Mark 15:1

Ch. Mar_15:1-15. The Examination before Pilate

1. And straightway] As the day dawned, a second and more formal meeting of the Sanhedrim was convened in one of the halls or courts near at hand. A legal Sanhedrim it could hardly be called, for there are scarcely any traces of such legal assemblies during the Roman period. In theory the action of this august court was humane, and the proceedings were conducted with the greatest care. A greater anxiety was manifested to clear the arraigned than to secure his condemnation, especially in matters of life and death. It was enacted (i) that a majority of at least two must be secured before condemnation; (ii) that while a verdict of acquittal could be given on the same day, one of guilty must be reserved for the following day; (iii) that no criminal trial could be carried through in the night; (iv) that the judges who condemned a criminal to death must fast all day; (v) that the sentence itself could be revised; and that (vi) if even on the way to execution the criminal reflected that he had something fresh to adduce in his favour, he might be led back and have the validity of his statement examined. See Ginsburg’s Article on The Sanhedrim in Kitto’s Biblical Cyclopædia, iii. 767. But the influence of the Sadducees, who were now in the ascendancy, and were Draconian in their severity, had changed all this, and it was resolved to endorse the sentence already pronounced, and deliver over the Great Accused to the secular arm.

carried him away] Either (i) to one of the two gorgeous palaces which the first Herod had erected, or (ii) to a palace near the Tower of Antonia, for hither the governor had come up from Cæsarea “on the sea” to keep order during the feast.

to Pilate] The Roman governor roused thus early that eventful morning to preside in a case, which has handed down his name through the centuries in connection with the greatest crime committed since the world began, was Pontius Pilate. (i) His name Pontius is thought to indicate that he was connected, either by descent or adoption, with the gens of the Pontii, first conspicuous in Roman history in the person of C. Pontius Telesinus, the great Samnite general. His cognomen Pilatus has been interpreted as = (a) “armed with the pilum or javelin,” as = (b) an abbreviation of pileatus, from pileus, the cap or badge of manumitted slaves, indicating that he was either a libertus (“freedman”), or descended from one. He succeeded Valerius Gratus a. d. 26, and brought with him his wife Procla or Claudia Procula. (ii) His office was that of procurator under the governor (proprætor) of Syria, but within his own province he had the power of a legatus. His headquarters were at Cæsarea (Act_23:23); he had assessors to assist him in council (Act_25:12); wore the military dress; was attended by a cohort as a body-guard (Mat_27:27); and at the great festivals came up to Jerusalem to keep order. When presiding as judge he would sit on a Bema or portable tribunal erected on a tesselated pavement, called in Hebrew Gabbatha (Joh_19:13), and was invested with the power of life and death (Mat_27:26). (iii) In character he was not insensible to the claims of mercy and justice, but he was weak and vacillating, and incapable of compromising his own safety in obedience to the dictates of his conscience. As a governor he had shewn himself cruel and unscrupulous (Luk_13:1-2), and cared little for the religious susceptibilities of a people, whom he despised and could not understand.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mar_15:1

And bound Jesus.

The Lamb of God

It is interesting to observe the remarkable resemblance which is found to exist in several particulars between the ceremonial of the daily sacrifice of the lamb on the altar in the Temple and the sacrifice of the true, spotless Lamb of God. After the lamb had been kept under watch for four days, and had been examined by an inquisition of the priests on the evening before, to make sure that it was without spot or blemish, it was brought forth early in the morning as soon as it was light. At the cockcrow the altar had been swept clear of ashes to prepare it for the victim. Then the president said to the other priests, Go out and see if it be time to slay the lamb. If it was, the observer said, There are bright streaks of light in the east. The president asked, Do they stretch as far as to Hebron? If he answered that it was so, then he said, Go ye and bring the lamb from the prison of the lamb. Now, in like manner, on the fourth day after Jesus had come to Jerusalem to be offered up as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, when the morning was come after the night inquisition into the spotlessness of the Lamb of God, He is brought forth from His prison to he re-examined and ordered to be slain. The lamb of the daily sacrifice, before being laid on the altar, was bound. Those priests, we read, whose lot it is to attend to the pieces (with the view of laying them upon the altar) took hold of the lamb and bound it. So in the Antitype, they bound Jesus, and carried Him away. Christ is bound when He is in the hands, the power, of men. So is it always with the world. It desires to have not a free, but a bound Jesus. As the servants covered His face, so does the world desire to have a not all-seeing God. The world strives to emancipate itself from the bonds of obedience to the will of God. Let us break, they say, the bonds which the Lord God and His Christ lay on us; and even the very cords of love whereby they would draw us, let us cast away. There is a cry for freedom. Freedom is the most perfect blessing man can have. Freedom from what? Freedom to do what? Among the many, the desire is to be freed from responsibilities caused by duty, and to do their own will unrestrained by any obligations. That is, indeed, the great cry of the day. All duties are irksome, all obligations intolerable. No man can develop his individuality except in absolute freedom. But at the same time that the world seeks freedom from the bonds of Christ, it tries to impose bonds on Christ. Providence is to be bound with laws. Science imposes rules on the Most High, and lays down principles by which God must act-if there be a God-or science will do without Him. Prayer is declared to be worthless, because man cannot alter the course of Nature. God is fettered by self-imposed laws. He is not a free agent. Not only so, but Gods Church must not be free. It also must be hampered and restricted in every way-prevented from doing all it may for the cause of Christ. (S. Baring Gould, M. A.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mar 15:1. And straightway in the morning — Succeeding the dismal night in which the Jewish rulers had been so busily engaged in the horrid transactions related in the preceding chapter; the chief priests — As soon as it was day; held a consultation with the elders and scribes — What method they should take to execute the sentence they had passed against Jesus, and how they might contrive to put him to death in the most severe and contemptuous manner. And because the sanhedrim, which, indeed, had the power of trying and condemning men for crimes which the Jewish law had made capital, yet had not the power of putting such sentences in execution without the approbation of the civil magistrate, or Roman governor; therefore they determined to bind Jesus and deliver him to Pilate, which they accordingly did, while it was yet early, Joh 18:28. They had indeed bound him when he was first apprehended, but, perhaps, he had been loosed while under examination, or else they now made his bonds stricter than before; the better, as they might think, to secure him from a rescue as he passed through the public streets in the day-time. See note on Mat 27:1-2. The observation of Theophylact here is worthy of notice. “The Jews delivered up our Lord to the Romans, and they, for that sin, were themselves given up into the hands of the Romans!”

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

Mar_15:1. And the whole council.—Even the whole Sanhedrin, which consisted of the three classes just named—chief priests, elders, and scribes (1Ma_14:28).

Mar_15:2. Thou sayest it.—Σὺ λέγεις. This is generally taken as a direct affirmation—an idiomatic or courteous “Yes”; but Prof. Thayer seems to have shewn that it is rather an appeal to the questioner’s own conscience. “Art Thou the King of the Jews?” asked Pilate, half in scorn and half in amusement. “Dost thou say this?” is Christ’s reply; or, as in Joh_18:34, “Sayest thou this of thyself, or did others tell it thee concerning Me?” Bee Expository Times, vol. vi. No. 10, pp. 437–439.

Mar_15:3. But He answered nothing.—Omit this clause, “imported from Mat_27:12.

Mar_15:6. Render: Now at feast-time he was wont to release unto them one prisoner, whomsoever they desired. For ὅνπερ ᾐτοῦντο, א, A, B read ὃν παρῃτοῦντο, whom they begged off.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mar_15:1-15

(PARALLELS: Mat_27:1-2; Mat_27:11-26; Luk_23:1-7; Luk_23:13-24; Joh_18:28 to Joh_19:16.)

Christ and Pilate: the True King and His counterfeit.—The so-called trial of Jesus by the rulers turned entirely on His claim to be Messias; His examination by Pilate turns entirely on His claim to be King. The two claims are indeed one; but the political aspect is distinguishable from the higher one, and it was the Jewish rulers’ trick to push it exclusively into prominence before Pilate, in the hope that he might see in the claim an incipient insurrection, and might mercilessly stamp it out.

I. The True King at the bar of the apparent ruler (Mar_15:1-6).—Pilate holding Christ’s life in his hand is the crowning paradox of history and the mystery of self-abasing love. One exercise of the Prisoner’s will and His chains would have snapped and the governor lain dead on the marble “pavement.” The two hearings are parallel, and yet contrasted. In each there are two stages—the self-attestation of Jesus, and the accusations of others; but the order is different. The rulers begin with the witnesses, and, foiled there, fall back on Christ’s own answer. Pilate, with Roman directness and a touch of contempt for the accusers, goes straight to the point, and first questions Jesus. His question was simply as to our Lord’s regal pretensions. “Thou a king?”—poor, helpless peasant! A strange specimen of royalty this! How constantly the same blindness is repeated, and the strong things of this world despise the weak, and material power smiles pityingly at the helpless impotence of the principles of Christ’s gospel, which yet will one day shatter it to fragments, like a potter’s vessel! There are plenty of Pilates to-day who judge and misjudge the King of Israel. The silence of Jesus in regard to the eager accusations corresponds to His silence before the false witnesses. Christ can afford to let many of His foes alone. Contradictions and confutations keep slanders and heresies above water, which the law of gravitation would dispose of, if they were left alone. Pilate’s wonder might and should have led him further. It was the little glimmer of light at the far-off end of his cavern, which, travelled towards, might have brought him into free air and broad day. One great part of his crime was neglecting the faint monitions of which he was conscious.

II. The people’s favourite (Mar_15:7-15).—“Barabbas” means “son of the father.” His very name is a kind of caricature of the “Son of the Blessed,” and his character and actions present in gross form the sort of Messias whom the nation really wanted. The popular hero is like a mirror which reflects the popular mind. He echoes the popular voice, a little improved or exaggerated. Jesus had taught what the people did not care to hear, and given blessings which even the recipients soon forgot, and lived a life whose beauty of holiness oppressed and rebuked the common life of men. What chance had truth and goodness and purity against the sort of bravery that slashes with a sword, and is not elevated by inconvenient reach of thought or beauty of character above the mob? Even now, after nineteen centuries of Christ’s influence have modified the popular ideals, what chance have they? Are the popular “heroes” of Christian nations saints, teachers, lovers of men, in whom their Christlikeness is the thing venerated? That fatal choice revealed the character of the choosers, both in their hostility and admiration; for excellence hated shews what we ought to be and are not, and grossness or vice admired shews what we would fain be if we dared.—A. Maclaren, D.D.

A coward, and what became of him.—Fix your eyes on Pilate. An o’er close contact with an evil world had ploughed furrows across his face; sensuality had left its impress there. He had come up from Caesarea a little while ago to keep peace during the great annual festival, for the Jews were a turbulent race. He made his headquarters at the castle of Antonia, and doubtless kept well indoors; for he was the best-hated man in all Jerusalem, and deserved it. On the morning of this April day he was awakened early by a beating at his gates. He doubtless arose from his couch with reluctance and muttering maledictions on these troublesome Jews. They had brought a prisoner for trial. Last night, at the conclave of the Sanhedrin, He was accused of blasphemy, of making Himself equal with God. But no Roman magistrate would take cognisance of a theological indictment. So they must needs trump up charges against Him. First, He had perverted the nation. Second, He had forbidden payment of tribute to the emperor. Third, He had proclaimed Himself as a king. Pilate must determine upon this case: there was no escape. And you, friend, must also decide what you will do with Jesus who is called the Christ.

I. Now mark the circumstances which aggravated his cowardice—

1. He had heard about Jesus and knew Him. His wonderful work and words and name were in the air. He had had, moreover, an interview with Jesus. He had asked Him, “Art thou a king?” And Jesus answered, “Thou sayest it; but My kingdom is not of this world—I am come to reign in the province of truth.” So he knew about Him. What will he do with Him?

2. He had been warned concerning Him. Not only had his conscience rung the alarm—as conscience warns us all—but a special admonition had been given him. His wife Procula had dreamed in the waking hours of the morning—the hour when Israel thought all dreams came true—and tradition tells us the dream. She saw a conflagration that consumed homes and temples and palaces, licked up forests, and burned the heavens like a parched scroll, so that nothing could extinguish it. There were cries of the homeless and fear-stricken and dying. Then a lamb appeared, and as it lifted its eyes all sounds were hushed. It mounted the flaming pyre; its side was pierced, blood gushed forth, and the fires were quenched. Then the lamb assumed human form, and the appearance was, as the dreamer said,

“Of a Man Divine and passing fair,

And like your august Prisoner there.”

Therefore she said, “Do no harm to that just Man.”

3. Pilate’s cowardice was aggravated by his attempts at evasion and compromise. He entreated the people, “Why, what evil hath He done?” He might as well have sung a lullaby to a cyclone. “Crucify Him!” was the answer. “Crucify Him!” And then he sent Him to Herod—a happy thought. But Herod would not be responsible for the decision of this perplexing case; so he sent the Prisoner back. Pilate must judge Him; so must you and I. Here is this Jesus; and what will he do with Him? A great problem confronts him. He said, “I will chastise Him and let Him go.” Oh, shame upon him for a Roman magistrate! The Man is either guilty or innocent. If guilty, He should die the death; if innocent, let Him go. Compromise never pays. “Nothing is settled until it is settled right.” No man nor Church, no pastor nor teacher, can afford to split the difference in spiritual things.

II. But what was the occasion of this man’s cowardice?—

1. To begin with, he was a trifler. He lived in an age of cynicism; the foundations of religion were broken up. He had mingled with the soldiers at the camp-fire, cracking jokes about the gods and making sport of sacred things. And now, facing this Divine Truth-giver, the irony of his retort—“What is truth?”—was but the outcome of his pernicious habit. Some of you, perhaps, have been wont to trifle in like manner. But we cannot make light of any serious matter without ultimately paying for it.

2. He had no opinions of his own. He went to the people, to his wife, to the priests, for advice. Oh, man, think for thyself! It behoves us to have convictions of our own. Let us live by them, stand for them, and be willing in their defence, if need be, to die. If ever we are in doubt, we have a sure Counsellor (Jas_1:5).

3. Another reason for Pilate’s cowardice was his sycophancy. At all hazards he must be Caesar’s friend. What was the result? A little while after Tiberius was off the throne and Caligula was on. And Caligula said, “Go bring me Pilate; he must answer to certain charges concerning an aqueduct, a Roman standard, and a murder at the altar.” And a little later Pilate was an exile and a wanderer.

III. Let us not be too hard upon Pilate, for there may be some moral cowards among us. Let me give you a parting word, the motto of the Guthrie family, “Sto pro veritate.” Let us stand for the truth, the truth against the world. There is nothing better than that We are all in Pilate’s place. The Lord Jesus stands in judgment before us. What are you going to do with Him? Will you meet Him with mock heroics, admiration of His manhood and rejection of His Divine claim? Out upon all mere sentimentalism! Let us be logical and sensible. Christ was what He claimed to be, or else an impostor who deserved to die.—D. J. Burrell, D.D.

