John 18:1

"These words" evidently refer to all of what Jesus had said in chapters 13-17 all of which He may have spoken in the upper room. The Kidron Valley formed the eastern boundary of Jerusalem. The Kidron was also a wadi or dry streambed that contained water only when it rained hard. The Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane lay across the Kidron to the east. John only mentioned Gethsemane as the site of Jesus’ arrest. He did not record Jesus’ praying there (cf. Matthew 26:30; Matthew 26:36-46; Mark 14:26; Mark 14:32-42; Luke 22:39-46). The verbs that John used to describe Jesus entering and leaving Gethsemane suggest that it may have been a walled garden (cf. John 18:13).

"The present Gethsemane is only some seventy steps square, and though its old gnarled olives cannot be those (if such there were) of the time of Jesus, since all trees in that valley-those also which stretched their shadows over Jesus-were hewn down in the Roman siege, they may have sprung from the old roots, or from the odd kernels." [Note: Edersheim, 2:533.]

The parallels between Jesus’ experiences and David’s at this point are striking. Both men crossed the Kidron having been rejected by their nation and betrayed by someone very close to them, and hangings followed both incidents (cf. 2 Samuel 15; 2 Samuel 18:9-17; Matthew 27:3-10; John 18:1-3).