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Bible Dictionaries
Cedron
Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance And Dictionary
or So called from Kedar, black, dark, gloomy. This was the memorable brook over which the great Redeemer passed, to enter the garden of Gethsemane, the night before his sufferings and death. Here, indeed, Jesus often walked, for he loved the sacred haunts of that hallowed ground, where he knew his last agony, in the conflicts with Satan, was to take place. (John 18:1-2) The brook itself lay in a valley to the east of the city, between Jerusalem and the mount of Olives; and it emptied itself in the dead Sea. Into this black and foul brook ran all the filth of the sacrifices from the temple; and most probably, like other sinks, for the most part, what was conveyed thither from the temple remained stagnant until the swelling rain carried off the contents. This was the ever to be remembered brook Cedron, concerning which it was prophesied of the Lord Jesus, a thousand years before his incarnation, that "he should drink of the brook in the way." (Psalms 110:7) Some, in reading that and connecting with it in the mind, the hot country of Palestine, might conceive it to have a pleasant thing to a dry thirsty traveller to drink of the brook in his way. And no doubt, of all earthly delights, the cooling streams in a sultry desert is the most grateful. But Cedron was no cooling, limpid, pure stream; but dark, and black, and filthy. When Jesus, therefore, is said to drink of it, the meaning is, that all our uncleanness was put on him. Here Jesus passed through all that torrent of divine wrath against sin, when "he that knew no sin, became sin and a curse for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Corinthians 5:21) Here it was, that all the waves and billows of JEHOVAH'S just anger, for his broken law, went over the head of Christ, as the Surety and Representative of his people; and which brought forth those cries of the Glory-man, Christ Jesus, which, by the Spirit of prophecy, was recorded of him. (Psalms 22:1-31 and Psalms 69:1-36) Such was Cedron. And this brook was rendered memorable in allusion to Christ, when David, as a type of Jesus, passed it in his ascent to the mount of Olives, when fleeing from his kingdom with his followers barefoot, his head covered, and weeping, and sorrowing, at the instance of Absalom, his unnatural son. (2 Samuel 15:30) Thus Jesus passed Cedron under the deepest of all possible sorrows, when, with his few faithful disciples, he entered the garden from the foul conspiracy of Judas, and the high priest, and elders of his people. And God the Holy Ghost was graciously pleased to make Cedron again memorable, as typical of the Lord Jesus Christ, when Asa, Hezekiah, and Josiah, burnt and destroyed the idols of the land, and cast the accursed things of the groves into this brook. As if to shew, by type, that the brook Jesus, in after ages, was to drink of, should be the common receiver of all our idols, and all our uncleanness, when, by his gracious undertaking, that blessed promise of a covenant God in Christ was to be fulfilled: "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness, and from all your idols." (Ezekiel 36:25. See also 2 Chronicles 15:16; 2Ch 30:14 and 2 Kings 23:4-6) Such then was, and is, Cedron. Oh! the blessedness of beholding it thus explained to us by God the Holy Ghost, in reference to the Lord Jesus Christ! Here would my soul take frequent wing, and by faith, alight near the hallowed spot. And if Jesus oftimes resorted thither with his disciples, here, methinks, would my soul delight to roam, and see the place, and the memorable brook Jesus drank of by the way, See Gethsemane.
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Hawker, Robert D.D. Entry for 'Cedron'. Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance and Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/pmd/c/cedron.html. London. 1828.