Personal conviction and popular clamour.—This Jewish scene, so important in the world’s life, introduces us to a very serious subject, involving moral and religious questions—the rule or prevalence of the majority. The theory that every man has a voice and vote in the arrangement of things, and that that arrangement shall be according to the opinion which combines the greatest number of those votes or voices, is almost universal. It seems to embody the only principle upon which a decision has any justice, or is binding at all. It encourages activity, free thought, and discussion, and the individual personal interests of us all. And yet we are sorely perplexed about it at times. We feel that the voices of the majority often mean nothing at all, and should have no weight—that is, they are mere empty noise, behind which there is no truth, but only ignorance, or only a half-truth, destructive in its mutilated state. When, then, ought the many voices to prevail?

I. When the responsibility of decision and action is to belong to the many whose voices are heard.—If a company of travellers are to choose between certain plans or paths of journeying, and no one person has or is to have the responsibility, and the success or disappointment will not be visited upon any one member, but all are interested and will bear the blame or praise of the future action, then a vote of the entire companionship is taken. Their decision may be wrong in itself, but it is right that it should have been so made. Now in the case of our text it was not so. The multitude had nothing to do with the judging or deciding. It was an individual matter between Pilate and Christ. And so it is with each of us. Every quiet moment of conviction, when we stand face to face with Christ and His pure cross-marked religion, and debate anxiously the question, “Shall I decide for or against Him?” is a reproduction of the interviews of Pilate and Jesus at the inner judgment-seat. We should decide in a moment for Jesus, if it were not that other voices enter in. They control the sentence, and we bear the responsibility and results of it. Oh, think of it! That empty-tongued crowd of fashion or society, which cries down your single heart’s voice—that hard-voiced throng of money-seekers, which shames and silences your warm conviction for the Lord—that false, smooth-toned multitude of unbelievers, which surround you and ply you with their infidel voices and sneers and arguments, and chill your spiritual aspirations,—you can never fasten the blame upon them. They will only mock at you when the results come. They will say, “It is none of our matter.” And it will be true.

II. In a matter of fact, in the testimony of experience—The more witnesses to a fact of experience that can be brought, the better for the truth, whoever has to decide it. But now turn to this story of Pilate again. What sort of voices did he listen to and allow to prevail? Did they bring the overwhelming weight of experience against him? Was that what controlled and turned his decision? No, he knew that those chief priests cried for crucifixion out of envy. He knew that his own experience of Christ, that his comprehension and appreciation of Him, was something of which this crowd had nothing. They should never have prevailed. If you have felt the truth of Christ’s love to you only for a moment—if you have felt His purity by the side of your sin in one quick instant of repentant experience—if you have once felt His gentle yet complete kingliness by the side of false earthly power,—there is a voice of experience within you over which all voices of men who have seen and learnt no such facts should never prevail. Oh, if a man’s moral self and God’s Spirit insist upon being heard together, and above all else, it is not obstinacy, but firmness of purpose; it is the strongest condition of man; it is the richest of life’s harmonies—man’s voice and God’s voice at one.—F. Brooks.

OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

Mar_15:1. Activity in evil.—While honest men lay them down in peace and take their rest, suspecting no harm because they mean none, thieves and robbers are up and abroad, spreading their nets for the prey and watching to do mischievously. “The devil’s martyrs,” saith Bernard, “are more swift in running to hell than we to heaven.” How slack are we to do God any service! how backward to suffer anything for Him! And how they, on the other side, can bestir them to serve the devil, and be content to suffer a kind of martyrdom in his service! The way, sure, is broad enough and easy enough that leadeth to destruction; yet so much pains is there taken to find it, that I verily believe half the pains many a man taketh to go to hell, if it had been well bestowed, would have brought him to heaven.—Bishop Sanderson.

Jesus delivered to Pilate.—What a spectacle was that! The heads of the Jewish nation leading their own Messiah in chains to deliver Him up to a Gentile governor, with the petition that He should be put to death! Shades of the heroes and the prophets, who loved the nation and boasted of it and foretold its glorious fate, the hour of destiny has come, and this is the result! It was an act of national suicide. But was it not more? Was it not the frustration of the purpose and the promise of God? So it certainly appeared to be. Yet He is not mocked. Even through human sin His purpose holds on its way. The Jews brought the Son of God to Pilate’s judgment-seat, that both Jew and Gentile might unite in condemning Him; for it was part of the work of the Redeemer to expose human sin, and here was to be exhibited the ne plus ultra of wickedness, as the hand of humanity was lifted up against its Maker. And yet that death was to be the life of humanity; and Jesus, standing between Jew and Gentile, was to unite them in the fellowship of a common salvation.—J. Stalker, D.D.

Why was Jesus taken to Pilate?—The common opinion, that the Romans had deprived the Jews of the power to inflict capital punishment, would seem to be erroneous; for we learn from the Acts that the Sanhedrin put St. Stephen and others to death. The truth probably is, that the Pharisees, who were the chief instigators of our Lord’s death, were averse to the shedding of Jewish blood by the Sanhedrin, and preferred to throw the odium of His execution upon the Romans. The Sadducees, who took the lead in the persecution of the early Christians, had no such scruples.

Mar_15:2. Avowal and description of kingship.—Never answering the dishonest attack, the Saviour always answered the honest inquiry. Here He explicitly avows that He is “a king”—the King, according to the fuller reply recorded by John, of more than Jews; and, according to that account, He intimates His kingship (Joh_18:36) to be other than worldly royalties, not employing force and fighting men, but that His kingship is the royalty which invests all who can testify the truth, and invests Him as the Truth, as the Great Revealer of God, of duty, of mercy, of hope. There is no sort of kingliness like this.—R. Glover.

Mar_15:3-5. The silence of Jesus proceeds from His owning all our crimes before His Father, His only lawful judge. Concern, passion, fear of death, love of reputation, and desire to be justified, make an accused person speak who has nothing at liberty but his tongue; but even the tongue itself of Christ is not at liberty, being under a kind of confinement from His meekness, His patience, His wisdom, His humility, His obedience, and His quality of victim, which make Him even in love with shame and with the Cross.—P. Quesnel.

The silence of Jesus.—Much is said, and well said, on the teaching of Jesus—His manner and method as a speaker; how independent He was of times and circumstances; and how, in His peasant’s garb, and by the hillside or the river-shore, He forced the confession from His hearers, “Never man spake like this man!” He was troubled by no interruption. He was always ready to bear questionings, and no teacher was ever so patient to repeat himself so long as repetition promised anything. But there was the limit. When speech was useless, He was silent. The prudence of Jesus is seen in His keeping silence, and never more so than where He answered no more questions or thrusts. And the governor marvelled greatly. Pilate marvelled because he knew Jesus could speak. He knew the power with which He could plead the cause of truth. He knew the influence He had exerted by His eloquence. He knew these accusations came because of the power which the wonderful Teacher had exerted by His speech. He did not keep dumb because He had no words, nor because He was unused to discussion, nor because He could not bear the presence of these ecclesiastical dignitaries. Discussion and they were familiar to Him; but He had to practise the instructions He had given to His disciples. He had forbidden them to throw pearls where they would find no gold setting; and where there was only talk and no heart, He bade them leave the place and go elsewhere. He had not only taught this, but He had practised it. Many instances you will find which illustrate that so soon as He discovered that the disposition of the people was wrong He retired, and in silence found confidence and strength. And there in Pilate’s hall, accused and scorned, He who could wake the dead and still the sea, who could blast the unproductive fig tree whose life was expressed only in leaves, and who could open the deaf ear and bid the dumb to speak—He in the hour of mortal peril was silent. There He stood—still as the stars dropping their crystal light—still as the grass springs and the blossoms unfold—still as the subtlest forces of nature speed on their way—still as the footsteps of God, when He visits specially the human soul—still as the spirit goes to the resurrection. The example of Jesus in reference to the time to keep silent must not be lost upon us. We sometimes forget that the world is not wholly ruled by talk, that it is not possible at all times to find an unperverting hearing, and we need the discipline of silence. To Jesus let us go for an example in reference to the times and seasons of silence; and then in the difficult passes of life we shall say our word calmly, solemnly, truthfully, and leave the issues with God, not doubting the fidelity of His providence.—Henry Bacon.

Silence under misconception.—There still are few, even under the tuition of the example of Christ, who can preserve this supreme silence. It is not altogether easy, even for the wisest and the best, to be serenely contented to be misunderstood—to let their thought quietly grow, their good intention gradually become known of all men, their larger plan, their higher purpose, their prophetic anticipation of the world-age next to come, wait its hour, while they themselves may be regarded as unbelievers, or looked upon as visionaries, or hardly tolerated as dangerous Christian teachers; and they themselves may not expect to live to see the larger good in which some day their thought and toil may find beneficent fruitions. And if silence under misconception is no easy virtue always even for the wisest and the best, it is a spiritual gift not even coveted by the great mass of men and women whom the slightest misunderstanding may irritate into bitter speech and the least provocation cause to bristle up in offensive self-assertion. The millennium can hardly be expected to come even to the best society until men and women shall have mastered more humbly and unselfishly the secret of this personal silence of the Christ. His conduct in this particular seems the more remarkable when we consider what powers of commanding speech He possessed, had He been pleased to exercise them in His own behalf. What a vindication, had He pleased, He might have given of His life as the Son of Man, when the Jews falsely accused Him before Pilate of making Himself a king in Caesar’s place! What glorious argument of His doctrine He might have spoken when Herod asked Him many questions! What sublime apology for His life as the Divine Servant of men He might have left for disciples to publish to the coming ages after He should have suffered a martyr’s death! Yet He chose a kinglier silence for His record, and Heaven’s approval for His crown. He could wait, He alone of the great powers of our human history, until the glory of the Father which He had from the beginning should be manifested, and in His name all be reconciled.—N. Smyth, D.D.

Mar_15:10. The envy of the chief priests.—Christ’s earthly life was in many respects so unenviable that the thought of envy at first occasions surprise. He had no advantage of wealth or station. His limited successes in preaching the gospel of His kingdom were chiefly among poor and despised classes. How came it, then, that rich and haughty Sadducees envied Him? The truth is, that envy is a passion of blacker face than the mere feeling of disquiet at sight of the worldly successes of others. The heart that is apart from God and unreconciled to Him, lacking a worthy object for its affection, is a prey to unrest. Sometimes it must needs be discontented. And then the sight of spiritual peace and happiness in others awakens that sense of lack and that pain of contrast which we call envy. It may be hardly more than a tinge of feeling, or it may grow to be a dominant and malignant passion. Lord Bacon said: “A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others, for men’s minds will either feed upon their own good or upon others’ evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope to attain another’s virtue will seek to come at even hand by depressing another’s fortune.”

The choice of alternatives.—Tinworth has graphically reproduced this scene in clay, and called it “The World’s Choice.” He thus treats it not only as an historic but also as a typical fact. It expresses the spirit of the world. Note a few of the many elements in it.

1. Hatred of Rome and a desire to perplex Pilate.

2. Sympathy with the man who had lifted up his hand against the hateful rule of Rome and her representatives.

3. Bitter resentment against Christ for His scathing words in cleansing the Temple, and His daring deeds in scourging unholy traffickers.

4. The infectious influence of raging passion, or the feverish and mad frenzy of a crowd.

5. The felt inconvenience of being in the minority.—D. Daivies.

The tragedy of Pilate’s life.—There was nothing to signalise him; he was no bad example of an average Roman governor. In a few months he might have retired from his post, to end his days in the merciful obscurity which has closed over the remains of thousands such as he. But the pathetic tragedy of his life lies in this: that suddenly, by accident (as we speak), without any wish or choice or consent of his own, unasked, unwarned, surprised, he is found to be placed at the very hour and centre of the. sharpest and fiercest crisis that the world has ever seen. The heat of the great battle surges with abrupt vehemence, with furious emphasis, round the spot where he happens to stand. It is the hour of all hours, and he is in the very thick of its awful pressure before he is aware of it, before he can take its measure. Unexpected, uncalculated, the eternal war has swung his way—the war between good and evil, God and devil—the death-struggle for the world’s redemption. Round him the forces of the spiritual strife surge and swell. In a moment he is caught up into them, as into a whirlpool—round and round they eddy, they storm, they howl; they clamour for a decision from him—a decision swift, momentous, vital. “Yes or no.”—Canon Scott-Holland.

Mar_15:12. The parting of the ways.—It is very easy and respectable to place Pilate in our thoughts upon a pedestal of infamy; but are we sufficiently alive to the fact that our responsibility is as great? We have to pursue a certain course in regard to Christ. There are two main divergent roads, and only two. We must side with the mob, we must belie our own conscience, as Pilate did; or we must yield Him our allegiance, and crown Him with our love. Yet, of course, there are degrees in partisanship. The relations of men to Christ may be more elaborately described.

1. For example, you may put Christ off. Thousands do that without the slightest thought of dying infidels, and finally and deliberately rejecting the Christian gospel. But, oh, remember postponement is distinct action! For the time being it is final.

2. Or you may patronise Him. You may clothe Him in the fine robe of genteel respect; you may support the institutions of religion that bear His name; you may never speak against Him—you may even speak up for His Church. How high a value, think you, does Christ place upon this kind of support?

3. Or, again, you may sell Christ. You love money. But, it may be, you cannot make money as you have been making it and place Him on the throne of your heart. You are in sight of a big success; you have only to square your conscience and the thing will be done. Oh! face the situation boldly, know distinctly what you are going to do with Jesus which is called Christ!

4. Or, once more, you may boycott Him. In your heart of hearts you acknowledge His claim; yet you never seem to know Christ in society. You never speak of Him, you never honour Him, you never stand up for Him, you treat Him like a poor relation of whom you are ashamed. Now, is not each of these expedients the selection of a way? Is it not the adoption of a party? Is it not enlistment on one side of the great struggle? The most obvious and important lesson from this incident in Pilate’s history is the impossibility of shirking spiritual responsibilities.—R. B. Brindley.

A crisis in Pilate’s life.—Quite apart from that which is at stake, it is a terrible picture of a man, by no means all bad, driven by bold, bad men to do a dreadful deed, a deed from which his heart and his conscience and his honour each in turn recoil, a deed which has made the name of Pontius Pilate stand out in lurid letters as no other name ever named among men stands out, as no other name ever can stand out. It was not, you must notice, the first or the second time that Pilate had been defeated in the attempt to carry out his will by the determination of the Jews. He knew well what they were. His was the famous order which sent into the Holy City the standards of the Roman soldiers with the desecrating image of the emperor; and after one device and another had failed, after he had tried persuasion, and had tried the threat and the shew of violence, they made him withdraw the order. He it was who hung up in the palace of the Roman governor shields inscribed with the names of the Roman deities; but here, great as was the outrage to the Jews, he remained firm, and, had to bear the indignity of a special order from Tiberius to remove them. In both of those cases he was wrong from the first and throughout, and he had to give way,—in the one case to submit; in the other, in the case which fills our thoughts to-day, he strove to do what was right, and he had to give way, as before. It is a terrible warning to a weak man in a place of responsibility.—Canon G. F. Browne.

