Luke 22: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Judas agrees to hand Jesus over to the chief priests for money, and Jesus eats the Passover meal with his apostles, giving them bread and a cup and telling them one of them will betray him. He answers their argument about who is greatest, tells Peter he will deny him three times, and then prays in anguish on the Mount of Olives before an armed crowd arrests him. Peter denies knowing him and weeps, the guards mock and beat Jesus, and at daybreak the council questions him about being the Christ and the Son of God and treats his answer as all the testimony they need.

Claim by Claim

1. 22:1
   • The feast of unleavened bread was drawing near.
   • The feast of unleavened bread is called the Passover.
2. 22:2
   • The chief priests and the scribes were seeking how they might kill him.
   • They feared the people.
3. 22:3
   • Satan entered into Judas, called Iscariot.
   • Judas was of the number of the twelve.
4. 22:4
   • Judas went away and talked with the chief priests and the officers.
   • He discussed with them how he might hand Jesus over to them.
5. 22:5
   • They were glad.
   • They agreed to give Judas money.
6. 22:6
   • Judas consented.
   • Judas sought an opportunity to hand Jesus over to them apart from the crowd.
7. 22:7
   • The day of unleavened bread came.
   • On that day the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.
8. 22:8
   • Jesus sent Peter and John.
   • He told them to go and prepare the Passover for them.
   • He said this so that they might eat it.
9. 22:9
   • They asked him where he wanted them to prepare it.
10. 22:10
    • Jesus said that when they entered the city a man carrying a jar of water would meet them.
    • He told them to follow that man into the house he entered.
11. 22:11
    • Jesus told them to say to the master of that house that the Teacher asks where the guest room is.
    • The guest room is where Jesus would eat the Passover with his disciples.
12. 22:12
    • Jesus said the man would show them a large upper room, furnished.
    • Jesus told them to make preparations there.
13. 22:13
    • They went.
    • They found things as he had told them.
    • They prepared the Passover.
14. 22:14
    • When the hour came, Jesus reclined at the table.
    • The twelve apostles reclined with him.
15. 22:15
    • Jesus said to them that he had earnestly desired to eat this Passover with them.
    • He said this desire was before he suffered.
16. 22:16
    • Jesus said he would not eat it any more until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.
17. 22:17
    • Jesus took a cup.
    • He gave thanks.
    • He told them to take it and divide it among themselves.
18. 22:18
    • Jesus said he would not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.
19. 22:19
    • Jesus took bread.
    • He gave thanks.
    • He broke the bread.
    • He gave it to them.
    • He said the bread is his body, which is given for them.
    • He told them to do this in remembrance of him.
20. 22:20
    • Jesus did likewise with the cup after supper.
    • He said that this cup is the new covenant in his blood.
    • He said his blood is poured out for them.
21. 22:21
    • Jesus said the hand of the one betraying him is with him on the table.
22. 22:22
    • Jesus said the Son of man goes as it was determined.
    • Jesus pronounced woe on the man by whom he is betrayed.
23. 22:23
    • They began to question among themselves which of them was going to do this.
24. 22:24
    • A dispute also arose among them.
    • The dispute was about which of them was to be considered the greatest.
25. 22:25
    • Jesus said the kings of the Gentiles lord it over them.
    • He said those who exercise authority over them are called benefactors.
26. 22:26
    • Jesus said his disciples are not to be so.
    • He said the greatest among them should become like the youngest.
    • He said the one who leads should become like the one who serves.
27. 22:27
    • Jesus asked which is greater, the one reclining at the table or the one serving.
    • He said it is the one reclining at the table.
    • He said he is among them as the one who serves.
28. 22:28
    • Jesus said they are the ones who have remained with him in his trials.
29. 22:29
    • Jesus said he confers a kingdom on them.
    • He said his Father conferred a kingdom on him.
30. 22:30
    • Jesus said they will eat and drink at his table in his kingdom.
    • He said they will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
31. 22:31
    • The Lord spoke.
    • He addressed Simon by name twice.
    • He said Satan had demanded to have them.
    • He said Satan's purpose was to sift them like wheat.
32. 22:32
    • Jesus said he had prayed for Simon.
    • He prayed that Simon's faith would not fail.
    • He told Simon that when he had turned back he should strengthen his brothers.
33. 22:33
    • Peter said to him, Lord, he was ready to go with him both to prison and to death.
34. 22:34
