"Just as he was"

Hessische Landesbibliothek, MS 1640

"And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was" (Mk 4:36 (N)RSV, italics mine).

1.  without further ado; i.e. without first, say, returning "home" to Capernaum (3:19; 2:1; 1:21).

2.  as per the emergency plan (3:9).  But the plan had already been executed, for Jesus had long since stepped into the boat and sat down (4:1).

3.  as per an improvisation on the emergency plan (3:9).  This, with no. 1, seems to me the most likely historical sense.  Jesus, following the emergency plan, had long since stepped into the boat and sat down (4:1).  The disciples, by contrast, are with the crowd on land.  Jesus says, "'Let us go across to the other side.'"  They leave the crowd (4:36 and two variants), step into the boat, and "t[ake] him with them in [it], just as he [had been]" (4:36).  Before long he lays down in the stern and falls fast asleep.  Hence:

4.  exhausted as he was (4:38).  Exhausted, pressed by the crowd (3:9), and threatened—albeit in sleep—by the storm (4:37).  I.e., as supremely vulnerable as he was.  This seems to me to be a legitimate figurative sense, a sense that stands then in marked contrast with the flash of divinity displayed from v. 39 (cf. 1:27).  "just as he was," i.e. fully man and, as it turned out, fully God.