Pilate’s weakness.—“Poor mockery of a ruler,” one has said, “set by the Eternal to do right upon the earth and afraid to do it! Told so by his own bosom; strong enough in his legions, and in the truth itself, to have saved the Innocent One and kept his own soul,—he could only think of the apparently expedient. Type of the politician of all ages who forgets that only the right is the strong or wise.”

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 15

Mar_15:3-5. Silence and self-control.—Moltke, the great strategist, was a man of lowly habits and few words. He has been described as a man “who can hold his tongue in seven languages I”

Mar_15:10. Envy.—Dionysius the tyrant, out of envy, punished Philoxenus the musician because he could sing, and Plato the philosopher because he could dispute, better than himself.

Mar_15:11-14. A change of national sentiment.—Englishmen can very well understand what a change of national sentiment means—what it is for a ruler to have the confidence of the nation at one time and lose it at another. When that happens, and is proved to have happened by a general election, there need not be any voters—there seldom are more than a few scores or hundreds—who actually change sides, who vote one way one time and the opposite way another. But the party that was dominant at one time, that knew what it wanted and meant to get it, is at another time halfhearted and doubtful; if they will not vote against their old party they perhaps do not care to vote at all, or at any rate they do not care to try to convince others, to gain over those who are doubtful, or to urge to activity those who are indifferent, or still more half-hearted than themselves.—W. H. Simcox.

Fickleness of popularity.—On July 25th, 1553, Northumberland and Lord Ambrose Dudley were brought in from Cambridge, escorted by Grey and Arundel, with four hundred of the Guards. Detachments of troops were posted all along the streets from Bishopsgate, where the duke would enter, to the Tower, to prevent the mob from tearing him to pieces. It was but twelve days since he had ridden out from that gate in the splendour of his power: he was now assailed from all sides with yells and execrations; bareheaded with cap in hand, he bowed to the crowd as he rode on, as if to win some compassion from them; but so recent a humility could find no favour. His scarlet cloak was plucked from his back; the only sounds which greeted his ears were, “Traitor I traitor I Death to the traitor I” And he hid his face, sick at heart with shame, and Lord Ambrose at the gate of the Tower was seen to burst into tears.—J. A. Eroude.

Inherent weakness of human nature.—The poet has said, “Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.” Can you say that of human nature?

Mar_15:13. The world’s reception of Christ.—It is said of Dr. Robertson, the celebrated historian, that, preaching once in the forenoon, he affirmed, in the words of the ancient heathen, that “if perfect virtue were to descend to the earth clothed in a human form, all the world would fall prostrate and worship her.” In the afternoon Dr. Erskine, his colleague, remarked, on the contrary, that “perfect virtue, in the human nature of the Saviour of mankind, had indeed appeared on the earth; but, instead of being universally worshipped, the general cry of His countrymen was, “Crucify Him I crucify Him I”

Mar_15:15. Scourging.—We cannot tell what that Roman punishment was; we read about it in the olden books, but men do not understand what they read so much as what they feel. The victim was tied by the hands to a post or standard; he was compelled to assume a stooping position; the knotted thong was in the hands of a Roman executioner, and be administered the punishment largely according to his own will or passion. We have heard of the knout in Russia; in our own land we have the “cat,” so feared by felons; in the Roman law there was this arrangement for scourging, that men might be humbled as well as punished, that the truth might be extorted from them as well as a penalty inflicted, that they might be brought into lowliness of mind and submissiveness of temper, so that the judge could do with them what he pleased. The hands of Christ were tied to the stake, the flagellum was used upon His naked back; He was scourged by Roman hands.—J. Parker, D.D.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

5. Christ, betrayed to the Gentiles, standing before Pilate at the Tribunal of Temporal Authority: a. The Examination. Christ and the Accusers. The Confession, the Accusations, and the Lord’s Silence. b. The Judge’s attempt to deliver. Christ and Barabbas. The Outcry of the Enemy, the Silence of the Lord. The Surrender. The Mocking. Mar_15:1-15

(Parallels: Mat_27:1-26; Luk_23:1-25; Joh_18:1-16.)

1And straightway in the morning1the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes, and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried him away, and delivered him to Pilate. 2And Pilate asked him, Art thou the King of the Jews? And he answering, said unto him, Thou sayest it. 3And the chief priests accused him of many things; but he answered nothing. 4And Pilate asked him again, saying, Answerest thou nothing? behold how many things they witness against thee. 5But Jesus yet 6answered nothing: so that Pilate marvelled. Now at that feast he released unto them one prisoner, whomsoever they desired. 7And there was one named Barabbas, which lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him,2 who had committed murder in the insurrection. 8And the multitude, crying aloud,3 began to desire him to do as he had ever done unto them. 9But Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews? (10For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy.) 11But the chief priests moved the people, that he should rather release Barabbas unto them. 12And Pilate answered and said again unto them, What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews ? 13And they cried out again, Crucify him. 14Then Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil hath he done? 15And they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify him. And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Comp. the parallels in Matthew and Luke.—Mark, with Matthew, takes notice of the second formal council-meeting on the morning of the crucifixion: he, like Luke, brings more distinctly into view the circumstance that the whole Sanhedrim led Christ away to Pilate; and with him omits the end of Judas, recorded by Matthew, the dream of Pilate’s wife, the washing of the hands, and the cry—“His blood be on us, and our children.” Again, Mark, like Matthew, passes over the fact that Jesus was sent to the bar of Herod, which Luke records; the full examination before Pilate, omitted by all the Synoptics, related by John; and, finally, the repeated hesitations of Pilate in condemning. Mark merely notices what John and Luke relate very fully, that many additional accusations were raised against Jesus, regarding which He maintained an unbroken silence. He limits himself, like Matthew, particularly to the two chief features in the humiliation of Jesus before Pilate: His confession of His Messiahship (King of the Jews), and His being placed side by side with Barabbas. The characterization of Barabbas he gives more accurately, in a manner similar to Luke. He marks the decision of Pilate in a peculiar way, Mar_15:15. It is worthy of note that he, along with Matthew, represents the scourging and mocking of the Lord in Pilate’s prætorium (Luke, on the other hand, relates the putting to shame of Jesus in the palace of Herod) to be part of the crucifixion-agonies; consequently, the second unsuccessful attempt of Pilate to release Him, which, according to John, he sought to effect by bringing forth the scourged One to the people, is passed over unnoticed. The assembling of the populace before the prætorium, and the more exact designation of the prætorium, are peculiar to Mark.

Mar_15:6. He released unto them one prisoner.—This was a voluntary custom of the procurator.

Mar_15:7. In the insurrection.—In which he had been captured. One of the numberless Jewish insurrections; not known more exactly. “Paulus refers to Joseph. Antiq. 18, 4.” Meyer.

Mar_15:8. That had gone up.4—The stream of the populace comes, namely, back from the palace of Herod, whither Pilate had sent the Lord. Meanwhile the priests have prepared their people, have instigated and instructed them.

When he had scourged Him, to be crucified.—John, viewing matters from the psychological stand-point, mentions the scourging among the acts of Pilate, as the final attempt to deliver Jesus; Mark and Matthew, viewing the events from the historical stand-point, judge from this act that all is decided, and they look accordingly upon the scourging as the opening act in the awful tragedy of the crucifixion, παρέδωκε φραγελλώσας. Both are equally correct points of view. The scourging should have moved the people; it only led them to obduracy. And, as the matter issued, the crucifixion had already begun. In relating this circumstance, Matthew emphasizes the fact that the scourging resulted in the yielding up of Christ to the Jews (φραγελλώσας παρέδωκεν); Mark points out that the scourging was the opening scene in the crucifixion, and took place in consequence of the surrender.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. Comp. Matthew.

2. Christ before Pilate, beside Barabbas, amid the soldiers: a threefold climax in the world’s judgment upon the Judge of the world.

3. Barabbas, the murderer, a representative of the first murderer, the father of lies, as Christ stood there in the name of His Father.—The people’s choice between the two: 1. The miscalculated and improper juxtaposition caused by the political party, a self-condemnation of worldly polity; 2. the evil advice of the chief priests, a self-condemnation of the hierarchical guardianship of the people; 3. the horrifying choice, a self-condemnation of the self destroying populace.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

See Matthew.—The world assembled to judge the Lord: 1. Jerusalem (the chief council); 2. Rome (Pilate); 3. the whole wide world (the soldiery).—Jesus condemned as Messiah, as the Christ of God. As Christ: 1. Condemned by the chief council; 2. given over to judgment by Pilate; 3. mocked by the soldiery.—The surrender of the prisoner at the paschal festival (probably a Passover-drama to represent the atonement for the first-born of Israel) is here a judgment upon completed blindness.—Barabbas is made by the Jews to represent the first-born of Israel, Christ the first-born of Egypt.—Christ justified upon His trial by the hostile judges: 1. By the judge: he seeks to free Him; 2. by the accusers and the people: their petition for the release of Barabbas reveals the bitterness of their hate; 3. by the soldiers, who adorn Him with the symbols of His patience and His spiritual glory.—The very mockery of truth must witness, even by its caricatures, to the glorious original.

Starke:—When superior judges act unjustly, they accumulate upon their heads much more guilt than the subordinate authorities; for in that case the oppressed have no further appeal.—Quesnel:—The assembling of the magistrates is orderly and beautiful: but the more proper their appearance, the more sinful the abuse of their authority in the oppression of the innocent.—Hedinger:—When innocence itself must appear and be accused before the judges, is it anything strange that Thou, precious Jesus, art persecuted by the devil, accused, slandered, and condemned?—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—Liars’ mouths can devise much; enough, if thou art guiltless.—Envy is hateful in every man, especially in ministers of the Gospel, who should content themselves in God.—Quesnel:—What envy did here against Christ, the Chief Shepherd, that it does still to His servants, and will not cease to do till the world’s end.—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—If the rulers among the people, who should put a stop to evil, themselves instigate and make the people sin, then must Christ be crucified.—Hedinger:—In the last day the heathen will put many Christians to shame.—Quesnel:—Love of honor and the fear of the world may lead a judge (who is not firmly settled in his love to justice) to many sins.—One single sinful passion makes slaves of men.—Natural honor a weak shield against temptation.—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—The King of glory wears a crown of thorns, in order that He may take the curse away from the earth, and gain for us the crown of holiness.—The crowns of princes, also, have their thorns. Should they wear these to the honor of the crowned Jesus, then will they discharge aright the duties of their difficult office.—Hypocrites and the godless still insult Christ, though they even bow the knee at His name.

Braune:—The deeper He went down in suffering, the less He pleased them.—All that God did to perplex the enemies of Jesus in their acts, was in vain (Peter’s tears, the acknowledgment of Judas, the silence of Herod on the chief point, the witness of Pilate, the dream of Procula; the comparison between the insurrectionist and murderer Barabbas, and Jesus in His majesty and tranquil greatness).—Brieger:—Pilate did not concede the truthfulness of the accusations of the Jews, yet condemned the Son of God to death. He thereby fulfilled in two respects the wisdom of God:—First, that the Lord should be crucified, and not stoned; second, that Jews and Gentiles should unite in His death.—Bauer:—Sad is the scene which here meets our eyes; as it ever is when goodness has to protect itself by the votes of the masses.

Footnotes:

[1][Mar_15:1.—Codd. B., C., D., Lachmann, Tischendorf read only πρωί̈.]

[2][Mar_15:7.—Codd. B., C., D., Lachmann, Tischendorf read στασιαστῶν.]

[3][Mar_15:8.—Codd. B., D., Lachmann, Tischendorf, ἀναβάς instead of ἀναβοήσας.]

[4][Lange adopts the reading ἀναβάς in his translation. Luther’s version does the same.—Ed.]

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mark

CHRIST AND PILATE: THE TRUE KING AND HIS COUNTERFEIT

Mar 15:1 - Mar 15:20.

The so-called trial of Jesus by the rulers turned entirely on his claim to be Messias; His examination by Pilate turns entirely on His claim to be king. The two claims are indeed one, but the political aspect is distinguishable from the higher one; and it was the Jewish rulers’ trick to push it exclusively into prominence before Pilate, in the hope that he might see in the claim an incipient insurrection, and might mercilessly stamp it out. It was a new part for them to play to hand over leaders of revolt to the Roman authorities, and a governor with any common sense must have suspected that there was something hid below such unusual loyalty. What a moment of degradation and of treason against Israel’s sacredest hopes that was when its rulers dragged Jesus to Pilate on such a charge! Mark follows the same method of condensation and discarding of all but the essentials, as in the other parts of his narrative. He brings out three points-the hearing before Pilate, the popular vote for Barabbas, and the soldiers’ mockery.

I. The true King at the bar of the apparent ruler {Mar 15:1 - Mar 15:6}.

The contrast between appearance and reality was never more strongly drawn than when Jesus stood as a prisoner before Pilate. The One is helpless, bound, alone; the other invested with all the externals of power. But which is the stronger? and in which hand is the sceptre? On the lowest view of the contrast, it is ideas versus swords. On the higher and truer, it is the incarnate God, mighty because voluntarily weak, and man ‘dressed in a little brief authority,’ and weak because insolently ‘making his power his god.’ Impotence, fancying itself strong, assumes sovereign authority over omnipotence clothed in weakness. The phantom ruler sits in judgment on the true King. Pilate holding Christ’s life in his hand is the crowning paradox of history, and the mystery of self-abasing love. One exercise of the Prisoner’s will and His chains would have snapped, and the governor lain dead on the marble ‘pavement.’

The two hearings are parallel, and yet contrasted. In each there are two stages-the self-attestation of Jesus and the accusations of others; but the order is different. The rulers begin with the witnesses, and, foiled there, fall back on Christ’s own answer, Pilate, with Roman directness and a touch of contempt for the accusers, goes straight to the point, and first questions Jesus. His question was simply as to our Lord’s regal pretensions. He cared nothing about Jewish ‘superstitions’ unless they threatened political disturbance. It was nothing to him whether or no one crazy fanatic more fancied himself ‘the Messiah,’ whatever that might be. Was He going to fight?-that was all which Pilate had to look after. He is the very type of the hard, practical Roman, with a ‘practical’ man’s contempt for ideas and sentiments, sceptical as to the possibility of getting hold of ‘truth,’ and too careless to wait for an answer to his question about it; loftily ignorant of and indifferent to the notions of the troublesome people that he ruled, but alive to the necessity of keeping them in good humour, and unscrupulous enough to strain justice and unhesitatingly to sacrifice so small a thing as an innocent life to content them.