    • Jesus said to Peter that the cock would not crow that day until Peter had three times denied knowing him.
35. 22:35
    • Jesus asked them whether they lacked anything when he sent them out without purse, bag, and sandals.
    • They answered that they lacked nothing.
36. 22:36
    • Jesus said that now the one who has a purse should take it.
    • He said likewise the one who has a bag should take it.
    • He said the one who has no sword should sell his garment and buy a sword.
37. 22:37
    • Jesus said that what is written must be accomplished in him.
    • The writing says he was reckoned among transgressors.
    • He said the things concerning him have their end.
38. 22:38
    • They said, Lord, there were two swords there.
    • He said to them that it is enough.
39. 22:39
    • Jesus went out and went to the Mount of Olives.
    • This was his custom.
    • His disciples also followed him.
40. 22:40
    • When he was at the place, he told them to pray that they not enter into temptation.
41. 22:41
    • He withdrew from them about a stone's throw.
    • He knelt down.
    • He prayed.
42. 22:42
    • He addressed God as Father.
    • He asked that, if God were willing, this cup be removed from him.
    • He said that not his own will but God's will should be done.
43. 22:43
    • An angel from heaven appeared to him.
    • The angel strengthened him.
44. 22:44
    • He was in agony.
    • He prayed more earnestly.
    • His sweat became like great drops of blood.
    • The drops fell down to the ground.
45. 22:45
    • He rose from prayer.
    • He came to the disciples.
    • He found them sleeping.
    • They were sleeping from sorrow.
46. 22:46
    • He asked them why they were sleeping.
    • He told them to rise and pray.
    • He said this was so that they would not enter into temptation.
47. 22:47
    • While he was still speaking, a crowd came.
    • The man called Judas was going before them.
    • Judas was one of the twelve.
    • Judas drew near to Jesus to kiss him.
48. 22:48
    • Jesus asked Judas whether he was betraying the Son of man with a kiss.
49. 22:49
    • Those around him saw what was about to happen.
    • They asked, Lord, whether they should strike with the sword.
50. 22:50
    • One of them struck the servant of the high priest.
    • He cut off the servant's right ear.
51. 22:51
    • Jesus answered and said to permit this far.
    • He touched the ear.
    • He healed him.
52. 22:52
    • Jesus spoke to the chief priests, the captains of the temple, and the elders who had come against him.
    • He asked whether they had come out with swords and clubs as against a robber.
53. 22:53
    • He said he was with them daily in the temple.
    • He said they did not stretch out their hands against him then.
    • He said this is their hour and the power of darkness.
54. 22:54
    • They seized him.
    • They led him away.
    • They brought him into the house of the high priest.
    • Peter followed at a distance.
55. 22:55
    • They kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard.
    • They sat down together.
    • Peter sat down among them.
56. 22:56
    • A servant girl saw him sitting by the firelight.
    • She looked intently at him.
    • She said this man also was with him.
57. 22:57
    • Peter denied him.
    • He said, Woman, I do not know him.
58. 22:58
    • After a little while another person saw him.
    • That person said Peter was also one of them.
    • Peter said, Man, I am not.
59. 22:59
    • About an hour later another man insisted.
    • He said that truly this man also was with him.
    • He said the reason was that he is a Galilean.
60. 22:60
    • Peter said, Man, I do not know what you are saying.
    • Immediately, while he was still speaking, the cock crowed.
61. 22:61
    • The Lord turned and looked at Peter.
    • Peter remembered the word of the Lord.
    • The Lord had said to him that before the cock crowed he would deny him three times.
62. 22:62
    • Peter went outside.
    • He wept bitterly.
63. 22:63
    • The men holding Jesus mocked him.
    • They beat him.
64. 22:64
    • They blindfolded him.
    • They struck him on the face.
    • They asked him to prophesy who it was that struck him.
65. 22:65
    • They spoke many other blasphemous things against him.
66. 22:66
    • When day came, the elders of the people, the chief priests, and the scribes assembled.
    • They led him into their council.
67. 22:67
    • They asked whether he is the Christ and told him to tell them.
    • He said that if he told them they would not believe.
68. 22:68
    • He said that if he asked them they would not answer him.
    • He said they would not let him go.
69. 22:69
    • He said that from now on the Son of man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.
70. 22:70
    • They all asked whether he is then the Son of God.
    • He said to them that they say that he is.
71. 22:71
    • They said they had no further need of testimony.
    • They said they themselves had heard it from his own mouth.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

