Biblion Bible Commentary
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Being in Agony He Prayed
Luke 22:39-46
39 He came out and went, as his custom was, to the Mount of Olives. His disciples also followed him. · WEB
He asks for the cup to be taken away, and an angel comes to strengthen him — and the disciples are asleep from grief.
He came out and went, as his custom was, to the Mount of Olives Luke 22:39.
As his custom was explains how Judas knew where to look. He had slept on that hillside every night of the week Luke 21:37, and the arrangement made in secret for the upper room did not extend to where he went afterward.
The scene is told in the earlier accounts Mark 14:22–42 Matthew 26:36–46. This telling is the shortest and it has two things the others do not.
"Pray that you don't enter into temptation" Luke 22:40. The instruction opens and closes the passage Luke 22:46, and in a book that opened with a wilderness temptation and said the tempter would return until another time Luke 4:13, the word is not casual.
He was withdrawn from them about a stone's throw, and he knelt down and prayed Luke 22:41. The distance is measured, which is this writer's habit. Close enough to be seen; too far to be helped.
"Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done" Luke 22:42.
One prayer here where the others have three, and both halves are real. The request is plain — a man asking for a way out, in the simplest words, having said four times that this must happen. And the second half is not resignation but an act of will made while the will is still running the other way. It is the sentence from the prayer he taught them Luke 11:2.
The cup is what God hands a person to drink Isaiah 51:17, and it is the cup he asked the sons of Zebedee about.
An angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him. Being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground Luke 22:43–44.
These two verses are printed differently in different English Bibles, and they are treated here as they stand in the text before us.
What they record is worth taking slowly. Help comes, and it does not remove the distress — the agony is described after the angel arrives, and the praying gets harder rather than easier. The word is the one used of an athlete's struggle in the ring.
And the sweat is described with care. The account says like great drops of blood falling to the ground, which is a comparison about weight and fall rather than a medical claim. What is being reported is a man under a strain that showed on his body.
When he rose up from his prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping because of grief Luke 22:45.
The last three words are this Gospel's alone and they are an act of mercy toward the eleven. The other accounts record that they slept. This one says why — exhaustion of the kind that follows sustained sorrow, which anyone who has sat up with bad news will recognize. It is not an excuse. It is an explanation, and the writer chose to include it.
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