What could such a man see in Jesus but a harmless visionary? He had evidently made up his mind that there was no mischief in Him, or he would not have questioned Him as to His kingship. It was a new thing for the rulers to hand over dangerous patriots, and Pilate had experience enough to suspect that such unusual loyalty concealed something else, and that if Jesus had really been an insurrectionary leader, He would never have fallen into Pilate’s power. Accordingly, he gives no serious attention to the case, and his question has a certain half-amused, half-pitying ring about it. ‘Thou a king? ‘-poor helpless peasant! A strange specimen of royalty this! How constantly the same blindness is repeated, and the strong things of this world despise the weak, and material power smiles pityingly at the helpless impotence of the principles of Christ’s gospel, which yet will one day shatter it to fragments, like a potter’s vessel! The phantom ruler judges the real King to be a powerless shadow, while himself is the shadow and the other the substance. There are plenty of Pilates to-day who judge and misjudge the King of Israel.

The silence of Jesus in regard to the eager accusations corresponds to His silence before the false witnesses. The same reason dictated both. His silence is His most eloquent answer. It calmly passes by all these charges by envenomed tongues as needing no reply, and as utterly irrelevant. Answered, they would have lived in the Gospels; unanswered, they are buried. Christ can afford to let many of His foes alone. Contradictions and confutations keep slanders and heresies above water, which the law of gravitation would dispose of if they were left alone.

Pilate’s wonder might and should have led him further. It should have prompted to further inquiry, and that might have issued in clearer knowledge. It was the little glimmer of light at the far-off end of his cavern, which, travelled towards, might have brought him into free air and broad day. One great part of his crime was neglecting the faint monitions of which he was conscious. His light may have been dim, but it would have brightened; and he quenched it. He stands as a tremendous example of possibilities missed, and of the tragedy of a soul that has looked on Jesus, and has not yielded to the impressions made on him by the sight.

II. The people’s favourite {Mar 15:7 - Mar 15:15},

‘Barabbas’ means ‘son of the father,’ His very name is a kind of caricature of the ‘Son of the Blessed,’ and his character and actions present in gross form the sort of Messias whom the nation really wanted. He had headed some one of the many small riots against Rome which were perpetually sputtering up and being trampled out by an armed heel. There had been bloodshed, in which he had himself taken part {‘a murderer,’ Act 3:14}. And this coarse, red-handed desperado is the people’s favourite, because he embodied their notions and aspirations, and had been bold enough to do what every man of them would have done if he had dared. He thought and felt, as they did, that freedom was to be won by the sword. The popular hero is as a mirror which reflects the popular mind. He echoes the popular voice, a little improved or exaggerated. Jesus had taught what the people did not care to hear, and given blessings which even the recipients soon forgot, and lived a life whose ‘beauty of holiness’ oppressed and rebuked the common life of men. What chance had truth and kindness and purity against the sort of bravery that slashes with a sword, and is not elevated above the mob by inconvenient reach of thought or beauty of character? Even now, after nineteen centuries of Christ’s influence have modified the popular ideals, what chance have they? Are the popular ‘heroes’ of Christian nations saints, teachers, lovers of men, in whom their Christ-likeness is the thing venerated? The old saying that the voice of the people is the voice of God receives an instructive commentary in the vote for Barabbas and against Jesus. That was what a plebiscite for the discovery of the people’s favourite came to. What a reliable method of finding the best man universal suffrage, manipulated by wirepullers like these priests, is! and how wise the people are who let it guide their judgments, or still wiser, who fret their lives out in angling for its approval! Better be condemned with Jesus than adopted with Barabbas.

That fatal choice revealed the character of the choosers, both in their hostility and admiration; for excellence hated shows what we ought to be and are not, and grossness or vice admired shows what we would fain be if we dared. It was the tragic sign that Israel had not learned the rudiments of the lesson which ‘at sundry times and in divers manners’ God had been teaching them. In it the nation renounced its Messianic hopes, and with its own mouth pronounced its own sentence. It convicted them of insensibility to the highest truth, of blindness to the most effulgent light, of ingratitude for the richest gifts. It is the supreme instance of short-lived, unintelligent emotion, inasmuch as many who on Friday joined in the roar, ‘Crucify Him!’ had on Sunday shouted ‘Hosanna!’ till they were hoarse.

Pilate plays a cowardly and unrighteous part in the affair, and tries to make amends to himself for his politic surrender of a man whom he knew to be innocent, by taunts and sarcasm. He seems to see a chance to release Jesus, if he can persuade the mob to name Him as the prisoner to be set free, according to custom. His first proposal to them was apparently dictated by a genuine interest in Jesus, and a complete conviction that Rome had nothing to fear from this ‘King.’ But there are also in the question a sneer at such pauper royalty, as it looked to him, and a kind of scornful condescension in acknowledging the mob’s right of choice. He consults their wishes for once, but there is haughty consciousness of mastery in his way of doing it. His appeal is to the people, as against the priests whose motives he had penetrated. But in his very effort to save Jesus he condemns himself; for, if he knew that they had delivered Christ for envy, his plain duty was to set the prisoner free, as innocent of the only crime of which he ought to take cognisance. So his attempt to shift the responsibility off his own shoulders is a piece of cowardice and a dereliction of duty. His second question plunges him deeper in the mire. The people had a right to decide which was to be released, but none to settle the fate of Jesus. To put that in their hands was an unconditional surrender by Pilate, and the sneer in ‘whom ye call the King of the Jews’ is a poor attempt to hide from them and himself that he is afraid of them. Mark puts his finger on the damning blot in Pilate’s conduct when he says that his motive for condemning Jesus was his wish to content the people. The life of one poor Jew was a small price to pay for popularity. So he let policy outweigh righteousness, and, in spite of his own clear conviction, did an innocent man to death. That would be his reading of his act, and, doubtless, it did not trouble his conscience much or long, but he would leave the judgment-seat tolerably satisfied with his morning’s work. How little he knew what he had done! In his ignorance lies his palliation. His crime was great, but his guilt is to be measured by his light, and that was small. He prostituted justice for his own ends, and he did not follow out the dawnings of light that would have led him to know Jesus. Therefore he did the most awful thing in the world’s history. Let us learn the lesson which he teaches!

III. The soldiers’ mockery {Mar 15:16 - Mar 15:20}.

This is characteristically different from that of the rulers, who jeered at His claim to supernatural enlightenment, and bade Him show His Messiahship by naming His smiters. The rough legionaries knew nothing about a Messiah, but it seemed to them a good jest that this poor, scourged prisoner should have called Himself a King, and so they proceed to make coarse and clumsy merriment over it. It is like the wild beast playing with its prey before killing it. The laughter is not only rough, but cruel. There was no pity for the Victim ‘bleeding from the Roman rods,’ and soon to die. And the absence of any personal hatred made this mockery more hideous. Jesus was nothing to them but a prisoner whom they were to crucify, and their mockery was sheer brutality and savage delight in torturing. The sport is too good to be kept by a few, so the whole band is gathered to enjoy it. How they would troop to the place! They get hold of some robe or cloth of the imperial colour, and of some flexible shoots of some thorny plant, and out of these they fashion a burlesque of royal trappings. Then they shout, as they would have done to Caesar, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ repeating again with clumsy iteration the stale jest which seems to them so exquisite. Then their mood changes, and naked ferocity takes the place of ironical reverence. Plucking the mock sceptre, the reed, from His passive hand, they strike the thorn-crowned Head with it, and spit on Him, while they bow in mock reverence before Him, and at last, when tired of their sport, tear off the purple, and lead him away to the Cross.

If we think of who He was who bore all this, and of why He bore it, we may well bow not the knee but the heart, in endless love and thankfulness. If we think of the mockers-rude Roman soldiers, who probably could not understand a word of what they heard on the streets of Jerusalem-we shall do rightly to remember our Lord’s own plea for them, ‘they know not what they do,’ and reflect that many of us with more knowledge do really sin more against the King than they did. Their insult was an unconscious prophecy. They foretold the basis of His dominion by the crown of thorns, and its character by the sceptre of reed, and its extent by their mocking salutations; for His Kingship is founded in suffering, wielded with gentleness, and to Him every knee shall one day bow, and every tongue confess that the King of the Jews is monarch of mankind.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter 15

1. Before Pilate. (Mar 15:1-5. Mat 27:1-14; Luk 23:1-4; Joh 18:28-38.)

2. Barabbas released and the Servant condemned. (Mar 15:6-15. Mat 27:15-26; Luk 23:16-25; Joh 18:39-40)

3. Crowned with thorns and mocked. (Mar 15:16-21. Mat 27:27-32; Luk 23:26-43; Joh 19:1-16)

4. Crucified. (Mar 15:22-32. Mat 27:33-44; Luk 23:26-43; Joh 19:17-27)

5. Obedient unto death, the death of the Cross. (Mar 15:33-41. Mat 27:45-56; Luk 23:44-49; Joh 19:28-37)

6. The Burial. (Mar 15:42-47. Mat 27:57-61; Luk 23:50-56; Joh 19:38-42.)

1. Before Pilate. Mar 15:1-5

The council had condemned Him to death and now the whole council delivered Him into the hands of the Gentiles. First the religious power had condemned the blessed Servant and the civil Power had to do the same. It will be seen that Mark’s account of our Lord’s trial before Pilate is the briefest, while Matthew’s is the longest. Again the Servant witnesses a good confession. But when accused by the chief priests His blessed lips were sealed. He stood there to witness and not to defend Himself. What a gracious example He gives to all His servants. The hatred of the religious leaders of the people is especially emphasized by Mark. For the complete exposition of this trial before Pilate see “Exposition of Matthew.”

2. Barabbas released; the Servant condemned to be crucified. Mar 15:6-15

The Story of Barabbas and his release is full of helpful instruction. “So true it was that, even in this last scene, Jesus delivers others at His own cost and in every sense. He had just before delivered the disciples from being taken; He is now the means of delivering Barabbas, wicked as he was. He never saved Himself. It was the very perfection of the moral Glory of Christ to deliver, bless, save, and in all at the expense of Himself.” (“Gospel of Mark,” W. Kelly) Barabbas was released, though guilty and condemned, because the Lord Jesus took his Place. Christ was his substitute. Barabbas released might have gone out and looked up to Him, who hung on the cross and said, “He died for me; he paid my penalty.” It is a blessed illustration of the atonement. They ask for the murderer Barabbas and demand the horrible death by crucifixion for God’s perfect Servant and their King. The chief priests had moved the people to make this fatal choice. See the interesting additions in Matthew’s Gospel on account of its Jewish-dispensational character.

3. Crowned with thorns and mocked. Mar 15:16-21

Oh! the heart piercing scenes of this section of our Gospel! They led Him away to heap the greatest indignities upon the Holy One. That is man’s answer to that service of love and power He so unceasingly had rendered. After the cruel scourging they clothed Him with a purple robe in mockery. Matthew reports a scarlet cloak. This is not a discrepancy. “A scarlet military robe was made to represent the imperial purple, hence the designation, a purple robe. And because this is the symbolic import of the robe, there is no discrepancy” (Lange). The scarlet cloak was used to represent in mockery the imperial purple robe. The crown of thorns was made to inflict cruel pain upon His brow. Thorns came on account of man’s sin; they are the signs of the curse. He took the curse upon His own head. Mark tells us most definitely who Simon the Cyrenian was, who was compelled to bear His cross, the father of Alexander and Rufus (see Rom 16:13). God did not forget this service; Simon’s sons became believers.

4. Crucified. Mar 15:22-32

It is interesting to note here that Mark speaks of bringing Him to Golgotha. The word translated “bring” really means “bear” (translated thus in Mar 2:3 and Luk 23:26). “And they bear Him unto the place Golgotha.” They had to hold Him up. The blessed Servant had spent His strength. What appearance He must have presented after all the scourging and cruel indignities! His face from the awful blows was marred. No wonder that His real human body was weak. But could He succumb? Never. No one could take His life. It could not be touched by man or Satan; death (the result of sin) had no claim on Him. He gave His life for a ransom. Mark also reports exclusively that the wine they offered Him was mingled with myrrh. This was considered an anodyne, to relieve and deaden the pain. The Servant who had come to spend all He had and to give Himself did not need it, but refused the concoction. Mark gives the hour of crucifixion as “the third hour.” In John’s Gospel (19:14) the sixth hour is mentioned when Pilate said, “Behold your King.” The critics triumphantly point to this as a discrepancy. But John gives the Roman way of reckoning the civil day and Mark adheres to the Jewish timekeeping.

The superscription on the cross is the briefest in Mark. He gives the substance of the accusation and not the full wording of it. The perfect Servant who had so fully glorified God and given Himself in all His service, hangs between the two thieves, who had robbed God and man. How true it was (though they knew it not), “He saved others; Himself He cannot save.” He did not save Himself for He came to die. He was obedient unto death.

5. Obedient unto death, the death of the Cross. Mar 15:33-41

What hours those were! What heart can penetrate its deep mysteries or fathom the depths of the sufferings of the Lamb of God, when He was obedient unto death, the death of the Cross! Nature bears witness to it by the supernatural darkness, for the One who created all things suffers for the creature’s sin. And what a scene in Heaven, when God’s own hand rested upon that One! Worship, praise and adoration is here more in order than an attempt of explanation. He was forsaken of God; and then He paid our penalty and stood in our stead in the presence of a holy God. Never say He was forsaken by His Father. Read Joh 16:32. The Servant’s cry with a loud voice shows that no one took His life, but that He gave “Himself.” And there was the rent veil from top to bottom (rent by God’s own hand). Then came the utterance of the Centurion: a Gentile confessing Him as Son of God. And the women are mentioned, who had ministered unto Him. The men had fled, the feeble women were there. All service now after the great victory He won, must be in weakness, depending on Him alone.

6. The Burial. Mar 15:42-47

Joseph of Arimathea, like Nicodemus, identified himself with Him, who had died on a cross and confessed Him boldly by this action. In Pilate’s astonishment that He had died so soon we have additional evidence that the Servant “gave His life.” Death by crucifixion, perhaps so often witnessed by the centurion, is a lingering death. They would have given Him the grave of the wicked, but God had predicted it otherwise (Isa 53:9 read, “they appointed His grave with the wicked, but with the rich He was when He had died”). The tomb was one in which no other dead had ever been. “The one born of a Virgin-womb could only be fittingly honored in a virgin tomb. He who could not see corruption, could not lie in a tomb which corruption had defiled.”

Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CHAPTER 26.

JESUS AT PILATE’S BAR

Mat 27:1-14; Mar 15:1-5; Luk 23:1-5; Joh 18:28-38. “Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas into the judgment-hall.”