22:1

Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were two observances run together. Passover was a single day, with the lamb killed in the afternoon and eaten that night; the seven days of Unleavened Bread followed, during which no yeast was used or even kept in the house. By this period people commonly used either name for the whole stretch, which is why Luke can say the one "is called" the other.

22:2

The "chief priests" were the senior priestly families who controlled the temple and its revenues, headed by the high priest. The "scribes" were the trained experts in the Law of Moses, men who copied, interpreted and taught it. Their fear of the people had a practical cause: at Passover the city filled with pilgrims, and a crowd that size could turn into a riot.

22:3

The meaning of "Iscariot" is uncertain. It is usually taken as "man of Kerioth," a town in southern Judea, which would make Judas the only one of the twelve who was not a Galilean. Others connect it to an Aramaic word for a hired dagger man, or to a word meaning one who hands another over.

22:4

KJV "captains" refers to the officers of the temple's own police force, made up of Levites. They kept order in the temple courts and had authority to make arrests. They were not Roman soldiers.

22:5

Luke records no sum. The thirty pieces of silver come from Matthew's account; Luke says only that money was agreed.

22:7

Passover lambs were killed in the temple courts on the afternoon before the meal, and each household or group then roasted and ate the animal after sunset. So "the day when the passover must be killed" names one specific afternoon on the calendar.

22:10

A man carrying a water jar was a conspicuous sight, because fetching water was ordinarily the work of women. The instruction works as a recognition signal precisely because such a figure would be easy to pick out in a crowded city.

22:11

KJV "goodman of the house" is old English for the master or owner of the house. "The Master" in the message is a different word entirely: it translates the ordinary term for a teacher, the word a pupil used of his rabbi, and says nothing about ownership.

22:12

Houses of any size had a room on the upper floor or flat roof, reached by an outside stair, which was the usual place to host guests. "Furnished" means already fitted out with the low couches and rugs a formal meal required.

22:14

KJV "he sat down" softens the picture. At a formal meal diners lay on their left side on low couches arranged around a table, propped on one elbow, eating with the right hand. Reclining at Passover was itself significant, since lying down to eat was the posture of free men rather than slaves.

22:15

"With desire I have desired" reproduces a Hebrew way of intensifying a verb by doubling it. It means something like "I have longed with all my heart."

22:16

"God's kingdom" means the time when God rules as king. Jesus said that time was coming.

22:17

The Passover meal was structured around several cups of wine, each with a set blessing spoken over it. Luke mentions a cup here, before the bread, and another after the food in verse 20.

22:18

"The fruit of the vine" is the fixed wording of the Jewish blessing said over wine, and simply means wine.

22:19

Passover bread was unleavened: flat, hard and brittle. Breaking it rather than cutting it was the ordinary way to divide it, and the breaking was part of the household ritual, done with a blessing.

22:20

In 1611 English, "testament" and "covenant" were both used for the same underlying word. A covenant was a formal, binding agreement that set the terms of a relationship between two parties, often sealed with a sacrifice. Calling it "new" takes up the language of Jeremiah 31, which promised a new covenant to replace the one made at Sinai.

22:21

Sharing a table in this culture created an obligation of loyalty between the people eating. That is what makes the image pointed: the betrayer's hand is on the same table as his host's.

