Mount of Olives #9

The Mount of Olives is a ridge east of Jerusalem, separated from the city by the Kidron Valley and named for the olive groves that once covered its slopes. It appears repeatedly at pivotal moments in the biblical story, long before it became one of the settings of Jesus’ final week. When David flees Jerusalem during Absalom’s rebellion, Scripture pictures his grief in physical terms: “David went up by the ascent of mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and had his head covered, and he went barefoot: and all the people that was with him covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up” (2 Samuel 15:30).

Teaching, Prayer, and Betrayal

Centuries later Jesus makes the mount’s slopes a frequent retreat during his final days in Jerusalem. Sitting there opposite the Temple, he delivers his extended teaching on the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the age, known as the Olivet Discourse, after his disciples ask him privately when these things will happen (Matthew 24:3). At the foot of the mount lies the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus brings his disciples on the night of his arrest. In anguish, he prays, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39), before Judas arrives with an armed crowd and betrays him with a kiss (Matthew 26:47-50).

Ascension and Return

After his resurrection, Jesus leads his disciples out toward Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, and is taken up into heaven before their eyes while he blesses them (Luke 24:50-51; Acts 1:9). As the disciples stand gazing upward, two angels appear and tell them, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). The mount had already carried prophetic weight from the Old Testament: Zechariah foretold that on the day of the Lord, the Lord’s own feet would stand there, splitting the mountain in two, “and his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east” (Zechariah 14:4).

Today

The Mount of Olives today holds some of Christianity’s most visited sites clustered on a single hillside: the Garden of Gethsemane, with its ancient olive trees, and the adjoining Church of All Nations, built in the twentieth century over the remains of earlier Byzantine and Crusader churches; the Church of the Pater Noster, associated with Jesus’ teaching on prayer; and the Chapel of the Ascension, marking the traditional site of Acts 1. The mount’s western slope also holds an extensive Jewish cemetery, one of the oldest and largest in the world, reflecting a long-held belief, rooted in passages like Zechariah 14, that the resurrection and final judgment will begin there.