1. They leave the Stone Table (Jerusalem) for the Fords of Beruna (Kidron Valley and Gethsemane), where they would sleep. Aslan would return to the Stone Table alone, while His followers remain sleeping (or scattered – it’s not an exact parallel) behind.
2. Aslan puts Peter in charge of the whole group. “You must put your centaurs at such and such a place,” complete with battle plans. Jesus equipped His disciples for carrying out the Great Commission and for spiritual warfare.
3. Aslan is preoccupied with what’s coming. Peter does well, thinking they should camp on the far side of the Fords, but Aslan knows it doesn’t matter. Some enemies aren’t fought with worldly wisdom or weapons.
4. Brief mention of a somber last supper, but nothing more indicative there.
5. Now the women come to the foreground. They follow Aslan while the rest sleep or are scattered. Aslan walks back to the Table, a la Via Dolorosa, stumbling along the way, comforted by women (Luke 23:27).
6. A crowd is gathered to do their worst to Aslan. Different factions of wickedness conspired together to kill Him. See Acts 4:27-28.
7. They bind Him and jeer Him, cut off His mane and mock Him as just another cat. “He was despised and rejected…. oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth” (Isa 53:3, 7). Also Psalm 22, especially verses 12-21. They muzzle Him, much like the crown of thorns on His head.
8. Lewis highlights here, at the dramatic moment, the substitutionary element: “the previous night… it had been Edmund instead of Aslan.”
9. Jadis thinks she has won. She knows no deeper magic than justice. She knows no more than raw power. Once Aslan is out of the way, who can stop her? She can do whatever she wants… The dramatic irony is supreme: her reveling in the very killing which is her ultimate undoing – and it saves Edmund in the process.
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