When I was in Jerusalem last November and December, I went directly from the Sanhedrin hall, on Mount Zion in the west, to Pilate’s judgment- hall, north-east wall, on the intervening slope between Mount Moriah and Bezetha. “And it was morning.” Thus Jesus has been up all night, dragged hither and thither, abused and afflicted by His enemies, and must be awfully fatigued and exhausted. “And they did not go into the judgment- hall, in order that they may not be polluted, but may eat the Passover.” This illustrates the nonsense into which Satan runs religious people when they give him a chance. Here they are so fearful of contracting ceremonial defilement that they will not so much as enter the Gentile judgment-hall; while they are already guilty of the blackest murder ever concocted in the bottomless pit. You must not think that these things are peculiar to the ancient times. The world is full of them now.

“Then Pilate came out to them, and said, What accusation do you bring against this Man? They responded and said, If He were not an evildoer, we had not delivered Him to thee. Then Pilate said to them, You indeed take Him, and judge Him according to your law. Then the Jews said to him, It is not lawful for us to kill any one, in order that the word of Jesus may be fulfilled, which He spoke, signifying by what death He was about to die.” Very early in our Lord’s ministry (Joh 3:14), in the case of the brazen serpent, He predicted the manner of His death by crucifixion. This was a Roman punishment, the Jews having no such a law. Consequently He was delivered by the Jews to the Romans for execution. You see here the dilemma in which the Jews were involved.

a. Having condemned Him to die for blasphemy, they now wake up to the fact that Judea is no longer free, but a Roman province, the prerogative of capital punishment having already passed out of the hands of the Jews and become the sole right of the Romans. Consequently they have to take Him to Pilate, the Roman proconsul.

b. By the time they arrive at Pilate’s judgment-hall, they have awakened to the fact that the Romans have no law against blasphemy, for which they have condemned Jesus to die. Consequently they see that it will be utterly unavailable to bring this charge against Him before a Roman court. Therefore they have no bill of charges to present to Pilate justifying the commitment of a prisoner to his adjudication.

c. Now they find themselves in a serious puzzle, as the overwhelming probability favors the conclusion that if they present to Pilate the prisoner charged with nothing but blasphemy, on which Roman legislation is utterly Silent, Pilate will simply throw the case out of court, refuse to adjudicate, and drive them all away from his tribunal, as Gallio did at Corinth (Acts 18) when Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue, brought Paul to him for condemnation, having no charge against him except matters pertaining to their own religion, which the proconsul looked upon as superstition, and consequently, threw it out of court, driving the Jews away from his tribunal, when the Gentile multitude became so disgusted with the foolish persecutions of the Jews against an innocent man that they took Sosthenes and gave him a good thrashing, which seems to have proved a blessing to him, as we only hear of him once more (1 Corinthians 1), when he is associated with Paul in the evangelistic work at Ephesus, having been converted and turned missionary.

d. The final result of all this tergiversation is, that they drop the charge of blasphemy altogether, and take up a new one, on which there had been no action, committing Him to Pilate under the accusation of high treason, claiming to be King of the Jews, and consequently a rival of the Roman emperor.

Luk 23:2. “And they began to accuse Him, saying, We found Him revolutionizing the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that He Himself is, Christ a King.” You see how adroitly they manipulated the matter. As the Scriptures denominate Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King, they construe Him as claiming to be King, and consequently a rival of Caesar.

Joh 18:33-38. “Then Pilate went again into the judgment-hall, and spoke to Jesus, and said to Him, Art Thou the King of the Jews? Jesus responded to him, Do you speak this of yourself, or did others tell you concerning Me? Pilate responded, Whether am I a Jew? Thy nation and the chief priests delivered Thee to me; what hast Thou done Jesus responded, My kingdom is not from this world , If My kingdom were from this world, My servants would fight for Me, in order that I may not be delivered to the Jews. But now My kingdom is not from thence.” This statement of our Savior in reference to His kingdom is frequently quoted as an argument against the coming Millennial Theocracy; but a moment’s reflection reveals the utter impertinency of such an application. Of course, God’s kingdom is not of this world, but of heaven; but that is no reason why, it should, not bear rule over this world. The kingdom of God is here now; yet it is not of this world. The kingdom of Satan is here; not of this world, but of hell, and a usurpation on the earth. When Satan is east out and imprisoned in hell (Revelation 20), thus all obstructions to the heavenly kingdom being removed, the latter, will, so wonderfully prevail on the earth as to receive a boundless, new impetus, not eliminating grace, but adding to it glory, when

“He shall have dominion over river, sea, and shore, Far as the eagle’s pinion or dove’s light wing can soar.”

“Then Pilate said to Him, Art Thou not then a King? Jesus responded, Thou sayest that I am.” N.B. — This is an Oriental form of positive affirmation, Jesus admitting to Pilate that He is King. “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, that I may witness to the truth.” His is significantly a kingdom of truth, in contradistinction to Satan’s kingdom of falsehood and error. “Every one being of the truth heareth My voice.” Poor Pilate was not of the truth. He was a corrupt thieving politician, therefore he did not hear the voice of Jesus, but came to a miserable end, dying a suicide in lonely exile, having been degraded and banished by Caligula, the Roman emperor.

“Pilate says to Him, What is truth?” Pilate took up the idea that He was a dreamy, visionary philosopher, gone wild with hard study, imagining that He was a King, and that He had found out the truth, as so many Greek sages claimed to have done; meanwhile he had no confidence in His claims to have discovered the truth. Consequently, when he asked the question, he goes right away, not waiting for an answer.

“Saying this again, he went out to the Jews, and tells them, I find nothing criminal in Him.” The Roman Empire had conquered all the world, and was at that time ruling all nations. The very idea that a poor prisoner in bonds, without an army to defend Him, should claim to be King of the Jews was, in Pilate’s judgment, sheer nonsense. Consequently he looks upon the royal claims of his prisoner as simply a matter of ridicule. Believing Him to be a harmless fanatic, dreaming that He is King of the Jews, therefore he makes short work of the judgment by bringing in a verdict of innocence.

Mat 27:12-14. “And while He was being accused by the high priests and elders, He responded nothing. Then Pilate says to Him, Do You not hear how many things they witness against You? And He responded to him not a word, so that the governor was astonished exceedingly.” Will you not follow the example of Jesus, when people falsely accuse you, and keep silent? Let them tell; ever so many scandals on you, give them no attention whatever; and they will soon get ashamed and let you alone, and in all probability make a specialty of showing you kindness.

Luk 23:4-5. “Pilate said to the chief priests and the multitudes, I find nothing criminal in this Man. And they continued to become more and more uproarious, saying that He revolutionizes the people, teaching throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee even unto this place.” The sun having risen about five is rapidly climbing the Oriental skies, and pouring down, the day from the summit of great Mount Olivet. His enemies, having worked hard all night to get Him condemned and killed before day, lest the people rally and fight, for Him, are now in an awful dilemma. They have Him on hand and are determined to kill Him; meanwhile the people are pouring in from all directions, and they awfully fear an outbreak, in which they will very likely be killed.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15:1-20 (Mar_15:1-20)

PILATE

"And straightway in the morning the chief priests with the elders and scribes, and the whole council, held a consultation, and bound Jesus, and carried Him away, and delivered Him up to Pilate."

". . . And they lead Him out to crucify Him." Mar_15:1-20 (R.V.)

WITH morning came the formal assembly, which St. Mark dismisses in a single verse. It was indeed a disgraceful mockery. Before the trial began its members had prejudged the case, passed sentence by anticipation, and abandoned Jesus, as one condemned, to the brutality of their servants. And now the spectacle of a prisoner outraged and maltreated moves no indignation in their hearts.

Let us, for whom His sufferings were endured, reflect upon the strain and anguish of all these repeated examinations, these foregone conclusions gravely adopted in the name of justice, these exhibitions of greed for blood. Among the "unknown sufferings" by which the Eastern Church invokes her Lord, surely not the least was His outraged moral sense.

As the issue of it all, they led Him away to Pilate, meaning, by the weight of such an accusing array, to overpower any possible scruples of the governor, but in fact fulfilling His words, "they shall deliver Him unto the Gentiles." And the first question recorded by St. Mark expresses the intense surprise of Pilate. "Thou," so meek, so unlike the numberless conspirators that I have tried, -- or perhaps, "Thou," Whom no sympathizing multitude sustains, and for Whose death the disloyal priesthood thirsts, "Art Thou the King of the Jews?" We know how carefully Jesus disentangled His claim from the political associations which the high priests intended that it should suggest, how the King of Truth would not exaggerate any more than understate the case, and explained that His kingdom was not of this world, that His servants did not fight, that His royal function was to uphold the truth, not to expel conquerors. The eyes of a practiced Roman governor saw through the accusation very clearly. Before him, Jesus was accused of sedition, but that was a transparent pretext; Jews did not hate Him for enmity to Rome: He was a rival teacher and a successful one, and for envy they had delivered Him. So far all was well. Pilate investigated the charge, arrived at the correct judgment, and it only remained that he should release the innocent man. In reaching this conclusion Jesus had given him the most prudent and skillful help, but as soon as the facts became clear, He resumed His impressive and mysterious silence. Thus, before each of His judges in turn, Jesus avowed Himself the Messiah and then held His peace. It was an awful silence, which would not give that which was holy to the dogs, nor profane the truth by unavailing protests or controversies. It was, however, a silence only possible to an exalted nature full of self-control, since the words actually spoken redeem it from any suspicion or stain of sullenness. It is the conscience of Pilate which must henceforth speak. The Romans were the lawgivers of the ancient world, and a few years earlier their greatest poet had boasted that their mission was to spare the helpless and to crush the proud. In no man was an act of deliberate injustice, or complaisance to the powerful at the cost of the good, more unpardonable than in a leader of that splendid race, whose laws are still the favorite study of those who frame and administer our own. And the conscience of Pilate struggled hard, aided by superstitious fear. The very silence of Jesus amid many charges, by none of which His accusers would stand or fall, excited the wonder of His judge. His wife's dream aided the effect. And he was still more afraid when he heard that this strange and elevated Personage, so unlike any other prisoner whom he had ever tried, laid claim to be Divine. Thus even in his desire to save Jesus, his motive was not pure, it was rather an instinct of self-preservation than a sense of justice. But there was danger on the other side as well; since he had already incurred the imperial censure, he could not without grave apprehensions contemplate a fresh complaint, and would certainly be ruined if he were accused of releasing a conspirator against Caesar. And accordingly he stooped to mean and crooked ways, he lost hold of the only clue in the perplexing labyrinth of expediencies, which is principle, and his name in the creed of Christendom is spoken with a shudder --: crucified under Pontius Pilate!"

It was the time for him to release a prisoner to them, according to an obscure custom, which some suppose to have sprung from the release of one of the two sacrificial goats, and others from the fact that they now celebrated their own deliverance from Egypt. At this moment the people began to demand their usual indulgence, and an evil hope arose in the heart of Pilate. They would surely welcome One who was in danger as a patriot: he would himself make the offer; and he would put it in this tempting form, "Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews?" Thus would the enmity of the priests be gratified, since Jesus would henceforth be a condemned culprit, and owe His life to their intercession with the foreigner. But the proposal was a surrender. The life of Jesus had not been forfeited; and when it was placed at their discretion, it was already lawlessly taken away. Moreover, when the offer was rejected, Jesus was in the place of a culprit who would not be released. To the priests, nevertheless, it was a dangerous proposal, and they needed to stir up the people, or perhaps Barabbas would not have been preferred.

Instigated by their natural guides, their religious teachers, these Jews made the tremendous choice, which has ever since been heavy on their heads and on their children's. Yet if ever an error could be excused by the plea of authority, and the duty of submission to constituted leaders, it was this error. They followed men who sat in Moses' seat, and who were thus entitled, according to Jesus Himself, to be obeyed. Yet that authority has not relieved the Hebrew nation from the wrath which came upon them to the uttermost. The salvation they desire was not moral elevation or spiritual life, and so Jesus had nothing to bestow upon them; they refused the Holy One and the Just. What they wanted was the world, the place which Rome held, and which they fondly hoped was yet to be their own. Even to have failed in the pursuit of this was better than to have the words of everlasting life, and so the name of Barabbas was enough to secure the rejection of Christ. It would almost seem that Pilate was ready to release both, if that would satisfy them, for he asks, in hesitation and perplexity, "What shall I do then with Him Whom ye call the King of the Jews?" Surely in their excitement for an insurgent, that title, given by themselves, will awake their pity. But again and again, like the howl of wolves, resounds their ferocious cry, Crucify Him, crucify Him.

The irony of Providence is known to every student of history, but it never was so manifest as here. Under the pressure of circumstances upon men whom principle has not made firm, we find a Roman governor striving to kindle every disloyal passion of his subjects, on behalf of the King of the Jews, -- appealing to men whom he hated and despised, and whose charges have proved empty as chaff, to say, What evil has He done? and even to tell him, on his judgment throne, what he shall do with their King; we find the men who accused Jesus of stirring up the people to sedition, now shamelessly agitating for the release of a red-handed insurgent; forced moreover to accept the responsibility which they would fain have devolved on Pilate, and themselves to pronounce the hateful sentence of crucifixion, unknown to their law, but for which they had secretly intrigued; and we find the multitude fiercely clamoring for a defeated champion of brute force, whose weapon has snapped in his hands, who has led his followers to the cross, and from whom there is no more to hope. What satire upon their hope of a temporal Messiah could be more bitter than their own cry, "We have no king but Caesar"? And what satire upon this profession more destructive than their choice of Barabbas and refusal of Christ? And all the while, Jesus looks on in silence, carrying out His mournful but effectual plan, the true Master of the movements which design to crush Him, and which He has foretold. As He ever receives gifts for the rebellious, and is the Savior of all men, though especially of them that believe, so now His passion, which retrieved the erring soul of Peter, and won the penitent thief, rescues Barabbas from the cross. His suffering was made visibly vicarious.

One is tempted to pity the feeble judge, the only person who is known to have attempted to rescue Jesus, beset by his old faults, which will make an impeachment fatal, wishing better than he dares to act, hesitating, sinking inch by inch, and like a bird with broken wing. No accomplice in this frightful crime is so suggestive of warning to hearts not entirely hardened.

But pity is lost in sterner emotion as we remember that this wicked governor, having borne witness to the perfect innocence of Jesus, was content, in order to save himself from danger, to watch the Blessed One enduring all the horrors of a Roman scourging, and then to yield Him up to die.

It is now the unmitigated cruelty of ancient paganism which has closed its hand upon our Lord. When the soldiers led Him away within the court, He was lost to His nation, which had renounced Him. It is upon this utter alienation, even more than the locality where the cross was fixed, that the Epistle to the Hebrews turns our attention, when it reminds us that "the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered without the gate." The physical exclusion, the material parallel points to something deeper, for the inference is that of estrangement. Those who serve the tabernacle cannot eat of our altar. Let us go forth unto Him, bearing His reproach. (Heb_12:10-13).