22:22

"Son of man" is the expression Jesus regularly uses of himself in the Gospels. In everyday Aramaic it could mean simply "a human being," or serve as a modest way of saying "I," and it also recalls the figure in Daniel 7 who comes on the clouds and is given lasting authority. The phrase carries both possibilities at once, and translators leave it standing rather than choosing. "Woe unto that man" is not a curse pronounced on him but an exclamation of grief and warning: how terrible for him.

22:24

This is not an abstract argument. At a meal, where you reclined marked your rank, with the places nearest the host counting as the most honorable, so a dispute about who was greatest was a dispute you could see on the couches.

22:25

"Gentiles" means the nations other than Israel. "Benefactors" translates a real honorary title, Euergetes in Greek, which several Hellenistic kings attached to their names and which grateful cities voted to rulers and wealthy patrons. The KJV wording "are called benefactors" can mean either that others call them this or that they take the title for themselves.

22:26

In a household the youngest member had the least standing and did the fetching and carrying, so "the younger" is shorthand for the person at the bottom of the order rather than a comment about age.

22:27

KJV "sitteth at meat" means reclining at the table as a guest at dinner. The contrast is between the person being waited on and the person carrying the dishes, a division of rank that in most households was the line between free and enslaved.

22:28

KJV "temptations" here means trials or testings: hard pressure of any kind, not enticement to do wrong. The related word in verses 40 and 46 leans toward a test one might fail, which is why the rendering uses "temptation" there and "trials" here.

22:29

The verb behind "appoint" is the one used for drawing up a will or making a covenant. It carries the sense of formally assigning something to someone, not merely nominating them.

22:30

The twelve tribes were the traditional divisions of Israel, descended from Jacob's twelve sons. "Judging" in Israelite usage meant governing and putting things right, the work of the leaders in the book of Judges, rather than only hearing court cases.

22:31

Sifting is a violent image, not a delicate one. Threshed grain was shaken hard in a sieve or tossed into the wind so the chaff and dirt were driven off. The "you" in "Satan hath desired to have you" is plural in Greek: the request covers all the disciples, though what follows in verse 32 is addressed to Simon alone.

22:32

KJV "when thou art converted" uses "converted" in its plain older sense of turning back or turning around. It is not a technical term for a religious experience. Note also the shift in pronouns: verse 31 is plural, verse 32 is singular, spoken to Simon by himself.

22:34

A rooster crowing was a standard way of marking the hours just before dawn, roughly the last night watch. "Thrice" means three times.

22:35

"Scrip" is an old English word for a traveler's bag, carried over the shoulder for food and belongings. Jesus is recalling the instructions he gave when he sent the disciples out earlier (Luke 9 and 10) with no supplies, on the assumption that people would take them in.

22:36

The outer garment was also a man's blanket at night, so basic that the Law forbade holding one overnight as security for a loan. Telling a man to sell it to buy a sword measures how completely the situation has changed since the earlier missions.

22:37

The quoted line is from Isaiah 53:12. "Transgressors" means lawbreakers, and the word could be used of common criminals. "The things concerning me have an end" does not mean they are stopping; "end" here means completion or fulfillment, the point they were heading toward.

22:38

"It is enough" is as abrupt in Greek as in English and has been read two ways: either two swords are sufficient, or the conversation has gone far enough and should stop. The wording does not settle it.

22:39

The Mount of Olives is the ridge immediately east of Jerusalem, separated from the temple by the Kidron valley and reached by a walk of about a mile. "As he was wont" means as he regularly did.

22:41

A stone's cast is a rough, everyday measure of distance, on the order of twenty to thirty yards: far enough for privacy, close enough to remain in sight.

22:42

In the Hebrew scriptures a "cup" is a common image for the portion handed to a person by God, most often a cup of suffering or of judgment that one is given to drink. Asking for the cup to be removed draws on that usage rather than referring to a cup on the table.

