sheet. They grabbed him, and he left the sheet and ran off with nothing on.

They took Jesus to the high priest. All the leaders were there. Peter followed a long way behind. He went into the courtyard and sat with the guards by the fire.

The leaders looked for evidence to kill Jesus and could not find any. Many people lied about Him, but their stories did not match.

The high priest stood up and asked Jesus to answer them. Jesus said nothing. Then the high priest asked if He was the Christ, the Son of God.

Jesus said, “I am.” He said they would see Him at God’s right hand, coming on the clouds.

The high priest tore his own clothes and said that was enough. They all agreed He should die. Some spat on Him. They covered His face and hit Him.

Down in the courtyard, a servant girl looked at Peter. She said he had been with Jesus. He said he did not know what she meant.

He moved to the gateway, and a rooster crowed. She saw him again and told the others he was one of them. He said no again.

A little later the men there said he must be, because he sounded like a man from Galilee. Peter swore that he did not know Jesus at all. Then the rooster crowed a second time. Peter remembered what Jesus had said, and he broke down and cried.

Frequently Asked Questions

Mark 14, The Full Text (KJV)

At 72 verses, Mark 14 is the longest chapter in Mark’s Gospel. Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 After two days was the feast of the passover, and of unleavened bread: and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft, and put him to death.

2 But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar of the people.

3 And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head.

4 And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made?

5 For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her.

6 And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me.

7 For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.

8 She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.

9 Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.

10 And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went unto the chief priests, to betray him unto them.

11 And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. And he sought how he might conveniently betray him.

12 And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the passover, his disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou that we go and prepare that thou mayest eat the passover?

13 And he sendeth forth two of his disciples, and saith unto them, Go ye into the city, and there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water: follow him.

14 And wheresoever he shall go in, say ye to the goodman of the house, The Master saith, Where is the guestchamber, where I shall eat the passover with my disciples?

15 And he will shew you a large upper room furnished and prepared: there make ready for us.

16 And his disciples went forth, and came into the city, and found as he had said unto them: and they made ready the passover.

17 And in the evening he cometh with the twelve.

18 And as they sat and did eat, Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, One of you which eateth with me shall betray me.

19 And they began to be sorrowful, and to say unto him one by one, Is it I? and another said, Is it I?

20 And he answered and said unto them, It is one of the twelve, that dippeth with me in the dish.

21 The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him: but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had never been born.

22 And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.

23 And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank of it.

24 And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.

25 Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.

26 And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives.

27 And Jesus saith unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.

28 But after that I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee.

29 But Peter said unto him, Although all shall be offended, yet will not I.

30 And Jesus saith unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice.

31 But he spake the more vehemently, If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise. Likewise also said they all.

32 And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray.

33 And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy;

34 And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch.

35 And he went forward a little, and 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 unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.

37 And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour?

38 Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.

39 And again he went away, and prayed, and spake the same words.

40 And when he returned, he found them asleep again, (for their eyes were heavy,) neither wist they what to answer him.

41 And he cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough, the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

42 Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand.

43 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 priest and the scribes and the elders.

44 And he that betrayed him had given them a token, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he; take him, and lead him away safely.

45 And as soon as he was come, he goeth straightway to him, and saith, Master, master; and kissed him.

46 And they laid their hands on him, and took him.

47 And one of them that stood by drew a sword, and smote a servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear.

48 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Are ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and with staves to take me?

49 I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and ye took me not: but the scriptures must be fulfilled.

50 And they all forsook him, and fled.

51 And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him:

52 And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.

53 And they led Jesus away to the high priest: and with him were assembled all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes.

54 And Peter followed him afar off, even into the palace of the high priest: and he sat with the servants, and warmed himself at the fire.

55 And the chief priests and all the council sought for witness against Jesus to put him to death; and found none.

56 For many bare false witness against him, but their witness agreed not together.

57 And there arose certain, and bare false witness against him, saying,

58 We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.

59 But neither so did their witness agree together.

60 And the high priest stood up in the midst, and asked Jesus, saying, Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee?

61 But he held his peace, and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?

62 And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.

63 Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we any further witnesses?

64 Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death.

65 And some began to spit on him, and to cover his face, and to buffet him, and to say unto him, Prophesy: and the servants did strike him with the palms of their hands.

66 And as Peter was beneath in the palace, there cometh one of the maids of the high priest:

67 And when she saw Peter warming himself, she looked upon him, and said, And thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth.

68 But he denied, saying, I know not, neither understand I what thou sayest. And he went out into the porch; and the cock crew.

69 And a maid saw him again, and began to say to them that stood by, This is one of them.

70 And he denied it again. And a little after, they that stood by said again to Peter, Surely thou art one of them: for thou art a Galilaean, and thy speech agreeth thereto.

71 But he began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not this man of whom ye speak.

72 And the second time the cock crew. And Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him, Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. And when he thought thereon, he wept.