Renounced by Israel, and about to become a curse under the law, He has now to suffer the cruelty of wantonness, as He has already endured the cruelty of hatred and fear. Now, more than ever perhaps, He looks for pity and there is no man. None responded to the deep appeal of the eyes which had never seen misery without relieving it. The contempt of the strong for the weak and suffering, of coarse natures for sensitive ones, of Romans for Jews, all these were blended with bitter scorn of the Jewish expectation that some day Rome shall bow before a Hebrew conqueror, in the mockery which Jesus now underwent, when they clad Him in such cast-off purple as the Palace yielded, thrust a reed into His pinioned hand, crowned Him with thorns, beat these into His holy head with the scepter they had offered Him, and then proceeded to render the homage of their nation to the Messiah of Jewish hopes. It may have been this mockery which suggested to Pilate the inscription for the cross. But where is the mockery now? In crowning Him King of sufferings, and Royal among those who weep, they secured to Him the adherence of all hearts. Christ was made perfect by the things which He suffered; and it was not only in spite of insult and anguish but by means of them that He drew all men unto Him.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

15:1-15 Following the story of Peter’s denial, Mark turns back to Jesus and what happened at his trial. Pilate’s wavering under pressure fits what is known of him from other sources.

15:1 Very early in the morning: Roman trials usually began at dawn. It is not clear whether this was a second meeting of the entire high council, or whether the account refers back to the decision of the council in 14:63-64 and resumes at this point. • Since the high council lacked authority to institute capital punishment (John 18:31), they had to take Jesus to Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea from AD 26–36. Pilate’s normal residence was on the coast at Caesarea, but he stayed in Jerusalem during Passover, when Israel’s celebration of the Exodus raised hopes of deliverance from Roman rule.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Mar_15:1. See on Mat_27:1-2. Comp. Luk_23:1.

ἐπὶ τὸ πρωΐ] on the morning (Mar_13:35), i.e. during the early morning, so that ἐπί expresses the duration stretching itself out. Bernhardy, p. 252. Comp. Act_3:1; Act_4:5. As to συμβ. ποι., comp. on Mar_3:6. They made a consultation. According to the more significant reading ἑτοιμάσ. (see the critical remarks), they arranged such an one, they set it on foot. On what subject? the sequel informs us, namely, on the delivering over to the Procurator.

καὶ ὅλον τὸ συνέδρ.] and indeed the whole Sanhedrim. Mark has already observed, Mar_14:53 (πάντες), that the assembly was a, full one, and with manifest design brings it into prominence once more. Synedrium septuaginta unius seniorum non necesse est, ut sedeant omnes … cum vero necesse est, ut congregentur omnes, congregentur omnes, Maimonides, Sanhedr. 3 in Lightfoot, p. 639.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mar 15:1-5 . Before Pilate (Mat 27:1-14 , Luk 23:1-10 ).

Mar 15:1 . εὐθὺς , πρωῒ , without delay, quam primum , in the morning watch, which might mean any time between three and six, but probably signifies after sunrise. συμβούλιον will mean either a consultation or the result, the resolution come to, according as we adopt the reading: ποιήσαντες (T.R. = [145] [146] ) or ἑτοιμάσαντες ( [147] [148] [149] ). καὶ ὅλον τὸ συνέδριον : the καὶ simply identifies = even the whole Sanhedrim, and does not imply that, besides the three classes previously mentioned, some others were present ( e.g. , στρατηγοὺς τοῦ ἱεροῦ : Luk 22:52 ). This added clause signifies that it was a very important meeting, as, in view of its aim, to prepare the case for Pilate, it obviously was. The Sanhedrists had accomplished nothing till they had got the matter put in such a form that they might hope to prevail with the procurator, with whom lay the jus gladii , to do their wicked will, and of course that Jesus claimed to be the Christ would not serve that purpose. Vide notes on Mt. Πιλάτῳ : without the article in best MSS. on this the first mention; with, in subsequent reference. Mk. does not think it necessary to say who or what Pilate was, not even mentioning, as Mt., that he was the governor.

[145] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.

[146] Codex Sangallensis, a Graeco-Latin MS. of the tenth century, and having many ancient readings, especially in Mark.

[147] Codex Sinaiticus (sæc. iv.), now at St. Petersburg, published in facsimile type by its discoverer, Tischendorf, in 1862.

[148] Codex Ephraemi

[149] Codex Regius--eighth century, represents an ancient text, and is often in agreement with א and B.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1–15. THE TRIAL BEFORE THE PROCURATOR

Mat 27:1-26. Luk 23:1-3; Luk 23:18-25

Joh 18:28-40; Joh 19:4-16

1. ποιήσαντες ([3347][3348][3349][3350][3351][3352][3353][3354]) rather than ἑτοιμάσαντες ([3355][3356][3357])

[3347] Codex Alexandrinus. 5th cent. Brought by Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople, from Alexandria, and afterwards presented by him to King Charles I. in 1628. In the British Museum. The whole Gospel. Photographic facsimile, 1879.

[3348] Codex Vaticanus. 4th cent., but perhaps a little later than א. In the Vatican Library almost since its foundation by Pope Nicolas V., and one of its greatest treasures. The whole Gospel, ending at Mar 16:8. Photographic facsimile, 1889.

[3349] Codex Purpureus. 6th cent. Full text in Texts and Studies v. No. 4, 1899. Contains Mar 5:20 to Mar 7:4; Mar 7:20 to Mar 8:32; Mar 9:1 to Mar 10:43; Mar 11:7 to Mar 12:19; Mar 14:25 to Mar 15:23; Mar 15:33-42. See below on Ψ.

[3350] Codex Monacensis. 10th cent. Contains Mar 6:47 to Mar 16:20. Many verses in 14, 15, 16 are defective.

[3351] Codex Oxoniensis. 9th cent. Contains Mark, except Mar 3:35 to Mar 6:20.

[3352] Codex Sangallensis. 9th or 10th cent. Contains the Gospels nearly complete, with an interlinear Latin translation. The text of Mark is specially good, agreeing often with CL. At St Gall.

[3353] Codex Petropolitanus. 9th cent. Gospels almost complete. Mar 16:18-20 is in a later hand.

[3354] Codex Athous Laurae. 8th cent. Like N and Σ, it is written in silver letters on purple vellum. Contains Mar 9:5 to Mar 16:20, and, as in L, the shorter ending is inserted between Mar 16:8 and Mar 16:9. As in Δ, the text of Mark is specially good.

[3355] Codex Sinaiticus. 4th cent. Discovered by Tischendorf in 1859 at the Monastery of St Katharine on Mount Sinai. Now at St Petersburg. The whole Gospel, ending at Mar 16:8. Photographic facsimile, 1911.

[3356] Codex Ephraemi. 5th cent. A palimpsest: the original writing has been partially rubbed out, and the works of Ephraem the Syrian have been written over it; but a great deal of the original writing has been recovered; of Mark we have Mar 1:17 to Mar 6:31, Mar 8:5 to Mar 12:29, Mar 13:19 to Mar 16:20. In the National Library at Paris.

[3357] odex Regius. 8th cent. An important witness. At Paris. Contains Mar 1:1 to Mar 10:15; Mar 10:30 to Mar 15:1; Mar 15:20 to Mar 16:20, but the shorter ending is inserted between Mar 16:8 and Mar 16:9, showing that the scribe preferred it to the longer one.

1. εὐθὺς πρωΐ. Directly it was morning, i.e. as soon as it was lawful to transact business. They must get everything settled with Pilate before the Paschal Lambs were killed that afternoon. The real business was done at the nocturnal meeting, of which Mk and Mt. give a detailed account, and therefore describe the formal confirmation in the morning very briefly. Lk. records the later meeting only, and transfers to it features of the midnight sitting. Some items would have to be gone through twice. There is no exact parallel to εὐθὺς πρωΐ, but εὐθὺς τοῖς σάββασιν, “on the very first sabbath” (Mar 1:21) is near it.

συμβούλιον ποιήσαντες. “Held a consultation” (A.V., R.V.) is very likely right, but συμβούλιον may mean the result of consultation, “a plan of action.” Mt., as usual, has συμβ. ἔλαβον. See on Mar 3:6.

οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς. The three elements of the Sanhedrin are given, but differently from Mar 14:53. With characteristic fulness (Mar 14:58; Mar 14:61; Mar 14:68) Mk adds καὶ ὅλον τὸ συνέδριον, which Mt. omits as superfluous. Lk. has simply his characteristic words ἅπαν τὸ πλῆθος αὐτῶν.

δὴσαντες. He had been bound in the garden (Joh 18:12; Joh 18:24), and probably unbound in the high-priest’s palace. It was important to show to Pilate that they regarded Him as dangerous, and it is said that binding intimated that He had been declared to be worthy of death.

παρέδωκαν Πειλάτῳ. Mk assumes that his readers know who Pilate was; he never calls him ὁ ἡγεμών. The Procurator had come from Caesarea, the Roman capital, to keep order during the Passover. He probably occupied Herod’s palace, as Florus had previously done (Joseph. B.J. II. xiv. 8, xv. 5). The hierarchy hand Jesus over to him to get their sentence of death confirmed; See on Joh 18:31. Pilate of course would not listen to a charge of blasphemy, so they accuse Him of being seditious, forbidding tribute to Tiberius, and assuming the title of “king.” Pilate would not understand “Messiah,” but “king of the Jews” would be intelligible enough. Pilate does not take their word for it; he begins to investigate the case himself; and here we may have much of the exact language used, for Pilate would converse with our Lord in Greek.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chap.

15:1-5.] Jesus is led away to Pilate, and examined by him. Mat 27:1, Mat 27:2, Mat 27:11-14.Luk 23:1-5Luk 23:1-5.Joh 18:28-38Joh 18:28-38. Our account is very nearly related to that in Matt.: see notes there. The ὅλον τὸ σ. is a touch of accuracy. From ch. 14:53 we know that πάντες were assembled. Lightfoot quotes from Maimonides Sanhedr. 3 b., “Synedrium septuaginta unius seniorum non necesse habet ut sedeant omnes … cum vero necesse est ut congregentur omnes, congregentur omnes.”

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

JESUS BEFORE PILATE

15:1-15. The Sanhedrim have found in Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah a basis of procedure against him under Jewish law. The claim they judged to be blasphemy. It appears now that they made use of the same before Pilate. For the first question that Pilate asks is whether Jesus is king of the Jews, evidently reflecting in this the charge on which Jesus has been brought to him. Jesus assents to this, but Pilate is well enough informed about the affairs of his province to know that the claim as made by Jesus does not amount to treason, and involves no harm to the state. Otherwise, the case would have been complete. The chief priests, seeing that it is not, proceed to make various charges, to which Jesus makes no reply. Just how the next step is brought about we are not told, but probably it is a device of Pilate’s to use the sympathy of the people against the malice of the authorities, and so justify himself in releasing Jesus. In a case like this, it would be the policy of the empire not only to decide the question on its merits, but to conciliate the people. At any rate, the question of releasing to the people a political prisoner being brought up, he asks them if he shall release to them the king of the Jews. But the chief priests, knowing that the hope of the people had been for a political Messiah, and that Jesus had disappointed that hope, found it easy to stir up the crowd to demand the release of Barabbas, who had been in a political plot, and even the crucifixion of Jesus. And Pilate following the Roman policy, acceded to their demand.

1. Καὶ εὐθὺς πρωῒ συμβούλιον ἑτοιμάσαντες—And immediately in the morning, having made ready a concerted plan of action. It is evident that their formal procedure had been the night before, resulting in the condemnation of Jesus, 14:64. On the contrary, this morning meeting was an informal gathering to decide on a plan of action before Pilate. συμβούλιον with ἑτοιμάζειν denotes not a consultation, but the result of the consultation, a concerted plan of action.1 This is the reverse of Jewish legal process, which would have allowed the informal gathering at night, but a judicial procedure only during the day.2 Lk. makes this trial in the morning to be the one in which they extract from Jesus the confession that he is the Messiah. In fact, in Mt. and Mk. the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrim is at night, in Lk., on the contrary, it is in the morning.3 κ. ὅλον τὸ συνέδριον—The AV. translates here so as to make these words a part of those dependent on μετὰ, with. But they belong with οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς. The RV. translates properly; The chief priests with the elders and scribes, and all the council. τῷ Πιλάτῳ—this is the first time that Pilate has been mentioned in Mt. or Mk. Lk. tells us that he was procurator of Judæa at the time that John the Baptist began his work,4 and we know from other sources that he had been procurator for three years at that time. Judæa had been a part of the Roman province of Syria since a.d. 6, and was governed by a Roman procurator, whose residence was Cæsarea. Pilate was sixth in the line of these. His presence at Jerusalem was on account of the Passover, and the danger of disturbance owing to the influx of Jews at the feast.

Omit ἐπὶ τὸ before πρωῒ, Tisch. Treg. WH. RV. א BCDL 46, mss. Lat. Vet. Egyptt. ἑτοιμάσαντες, instead of ποιήσαντες, Tisch. WH. marg. א CL. Internal evidence favors this more difficult reading.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Christ being bound before the judgment seat of an earthly judge, in open assembly is condemned as guilty unto the death of the cross, not for his own sins, (as appeareth by the judge’s own words) but for all ours, that we most guilty creatures being delivered from the guiltiness of our sins, might be quitted before the judgment seat of God, even in the open assembly of the Angels.

It was not lawful for them to put any man to death, for all causes of life and death were taken away from them, first by Herod the great, and afterward by the Romans, about forty years before the destruction of the Temple, and therefore they deliver Jesus to Pilate.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Here we have, I. A consultation held by the great Sanhedrim for the effectual prosecution of our Lord Jesus. They met early in the morning about it, and went into a grand committee, to find out ways and means to get him put to death; they lost no time, but followed their blow in good earnest, lest there should be an uproar among the people. The unwearied industry of wicked people in doing that which is evil, should shame us for our backwardness and slothfulness in that which is good. They that war against Christ and thy soul, are up early; How long then wilt thou sleep, O sluggard?

II. The delivering of him up a prisoner to Pilate; they bound him. He was to be the great sacrifice, and sacrifices must be bound with cords, Psa 118:27. Christ was bound, to make bonds easy to us, and enable us, as Paul and Silas, to sing in bonds. It is good for us often to remember the bonds of the Lord Jesus, as bound with him who was bound for us. They led him through the streets of Jerusalem, to expose him to contempt, who, while he taught in the temple, but a day or two before, was had in veneration; and we may well imagine how miserably he looked after such a night's usage as he had had; so buffeted, spit upon, and abused. Their delivering him to the Roman power was a type of ruin of their church, which hereby they merited, and brought upon themselves; it signified that the promise, the covenant, and the oracles, of God, and the visible state church, which were the glory of Israel, and had been so long in their possession, should now be delivered up to the Gentiles. By delivering up the king they do, in effect, deliver up the kingdom of God, which is therefore, as it were, by their own consent, taken from them, and given to another nation. If they had delivered up Christ, to gratify the desires of the Romans, or to satisfy and jealousies of theirs concerning him, it had been another matter; but they voluntarily betrayed him that was Israel's crown, to them that were Israel's yoke.