22:43

Verses 43 and 44 are absent from several of the oldest surviving Greek manuscripts of Luke and present in many others, and some early copies mark them as doubtful. Most modern Bibles print them with a note about the uncertainty.

22:44

The KJV keeps a comparison: the sweat was "as it were" great drops of blood, that is, like them in how it fell. The text does not state that it was blood. The Greek word behind "agony" was used for the strain and dread of an athlete before a contest.

22:45

"Sleeping for sorrow" means their grief had exhausted them into sleep, a recognized physical effect of prolonged distress rather than mere carelessness.

22:47

A kiss on the cheek or hand was the normal respectful greeting between a disciple and his teacher. That ordinariness is what makes it usable as a signal to an arresting party in the dark.

22:49

"Smite" simply means strike or hit; it is used again in verses 50, 63 and 64.

22:50

"Servant" here translates the word for a slave. The high priest's household staff would have included many, and this one was evidently part of the group making the arrest.

22:51

"Suffer ye thus far" uses "suffer" in its old sense of allow or permit. The Greek phrase is compressed and genuinely ambiguous: it can mean "let them go this far" (addressed to the disciples), "permit this much" (addressed to the arresting party), or simply "stop, no more of this."

22:52

"Staves" are wooden clubs or staffs. KJV "thief" translates a word meaning an armed robber or bandit, someone who operated with a gang on the roads, and in this period it was also applied to armed insurgents. The complaint is about being taken as a dangerous criminal rather than as a teacher.

22:53

"Your hour" means the short span in which they are permitted to act. "The power of darkness" uses "power" in the sense of authority or jurisdiction, the same word used for an official's right to act.

22:54

The high priest presided over both the temple and the ruling council. His residence would have been a substantial house built around an open central court, which is where Peter ends up in the next verse.

22:55

KJV "hall" does not mean an indoor room. It is the open courtyard at the center of the house, with the living quarters opening onto it. Spring nights in Jerusalem are cold, which is why the household and guards built a fire in it.

22:56

KJV "maid" means a servant girl, most likely a household slave. Her word carried little legal weight, which sharpens the picture of Peter denying the charge to someone with no power over him.

22:59

Galileans were identifiable by their accent: northern pronunciation of Aramaic differed noticeably from the way it was spoken in Judea, and Judeans are known to have mocked it. The man is not guessing from Peter's appearance but from how he talks.

22:61

Because the rooms of such a house opened onto the central courtyard, someone being held or questioned inside could be within sight of the people at the fire.

22:63

"The men that held Jesus" are the guards holding him overnight. What follows in verse 64 is a cruel game: blindfold the prisoner, hit him, and demand that he name who did it, mocking the claim that he is a prophet.

22:64

Blindfolding the prisoner turned the beating into a guessing game: if he could name the man who hit him without seeing, that would prove the prophetic claim. "Prophesy" is used here in the sense of telling what one could not otherwise know.

22:65

KJV "blasphemously" is broader than modern usage. In older English, and in the Greek word behind it, the term covers abusive and slanderous speech against anyone, not only speech against God.

22:66

"Their council" is the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish court in Jerusalem. It numbered around seventy members drawn from the chief priests, the elders (heads of the leading lay families), and the scribes, and met under the high priest's presidency.

22:67

"Christ" is the Greek translation of the Hebrew "Messiah," meaning "anointed one." It is a title rather than a name, and in this period it commonly referred to the king from David's line whom many expected God to raise up.

22:69

The right hand of a king was the place of highest honor and authority beside him. "The power of God" reflects a reverent Jewish habit of naming God indirectly, so "the Power" stands in for the divine name itself. The wording draws on Psalm 110:1 and the scene in Daniel 7:13.

22:70

"Ye say that I am" is as slanted in Greek as it sounds in English. It neither plainly claims the title nor denies it, and can be heard as "that is your way of putting it" or as an affirmative. The council in verse 71 takes it as agreement.

22:71

Jewish law required the agreeing testimony of at least two witnesses to convict anyone of a capital charge. The council's point is that they no longer need to find witnesses because, as they see it, the accused has testified against himself.