(40-46) When he was at the place.--See Notes on Matthew 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-38. It is noticeable that St. Luke neither gives the name Gethsemane, nor describes it as "a garden." It is with him simply "the place" to which our Lord was wont to resort.

Pray that ye enter not into temptation.--The words are suggestive (1) as throwing light on the meaning of the "temptation" clause in the Lord's Prayer, which the disciples were now to use in all the fulness of its meaning; (2) as indicating that our Lord was Himself about to enter on a time of temptation, to which He was called, and from which He would not shrink. And yet even He, too, as the sequel shows, could utter a prayer which was in substance identical with that which He taught the disciples to use.

Verse 40. - Pray that ye enter not into temptation. The temptation in question was the grave sin of moral cowardice into which so soon the disciples fell. Had they prayed instead of yielding to the overpowering sense of weariness and sleeping, they would never have forsaken their Master in his hour of trial and danger.

22:39-46 Every description which the evangelists give of the state of mind in which our Lord entered upon this conflict, proves the tremendous nature of the assault, and the perfect foreknowledge of its terrors possessed by the meek and lowly Jesus. Here are three things not in the other evangelists. 1. When Christ was in his agony, there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. It was a part of his humiliation that he was thus strengthened by a ministering spirit. 2. Being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. Prayer, though never out of season, is in a special manner seasonable when we are in an agony. 3. In this agony his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down. This showed the travail of his soul. We should pray also to be enabled to resist unto the shedding of our blood, striving against sin, if ever called to it. When next you dwell in imagination upon the delights of some favourite sin, think of its effects as you behold them here! See its fearful effects in the garden of Gethsemane, and desire, by the help of God, deeply to hate and to forsake that enemy, to ransom sinners from whom the Redeemer prayed, agonized, and bled.And when he was at the place,.... In the garden, at Gethsemane, which was at the foot of the Mount of Olives;

he said unto them; to the disciples, as the Persic version reads;

pray that ye enter not into temptation. This, according to the Evangelists Matthew and Mark, was said to them after he had prayed the first time, and returned to the disciples, and found them sleeping; See Gill on Matthew 26:41.