III. The examining of him by Pilate upon interrogatories (Mar 15:2); "Art thou the king of the Jews? Dost thou pretend to be so, to be that Messiah whom the Jews expect as a temporal prince?" - "Yea," saith Christ, "it is as thou sayest, I am that Messiah, but not such a one as they expect." He is the king that rules and protects his Israel according to the spirit, who are Jews inwardly by the circumcision of the spirit, and the king that will restrain and punish the carnal Jews, who continue in unbelief.

IV. The articles of impeachment exhibited against him, and his silence under the charge and accusation. The chief priests forgot the dignity of their place, when they turned informers, and did in person accuse Christ of many things (Mar 15:3), and witness against him, Mar 15:4. Many of the Old Testament prophets charge the priests of their times with great wickedness, in which well did they prophesy of these priests; see Eze 22:26; Hos 5:1; Hos 6:9; Mic 3:11; Zep 3:4; Mal 1:6; Mal 2:8. The destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans is said to be for the iniquity of the priests that shed the blood of the just, Lam 4:13. Note, Wicked priests are generally the worst of men. The better any thing is, the worse it is when it is corrupted. Lay persecutors have been generally found more compassionate than ecclesiastics. These priests were very eager and noisy in their accusation; but Christ answered nothing, Mar 15:3. When Pilate urged him to clear himself, and was desirous he should (Mar 15:4), yet still he stood mute (Mar 15:5), he answered nothing, which Pilate thought very strange. He gave Pilate a direct answer (Mar 15:2), but would not answer the prosecutors and witnesses, because the things they alleged, were notoriously false, and he knew Pilate himself was convinced they were so. Note, As Christ spoke to admiration, so he kept silence to admiration.

V. The proposal Pilate made to the people, to have Jesus released to them, since it was the custom of the feast to grace the solemnity with the release of one prisoner. The people expected and demanded that he should do as he had ever done to them (Mar 15:8); it was not an ill usage, but they would have it kept up. Now Pilate perceived that the chief priests delivered up Jesus for envy, because he had got such a reputation among the people as eclipsed theirs, Mar 15:10. It was easy to see, comparing the eagerness of the prosecutors with the slenderness of the proofs, that it was not his guilt, but his goodness, not any thing mischievous or scandalous, but something meritorious and glorious, that they were provoked at. And therefore, hearing how much he was the darling of the crowd, he thought that he might safely appeal from the priests to the people, and that they would be proud of rescuing him out of the priests' hands; and he proposed an expedient for their doing it without danger of an uproar; let them demand him to be released, and Pilate will be ready to do it, and stop the mouths of the priests with this - that the people insisted upon his release. There was indeed another prisoner, one Barabbas, that had an interest, and would have some votes; but he questioned not but Jesus would out-poll him.

VI. The unanimous outrageous clamours of the people have Christ put to death, and particularly to have him crucified. It was a great surprise to Pilate, when he found the people so much under the influence of the priests, that they all agreed to desire that Barabbas might be released, Mar 15:11. Pilate opposed it all he could; "What will ye that I shall do to him whom ye call the King of the Jews? Would not ye then have him released too?" Mar 15:12. No, say they, Crucify him. The priests having put that in their mouths, the insist upon it; when Pilate objected, Why, what evil has he done? (a very material question in such a case), they did not pretend to answer it, but cried out more exceedingly, as they were more and more instigated and irritated by the priests, Crucify him, crucify him. Now the priests, who were very busy dispersing themselves and their creatures among the mob, to keep up the cry, promised themselves that it would influence Pilate two ways to condemn him. 1. It might incline him to believe Christ guilty, when there was so general an out-cry against him. "Surely," might Pilate think, "he must needs be a bad man, whom all the world is weary of." He would now conclude that he had been misinformed, when he was told what an interest he had in the people, and that the matter was not so. But the priest had hurried on the prosecution with so much expedition, that we may suppose that they who were Christ's friends, and would have opposed this cry, were at the other end of the town, and knew nothing of the matter. Note, It has been the common artifice of Satan, to put Christ and his religion into an ill name, and so to run them down. When once this sect, as they called it, comes to be every where spoken against, though without cause, then that is looked upon as cause enough to condemn it. But let us judge of persons and things by their merits, and the standard of God's word, and not prejudge by common fame and the cry of the country. 2. It might induce him to condemn Christ, to please the people, and indeed for fear of displeasing them. Though he was not so weak as to be governed by their opinion, to believe him guilty, yet he was so wicked as to be swayed by their outrage, to condemn him, though he believed him innocent; induced thereunto by reasons of state, and the wisdom of the world. Our Lord Jesus dying as a sacrifice for the sins of many, he fell a sacrifice to the rage of many.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

CHAPTER XV.

Jesus is brought before Pilate, examined, and accused, but

makes no answer, 1-5.

The multitude clamour for the release of Barabbas, and the

crucifixion of Christ, 6-14.

Pilate consents, and he is led away, mocked, insulted, and

nailed to the cross, 15-26.

Two thieves are crucified with him, 27, 28.

While hanging on the cross, he is mocked and insulted, 29-32.

The miraculous darkness and our Lord's death, 33-37.

The rending of the veil, and the confession of the centurion,

38, 39.

Several women attend and behold his death, 40, 41.

Joseph of Arimathea begs the body from Pilate, and buries it,

42-46.

Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of Joses, note the place of

his burial, 47.

NOTES ON CHAP. XV.

Verse 1. In the morning] See Mt 27:1, &c.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

XV.

(1-14) And the whole council.—The words in the Greek are in apposition with “the chief priests.” We do not know of any other elements in the Council or Sanhedrin than the priests, scribes, and elders, and it is possible that the writer may have added the words in the sense of “even the whole Council,” as giving the collective word for the body of which the three constituent parts had been already named. On the whole section see Notes on Mat_27:1-2; Mat_27:11-23.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1 And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried him away, and delivered him to Pilate.

Ver. 1. And straightway in the morning] They thought once to have deferred his execution till after the feast, Mar 14:2. But their malice was restless, as his was that said he would not away till he saw the martyr’s (the traitor’s he called him) heart out.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

See the principal events in this chapter explained in the notes at Matt. 27.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

It was customary with the Jews to bind and deliver over to the Roman governors those whom they had condemned in their own councils; but we must not suppose that this was the first time they bound Jesus; for St. John informs us, when first they apprehended him, they put manacles upon him. (Ven. Bede)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

See Poole on "Mat 27:1-2". Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor in Judea at this time, Luk 3:1. The reasons of their carrying Christ to him, when they had condemned him to death for blasphemy, (a crime cognizable before them, as appeareth in the case of Stephen, Act 7:54-60), see in our notes on Matthew. What time in the morning they carried him before Pilate is not said, only John saith it was early, and we read it was about the sixth hour, (that is, with us twelve of the clock), when Pilate dismissed him, being by him condemned; so probably they were with Pilate by six or seven in the morning. This morning was the morning after the evening in which they had eaten the passover, and the first day of their feast of unleavened bread: so little did they regard God’s ordinance.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

The Trial Before Pilate. The Crucifixion

1-15. Trial before Pilate (Mat_27:1, Mat_27:11; Luk_23:1, Luk_23:13; Joh_18:28). See on Mt and Jn. For the trial before Herod see on Luk_23:6.

16-20. The mockery (Mat_27:27). See on Mt.

16. Prætorium] see on Joh_18:28.

21-41. The Crucifixion (Mat_27:31; Luk_23:26; Joh_19:16). See on Mt, Lk, Jn.

21. Alexander and Rufus] These names occur only in Mk. They were clearly Christians of eminence, well known in the Roman Church for which this Gospel was composed. Rufus is probably the Rufus of Rom_16:13, where he is called 'chosen in the Lord.' Who Alexander was, is unknown. It is unlikely that he is identical with any of the other Alexanders mentioned in NT. (Act_19:33; 1Ti_1:20; 2Ti_4:14).

28. Nearly all modern editors omit this v. It is generally regarded as interpolated from Luk_22:37, which, however, is not parallel.

31. Himself he cannot save] RM 'Can he not save himself?'

40. The less] i.e. the little, generally identified with the son of Alphæus (Mat_10:3).

42-47. Burial of Jesus (Mat_27:57; Luk_23:50; Joh_19:38). See on Mt and Jn.

43. Waited for the kingdom of God] cp. Luk_2:25, Luk_2:38. This, which is also St. Luke's expression, answers to St. Matthew's, 'who also himself was Jesus' disciple.' Joseph had discovered the King of the Kingdom for which he waited.

44. Whether, etc.] RM 'Whether he were already dead.'

47. Mary the mother of Joses] lit. 'Mary of Joses' (or 'of Joseph,' for that spelling is also strongly supported). Who was this Mary? She can hardly be the same as the 'Mary of James' in Mar_16:1, for the evangelist (even if drawing from different sources) would hardly describe the same woman as 'of Joses' and 'of James' in two consecutive verses. Nor is it easy to identify her with Mary the mother of James and Joses (Mar_15:40). She is not called 'Mary the another of James and Joses,' or even 'Mary of James and Joses,' but simply 'Mary of Joses' (or 'Joseph'). Hence it is most natural to translate, 'Mary the daughter of Joses' (Joseph), and to regard her as the daughter (or just possibly the wife) of Joseph of Arimathæa, or of some unknown Joses (Joseph).

J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For explanation of this chapter, we refer generally to the notes on Matthew 27.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And straightway in the morning the chief priests with the elders and scribes, and the whole council, held a consultation, and bound Jesus, and carried him away, and delivered him up to Pilate. Straightway in the morning (euyewv prwi). The proceedings recorded in the last chapter terminated probably between five and six; the cock-crowing helps to fix the time. Now came the more formal trial. The whole Sanhedrim united in consultation. All the proceedings hitherto had been irregular and illegal. Now, for form"s sake, they tried him afresh. But there was another law which was also violated. It was now Friday. In capital cases, sentence of condemnation might not legally be pronounced on the day of the trial. Yet our Lord was tried, condemned, and crucified on the same day. They "hound him," that he might be impeded in any attempt to escape. They "carried him away" (aphnegkan), with the semblance of force; although we know that he went "as a lamb to the slaughter." How truly might it be said of these chief priests and elders, "Their feet are swift to shed blood!" A nd delivered him up to Pilate. Judaea now was added to the province of Syria, and governed by procurators, of whom Pontius Pilate was the fifth. It was necessary for the Jews to deliver Christ over to the Roman power; because the power of life and death had been taken from them since they became subject to the Romans. "It is not lawful for us," they say (Joh_18:31) "to put any man to death;" that is to say, they could not put to death without the authority of the governor. Our Lord predicted of himself, "They shall deliver him to the Gentiles.

Vers. 1-15. The trial before Pilate.

How true it is that "God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all"! Jesus was first examined by Annas, then tried before Caiaphas, the high priest, then formally condemned by the Sanhedrim. But these mock-trials, with all their injustice and their indignities, were not enough to exhaust the appointed humiliation and suffering. Christ must needs be.brought before the Roman governor, who had come up from Caesarea to Jerusalem to attend the Feast of the Passover. In order that he might endure the curse attaching to every one that hangeth on a tree, in order that he might fulfill his own prediction that he should die by crucifixion, he must needs be sentenced, not merely by a Hebrew, but also by a Roman tribunal. The passage before us exhibits the several agencies by which the condemnation of Christ was brought about.

I THE MALICE AND ENVY OF THE PRIESTS. Pilate "perceived that for envy the chief priests had delivered him up." They both hated the spiritual teaching of the Prophet of Nazareth, so much at variance with their own; and they were jealous of the influence which he had acquired over the people, not only in Galilee, but in Judaea. The hatred and envy of the priests, Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes, had been abundantly shown by their treatment of Jesus for some time past, but was made more apparent by the events of the past night. Their apprehension of him in the garden, their treatment of him before the high priest, had been flagitiously malicious and unjust. And now their charge against him at the bar of Pilate a charge virtually of political treason against the authority of the Roman empire was a proof of the length to which their hatred and hypocrisy could proceed. They brought this charge, simply because they thought that this would tell most against him in the estimation of the procurator.

II THE FICKLENESS AND THE UNPRINCIPLED CHOICE OF THE MULTITUDE. But a few days ago the crowds in the streets of Jerusalem had welcomed the Prophet of Nazareth with the cry, "Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." Of those who thus hailed the triumphal entry of the Nazarene, probably the greater part were Galileans. And the apprehension of Jesus had been effected at night; the trial of Jesus had been hurried on before the day, probably with this intent, that the pilgrims from the north of Palestine, who were so largely adherents of Jesus, might be prevented from taking any steps to rescue the Prisoner, or at all events from making a demonstration on his behalf. Yet the populace inhabiting and sojourning in the city cannot be acquitted of proverbial fickleness. The minions of the priesthood, no doubt, led the way, and raised the first shouts of popular outcry against Jesus. The multitude were instigated by the sacerdotal party and their adherents to this position of hostility, this ferocious howl for the blood of the Innocent. The infamous choice of the populace, who preferred Barabbas to Jesus, is one of the most distressing incidents of the awful martydom. A rioter and murderer was apparently represented as a champion of national independence, whilst "the Holy One and the Just" was charged with being the enemy of the temple and its services and solemnities. In this way the people were wrought upon to demand the death of the precious and the liberation of the vile.

III THE WEAKNESS, SELFISHNESS, AND FEAR OF THE ROMAN GOVERNOR. After all, the responsibility of capital punishment lay with Pilate. Had he stood firm for justice and right against lawlessness and violence, Jesus would have been saved. But so it was not to be. The governor"s own conviction of the innocence and excellence of the accused are evident, both from his language, "Why, what evil hath he done?" "I find no fault in him," and also from his repeated though unsuccessful, because irresolute, efforts to save his life. It is clear that Pilate admired and respected the Prisoner, whilst he despised the accusers and the mob. Yet he yielded to the savage outcry, from a desire to content the Jews, with whom it was his interest to stand well, and from fear lest, if he acquitted the Prisoner, his conduct might be misrepresented to the emperor to his disadvantage, and so might prove the occasion of his ruin. Desire of popularity, fear of the tyrant"s frown, these were the two motives which, in the mind of the cynical and selfish procurator, outweighed all considerations of righteousness and humanity. So it came to pass that Jesus "suffered under Pontius Pilate.

