Bible Dictionary
Bloody sweat
Bloody sweat describes the extraordinary agony of Jesus in Gethsemane. Luke records that His sweat became like great drops of blood as He prayed before His arrest.
Definition
Bloody sweat describes the extraordinary physical accompaniment of Jesus’ agony at Gethsemane. The expression may mean that His perspiration fell like clots or drops of blood, or may describe actual exudation of blood; the supplied material presents both explanations.
Biblical Usage
The phrase occurs in the account of Jesus praying in Gethsemane before His arrest and serves as a sign or token of His great agony.
Historical Background
The passage is absent from some manuscripts according to the supplied material. Older interpreters commonly understood the wording as a comparison, while the exceptional agony of Christ was considered capable of producing a unique physical condition.
Scripture References
Related Figures
Historical Bible Dictionaries
Easton's Bible Dictionary
The sign and token of our Lord’s great agony (Luke 22:44).
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)
<p>(swet hosei thromboi haimatos): Described in Lu 22:44 as a physical accompaniment of our Lord's agony at Gethsemane (on the passage, which is absent in some manuscripts, see Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in Greek). Many old writers take this to mean that the perspiration dropped in the same manner as clots of blood drop from a wound, regarding the Greek word prefixed as expressing merely a comparison as in Mt 28:3, where leukon hos chion means "white as snow." Cases of actual exudation of blood are described in several of the medieval accounts of stigmatization, and Lefebvre describes the occurrence of something similar in his account of Louise Lateau in 1870. For references to these cases see the article "Stigmatization" in Encyclopedia Britannica (11th edition), XXII, 550. It is perhaps in favor of the older interpretation that the word used by Aeschylus for drops of blood is stagon (Agam. 1122) and by Euripides stalagmos, not thromboi. None of the instances given by Tissot (Traite des nerfs, 279), or Schenck (Observ. med., III, 45:5), can be said to be unimpeachable; but as the agony of our Lord was unexampled in human experience, it is conceivable that it may have been attended with physical conditions of a unique nature.</p><p>Alex. Macalister</p>