Cup

A cup is a drinking vessel, and in Scripture it very often carries the further sense of a person's allotted portion — what is measured out to them to drink, whether good or bad. The text uses the ordinary object plainly enough, as when Jesus faults the scribes and Pharisees for cleaning "the outside of the cup and of the platter" while the inside is full of extortion (Matthew 23:25). Alongside that literal use stands a well-established figurative one: "You prepare a table before me… My cup runs over" pictures abundance and welcome (Psalms 23:5), while "fire, sulfur, and scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup" pictures the wicked's assigned lot (Psalms 11:6). In both cases the cup is the share given, and the drinker receives it rather than fills it.

The most developed use of the image in the Hebrew prophets is the cup of wrath. Jerusalem is addressed as one who has "drunk from Yahweh's hand the cup of his wrath" and drained "the bowl of the cup of staggering" (Isaiah 51:17), and is then promised that the cup will be taken from her hand and given to her tormentors (Isaiah 51:22). Jeremiah is told, "Take this cup of the wine of wrath from my hand, and cause all the nations to whom I send you to drink it" (Jeremiah 25:15) — the cup here is a commission to announce judgment, and drinking it means coming under it. Revelation takes up the same figure for the final judgment, where the wine of God's wrath is "prepared unmixed in the cup of his anger" (Revelation 14:10).

In the Gospels the cup becomes closely tied to Jesus' own vocation. In Gethsemane he prays, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me; nevertheless, not what I desire, but what you desire" (Matthew 26:39; compare Mark 14:36), and when Peter draws the sword he answers, "The cup which the Father has given me, shall I not surely drink it?" (John 18:11). At the supper he takes the cup and says, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you" (Luke 22:20). Paul then uses the image for participation and exclusive allegiance: "You can't both drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons" (1 Corinthians 10:21).

Christian traditions differ over how to read several of these texts. On the supper cup, churches that teach a real presence read the words of Luke 22:20 as consecrating the cup and identifying its contents with the covenant blood, while memorial and symbolic traditions read them as a sign and proclamation of that blood; the historic divide over the cup's meaning, and over who may receive it, follows from that. On Gethsemane, some read the cup chiefly as the wrath of God borne in the place of others, while others stress it as the appointed suffering and death entrusted by the Father, with Jesus' prayer as the model of surrender. Interpreters also differ over how far the cup-of-wrath imagery of Jeremiah and Revelation is literal and how far figurative.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.