Luke 22:46 , “And said unto them, Why are you asleep? rise and pray, lest you enter into temptation.”
It was the stillest part of the night. The weight of the moment was already thick in the air, but not everyone could feel it. Not yet. The breeze would’ve been cool on the Mount of Olives, but the trees were holding their breath. Yeshua had gone aside to pray again, He’d already been there once, and then again, kneeling, pressing His forehead to the dirt, pouring out His spirit before the Father. And while the others slept, He was already being pressed, like the very olives on that Mount, until blood came out of Him with the sweat.
He rose, already knowing what was coming down the hill, lanterns, armor, betrayal, and yet He turned back to His sleeping friends, and He said something that the Gospel writers preserved in Greek, but which He would have spoken aloud in Aramaic.
Let’s begin there, with the words He actually said..
“Mena yishanīn antūn? Qūmū waṣallū, d’la tēlālū l’nisyōna.”
And just like that, the whole world is in that sentence.
“Mena yishanīn antūn?”
Why are you sleeping?
That word mena, it’s not sharp, it’s not cold. It’s the kind of question you ask when your heart is breaking. It can mean why, but also what is this?How can it be? There’s a tremble in it. He’s not rebuking them; He’s aching for them. They weren’t sinful in this moment, they were asleep out of sorrow (Luke 22:45), the Word says. The Aramaic word yishanīn is plural, all of youare sleeping. And He speaks it tenderly: antūn, you, My friends, My disciples. My heart.
This is not theology. This is a man trying to wake His beloved from danger.
“Qūmū waṣallū”
Get up. Pray.
Now this, this is command language. But not military. This is rescue language. Qūmū comes from the root qum, the same Hebrew root used when God told the prophets to arise, when the dead were raised, when strength was summoned from weakness. “Stand up. Come to attention. Not your legs, your soul.”
And ṣallū, from the verb ṣlā, the Aramaic for pray, plead, intercede. It’s not a soft bedtime prayer. This is the word used when your spirit is calling out to heaven in desperation, wrestling, weeping, surrendering. He wasn’t saying “Repeat words.” He was saying, “Do what I just did. Dig down to the bottom of yourself and meet the Father there.”
Because the hour was no longer future, it was here. And the next words make that terrifyingly clear:
“D’la tēlālū l’nisyōna.”
So that you don’t enter into temptation.
Now let’s take this slowly.
D’la – so that not. It introduces the whole purpose of the warning.
Tēlālū – from the verb ‘alal, to enter into, to go inside of something. This is not brushing against a temptation. This is being swallowed by it, walking right into it without armor, without prayer, without strength.
And the word nisyōna, this is the Aramaic word that corresponds to the Greek peirasmos (πειρασμός), which we see throughout the New Testament. It means not merely a temptation to sin, but a testing, a sifting, a trial that reveals the truth of what’s inside you.This was the very thing Jesus had just warned Peter about back in verse 31:
“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hasdesired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat.”
That word “sift” in Greek is siniazō, a rare and violent term. It means to shake through a sieve, to separate chaff from grain. Satan had asked to shake them, to expose them. And Yeshua was giving them the one thing that could brace their hearts: prayer.
Not performance. Not cleverness. Not swords. Prayer.
Because the temptation wasn’t something that might happen next week. It was already marching toward them with torches.
And here’s where we need to look at how Jesus faced the same moment.
Back in Luke 22:44, it says,
“And being in agony He prayed more earnestly: and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”
The word “agony” there is agonia (ἀγωνία), from the Greek word for struggle, contest, battle. He wasn’t just distressed. He was wrestling with the full weight of what was coming, and praying more earnestly, the Greek says ektenesteron (ἐκτενέστερον), from ektenēs, meaning stretched-out, unrelenting, fervent. He didn’t relax into peace. He prayed Himself into strength.
And His sweat became thromboi haimatos, clots of blood. This is a real condition, hematidrosis, where extreme stress bursts the capillaries and blood leaks into the sweat. That’s not poetic. That’s body-breaking anguish. And still… He chose to pray through it.
This is how He overcame the nisyōna, the trial.
So when He tells the disciples “Qūmū waṣallū”, He’s not asking anything He hasn’t just done. He’s showing them that victory in the trial starts beforethe trial arrives.
But they slept right through it. And so when the pressure came, they cracked. Peter pulled a sword in panic and cut off a man’s ear (John 18:10).
Then, hours later, when a servant girl asked him if he knew Yeshua, he actually denied Him… three times! And when the rooster crowed, Peter remembered…
He remembered the warning.
He remembered the chance he had to pray instead of sleep.
And the Word says, “he went out and wept bitterly”(Luke 22:62).
That’s what entering the nisyōna without prayer looks like.
Your spirit may be willing, but your flesh will fall (Matthew 26:41).
This is why Yeshua taught them, and us, to pray this in what we call the Lord’s Prayer:
“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (English (miss)translation)
In Aramaic: “La tēlān l’nisyōna, ela paṣen min bīsha.”
“Do not bring us into the proving, but rescue us from the evil one.”
Not because God tempts us. James is clear about that:
“God cannot be tempted with evil, neither does He tempt any man.”(James 1:13)
But we still ask Him, “Father, don’t let us be brought into a test we’re not ready for. Strengthen us before it arrives. Keep us from walking unarmed into a fire we weren’t braced for.”
And that’s the lesson of Gethsemane.
Yeshua walked into the fire prayed up, surrendered, ready.
The disciples walked into it numb, drowsy, exposed.
One stood. The others ran. But He loved them anyway. He warned them, not to shame them, but to rescue them. Because even when we fail the test, He is the kind of Shepherd who comes back for us, just like He came back for Peter.
And He is still whispering to us today: “Mena yishanīn antūn? Qūmū waṣallū, d’la tēlālū l’nisyōna.”
Why are you sleeping? Wake up. Stand. Pray. So you don’t walk straight into the storm and get swallowed upby it.
That’s not ancient history. That’s a living word for right now.
Because the trial is already here. The hour is late. The Body is weary. The Church is dozing under the olive trees again, heavy with sorrow, distracted by fear, lulled by comfort, sleeping through the season of pressing.
And Yeshua is still saying the same thing in the same language He spoke that night:
Wake up, beloved. Don’t miss the hour of preparation.
“Qūmū waṣallū” = “Arise and pray! ”But it’s more like: “Get up with urgency and lift your hearts in earnest prayer!” It’s a call to move out of spiritual sleep or passivity and to engage in the battle on your knees.
This short phrase packs a whole life principle: Rise up, not just physically but spiritually. Pray, not as routine, but as warfare, crying out with the heart of the soul.
Yeshua was commanding His disciples, and us, to prepare for the coming test by waking up and praying with everything we have in us.