By Bobby Graham
When the Bible talks about “sweat like great drops of blood,” is it legitimate blood?
The writer of the New Testament who mentioned this aspect of Jesus’s suffering was Luke. In Luke 22:44, we find this record:
And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. And His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
Observe that the mention of Jesus’s sweat, whatever its aspect, occurs in connection with His agony. It is not lost that Luke the Beloved Physician (Col. 4:14) was the writer who made this information available to us. His increasing agony (meaning of the verb here, “becoming) was highlighted by the doctor as evident in His sweat, which was like large clots (thromboi) of blood.
Having this information available to us does not resolve our difficulty of ascertaining the meaning of Luke’s statement. It is possible that Luke speaks metaphorically, meaning that Jesus “sweated blood.” It is also possible that the doctor means that Jesus actually sweated large drops which were like blood clots. Actually, biblical commentators and medical scientists can be found on the side of this explanation.
While I am not certain about this matter, it appears probable that Jesus’s sweat was like blood in some respect. At least in the size of the sweat drops was this the case, for Luke said they were “great,” meaning large. It is also possible that His sweat drops were tinged red with blood, for such is the condition about which medical scientists have spoken in this case. They have cited others in a list of people experiencing the condition called hematidrosis (also called hematohidrosis), a rare condition resulting from great stress of mind causing blood vessels to rupture, thereby bleeding into those glands producing the sweat and coloring it red. I know that Luke did not mention the color of those sweat drops, but he said they were like blood. Simple largeness in size would not have made them “like” blood as they oozed from His pores. There must also have been some other similarity, like color, to make the connection to blood.
Let us use this occasion to recall that Jesus took upon Himself human nature (John 1:1-14; 1 John 1:1), thereby making Himself prone to such illnesses, weariness, emotions, pains, hunger, thirst as other humans knew (Luke 22:44; John 4:6; Matt. 23:37-39; 26:37-38; Heb. 5:7-8; Matt. 4:2; John 19:28). The Holy Spirit gave such experiences as these to show Christ’s qualifications to serve as our sympathetic High Priest (Heb. 2:17-18; 4:14-16). Only because He lived in the flesh could He suffer, bleed, and die in the flesh to atone for our sins (Isa. 53:3-6; Heb. 9:13-15, 22; 10:4).