IV THE CONFESSION AND THE DEMEANOUR OF CHRIST HIMSELF. The demeanour of Jesus was dignified and honorable, but far from fitted to procure his release. Silence, when false witnesses testified against him, only infuriated his foes. Before the Jewish tribunal he acknowledged that he was the Messiah and the Son of God. Before Pilate he confessed himself a King a confession which, however explained as a claim to spiritual dominion, was an embarrassment to his well-wisher and judge. And his reminder that there was a higher, because a Divine, authority, to which all earthly authority is subordinate, was itself irritating to a proud and absolute ruler. There was a marvellous mingling of boldness and meekness in the conduct of the innocent and holy Prisoner. Morally, this demeanour exculpated him; but legally it was to his disadvantage. And his confession of royalty became his sentence of condemnation; written upon his cross for the apparent vindication, but for the real and eternal censure, of those who accused and of him who sentenced him. Thus did Jesus witness a good confession before Pontius Pilate.

APPLICATION.

1. Observe the force and virulence of sin taking possession of humannature, and corrupting and degrading it. The malice, bigotry, and falsehood of the priests, the fickleness and unreasoning fury of the mob, the selfishness and cowardice of the governor, all illustrate the length to which sin can go. The innocence and benevolence of the Victim render more conspicuous the enormity of his foes.

2. Observe the faultless and beautiful spirit displayed by the Sufferer, the absence of all resentment or complaint, the meek submission to all that he needs must suffer. A Being so morally perfect demands our admiration and our worship, invites our confidence and our love.

3. Consider the price of our redemption. Jesus bore all this injustice, these insults, for man. He was condemned that we might be acquitted; he was slain that we might live.

HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR Vers. 1-5. Jesus at the bar of the Roman power.

In its officers and agents representative of the whole Gentile world; so that the whole human race is involved in his condemnation and death.

I THE PURPOSE OF THE FURTHER REFERENCE. TO obtain authority for carrying out the death-sentence. This would not be allowed to a simple Jewish tribunal. The step taken was, therefore, a practical abdication of their theocratic pretensions. Hatred drives men into inconsistency and hypocrisy.

II THE CHARGE MADE. Not the same as that upon which they themselves condemned him, but such an interpretation of it as would most readily render him liable to the judgment of the Roman government.

III His REPLY TO PILATE. An idiomatic equivalent for "Yes," "I am so." The question is understood as an assertion put interrogatively, "Thou art the King of the Jews?" "The rationale of the idiom is that when the interrogative form is withdrawn from the class of interrogations referred to, the saying that remains is the reality" (Morison). A similar purpose to that which animated the reply to the high priest is here apparent. The Roman world was certified as to the dignity of Christ. In John"s Gospel (Joh_18:36-38) the true interpretation of this title as a moral and spiritual one is recorded as having been given by Christ to Pilate. It involved no treason, therefore, against the Roman power.

IV THE GENERAL DEMEANOUR OF CHRIST TOWARDS HIS ACCUSERS. Silence.

1. A marvel. The calmness of the Prisoner was unlike the behavior of prisoners generally, and appeared supernatural.

2. It was equivalent to an appeal to a higher tribunal.

3. An impressive moral victory. M.

HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON Vers. 1-20. The second trial.

I IT ELICITED THE INNOCENCE OF JESUS. Charges were made that he had excited sedition through the country, had prohibited the Roman tribute, and had claimed royalty. The last only had any show of plausibility in it. Jesus admitted his kingship, but declared it in immortal words to be the sovereignty of truth over the consciences of men. Reading the narratives of the other evangelists, we gain a clear impression of the innocence of Jesus, as it was exhibited to all who looked on, and defied the inventions of malice. Especially is that innocence reflected from the bearing of Pilate. To him our Lord replied when he asked for information; but met the accusations of the" priests with a silence equally significant. And Pilate was struck dumb with conviction. Character is self-sufficiency. It is "centrality; the impossibility of being displaced or overset." Words will not prove innocence; it speaks louder in silence. Passion and unreason illustrate it. We are generally more anxious to avoid misconstruction than to act as we think right. Jesus teaches us to be servants of the truth, and to be indifferent to the constructions of our enemies. God and the angels are the true spectators of our actions; and the judgment of posterity will reflect the judgment of God.

II IT ELICITED HIS PERFECT LOYALTY. There must come a time when the truths we have professed will demand to be sealed by our action. Christ had taught men to "seek first the kingdom of God;" to postpone everything to duty; to take heed to the light within; to esteem the soul of greater worth than the whole world. His conduct now falls into harmony with his words; and perfect music flows through the world from both. He preferred the fulfillment of duty to the preservation of life.

III IT ELICITED HUMAN INJUSTICE AND VICE. Socrates told his judges at Athens that it was they who were really on their trial. So it was the Sanhedrim, and also Pilate, who were on this occasion tried and condemned. The ages have since been reverberating their damnation. Expediency and worldly favor were in one scale; right, innocence, truth, in the other. The former dipped. Worldly authority was opposed to spiritual majesty; the former struck a blow at the latter, which recoiled with Divine effect. The condemnation of Christ was an outrage upon the conscience of the world, both Jewish and pagan. Pilate"s illustrious countryman, Cicero, had taught with enthusiasm that the useful and the right form a unity; that the useful can never be put before the right without defeating the social good ("De Officiis," 3.). An action can never be useful unless it is first right. Here was a great reversal of that order. That Jesus should die is expedient, said the Sanhedrim; but not right, said their conscience. On other grounds, Pilate took the same position; while his wife, like a second conscience, would have restrained him. In similar crises of personal experience, let us remember that to subordinate right to expediency is to condemn the Lord of life afresh.

IV IT ILLUSTRATES THE METHODS OF PROVIDENCE. When innocence suffers and violence prevails, the foundations of moral order seem to be shaken, and the righteous exclaim, "What shall we do?" The face of Providence seems obscured. But God is One who hideth himself. What we call the evil in nature may be the disguise of his wisdom; and not less does he conceal himself behind the evil of men. Here the greatest evil on their part gave occasion for the greatest good.

V IT ILLUSTRATES THE ILLUSIVENESS OF APPEARANCES. Jesus is insulted by Roman soldiers; himself the spiritual Emperor of mankind. He is mocked with a semblance of royalty; the mocking expresses an eternal fact. "Ridicule is the test of truth." Beware of mockery and insolence; we may be defying the Spirit of God. Seek below the praise and the blame of men, their applause and their abuse, for the eternal fact. Judge not of Christianity by what men say of it, but by itself. Estimate not its divinity by the worldly honor that attaches to it; but rather by the dishonor of the many, and the loyalty and life of the few. Truth and meekness, truth and spiritual force, these are mightier than all falsehood and scorn. J.

HOMILIES BY J.J. GIVEN Vers. 1-15. Parallel passages: Mat_27:1, Mat_27:2, 11-26 Luk_23:1-7, 13-24 Joh_18:28 Joh_19:16. Judicial processes.

I JESUS SENT FROM THE SANHEDRIM TO PILATE FROM THE JEWISH TRIAL TO THE ROMAN TRIAL.

1. The first stage of the Jewish trial. After the arrest at Gethsemane, our Lord was conducted back to the city, across the Kidron to the palace-of the ex-high priest Annas, the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the actual high priest that same year. The influence of this functionary was very great; his age, astuteness, riches, power, perhaps presidency of the Sanhedrim. all contributed to it. In answer to the inquiries of Annas about our Lord"s disciples and doctrine, the Savior appealed to his teaching in the synagogue, in the temple, always in public; and referred him to his auditors on these occasions. This reply was construed into disrespect towards the ex-high priest., and resulted in the first act of violence, apart from the arrest itself; for one of the officers struck Jesus with the palm of his. hand or with a rod (rapisma), as rendered in the margin. This was the first of the three stages of the Jewish trial. Here we remark

(1) that both Jews and Gentiles took part in arresting Jesus and conducting him to the high priest. "The band and the captain," or chiliarch, that is, tribune, formed the Roman or Gentile element; while the "officers of the Jews" composed the Jewish element. Thus from first to last "the Gentiles and the people of Israel" combined against the Lord and his Anointed. The mention

(2) of both Annas and Caiaphas as high priests by St. Luke (Luk_3:9) tallies with the fact that, owing to the arbitrary interference of the Romans, there might be several high priests alive at the same time; that is, those who had held the office and been deposed, and the person actually exercising the office. Of course, according to the Law of Moses, there could only be one high priest at a time, and that rightful high priest was the hereditary representative of Aaron. Even in the Roman period the high priesthood had not become a yearly office, though the frequent depositions and displacements occasioned many changes and much confusion. Thus Annas had been deposed in the twelfth year of our era by Valerius Gratus, the immediate predecessor of Pilate in the procuratorship of Judaea; yet, so great was his influence, that he had his own son Eleazar, his son-in-law Caiaphas, and four other sons subsequently appointed to the high priesthood.

(3) The preliminary inquiry before Annas might elicit information with regard to the extent of discipleship, and so of sympathy among the rulers, as in the case of Nicodemus, that might be calculated on; not only so, it would result in a prejudgment of the ease through the shrewdness and influence of the ex-high priest. Further, a higher object an object most probably not dreamt of by either Annas or Caiaphas was antitypical. We read in Leviticus 16 that on the great day of Atonement, Aaron laid both his hands upon the head of the live, or scape-goat, and confessed over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat; and sent him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness; and the goat bore upon him all their iniquities into a land not inhabited. Similarly, the high priests concerned in this trial were, in the exercise of an analogous function, pronouncing sin to be upon the head of the Victim before he was led forth to crucifixion.

2. The second stage of the Jewish trial. The second stage of the Jewish trial consisted of an informal investigation before Caiaphas, and a committee or commission of the Sanhedrim. In order that a conviction might be obtained, it was necessary to secure two witnesses at least to depose to some definite charge. But while the testimony of some was irrelevant, that of others was self-contradictory. At length two volunteered to testify in the case. For this testimony, such as it was, they were obliged to travel back over a period of some three years. Then, fixing on certain words of our Lord at the first Passover after entering on his public ministry, in reference to the temple, they either misunderstood them, or misinterpreted and consequently misrepresented them. The words in question were constructed into contempt of the temple; this contempt, if fully proved, would have constituted a capital charge, just as, in the case of the proto-martyr Stephen, the charge was that he ceased not to speak "blasphemous words against this holy place and the Law." But this charge was not substantiated; the evidence broke down in consequence of the disagreement of the witnesses. Our Lord had said, Destroy (lusate) this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (egerw , a word quite suitable to resurrection, but no way appropriate to rebuilding); "but he spake of the temple of his body." One of the witnesses perverted this into, "I wilt destroy (katalusw) this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build (oikodomhsw) another made without hands"; (Mar_14:58) the other testified, "I can destroy (dunamai katalusai) the temple of God, and build (oikidomhsai) it in three days" Mat_26:61. Accordingly, St. Mark adds, "Neither so did their witness agree.What our Lord had spoken in a figurative sense they applied literally; for upraising they substituted building; what was really a promise they twisted into a threat; if they themselves destroyed their temple, he promised replacement. The temple had long been distinguished by the Shechinah glory or visible presence of Jehovah, yet was doomed to destruction; the human body of Jesus, in which dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily, when raised up would supersede the inhabitation of God in the literal temple.

3. Pretence of legality. What now can the members of the Sanhedrim present on this occasion do? They wish to keep up the semblance of law and justice, but the evidence has signally failed. The condemnation of Jesus is a foregone conclusion, in whatever way it is to be effected, and still the appearance of legality must be maintained. A clever thought occurs to the mind of the high priest, and in default of evidence he resorts to the desperate expedient of causing Jesus to criminate himself. Accordingly, standing up into the midst (eiv meson), and thus passing from his seat to some conspicuous position, as St. Mark graphically describes it, he adjured Jesus most solemnly to declare if he were indeed the Messiah, that is, "the Christ, the son of the Blessed," viz. if he claimed to be not only the expected Messiah, but also to be a Divine person the Son and equal of God. Whereupon followed the avowal by which he criminated himself, and gave ground of condemnation. Though he had acknowledged the confession of Peter to the same effect, and even commended it; though he had accepted the same or an equivalent title on the occasion of his public entry into Jerusalem, he had not as yet publicly claimed it. Now, however, he avowed it in the most public manner, in the presence of the high priest and members of council. According to St. Mark, this avowal was expressed by "I am;" according to St. Matthew by "Thou hast said;" while in St. Luke"s report of the third Jewish trial, the two are combined with a trifling variation, namely," Ye say that I am.

4. Hypocrisy in high places. If our Lord had remained silent, they would have probably charged him with imposture; now that he confessed his Messiahship and future exaltation, they proceeded to condemn him for blasphemy. The council sought nothing further; they wanted only evidence against him something to inculpate, not to exculpate, him. They did not wish to hear the grounds of his claim; they wanted no explanation. With the Jews the setting up of a claim to any Divine" attribute was regarded as blasphemy; the claim of Christ, according to their opinion of him, came under the Mosaic law of blasphemy. And now the hypocrisy of the high priest is something shocking. As the highest ecclesiastical functionary of the nation, and the principal officer of its great council, his duty surely was to investigate the confession and claim of one who professed to embody the hopes of the nation, and to scrutinize the true nature of that claim, the real meaning of it, the grounds on which it rested, the reasons of it, and the evidence for it. On the contrary, he grasped with avidity at the prospect of a condemnation. His sense of justice was no higher than his sense of religion; on anything that might tend to explain, or extenuate, or exculpate, he shut his eyes and closed his ears. But what is still more disgusting in the conduct of this ecclesiastic was his abominable hypocrisy. He feigned abhorrence at the crime which he was so anxious to establish. Glad as he was to have this constructive crime of blasphemy to allege, he pretended the most extreme horror by tearing his garments from the neck to the waist. Here, indeed, was "spiritual wickedness in high places.

5. The third stage of the Jewish trial. This was the more formal trial; it was held at dawn of day, and in the presence of the whole Sanhedrim (olon to sunedrion). The previous trial, being held at night, was invalid; besides, it had been conducted only by a representation an influential representation or committee of the Sanhedrim, consisting, it is probable, mainly of the priests. At the present stage the whole council was present, with its three constituent parts elders, chief priests, and scribes. This is the meeting of council mentioned in the first verse of the present chapter, and in the parallel verses of St. Matthew and St. Luke, viz. Mat_27:1 of the former, and Luk_22:66 of the latter. The object was to ratify a predetermined decree. They also found it necessary for their purpose to change the charge, and consequently also the venue. It was more, perhaps, with the object of consummating than of ratifying their sentence that this meeting was hastily summoned. The judicial murder which they had decided on was not in their power to carry out. Had it been so, stoning would have been the death-penalty. A deputation of an influential and imposing kind waited upon Pilate, to whom the Prisoner is now transferred, either hoping, through the facile condescension of the procurator, to get the case remitted to themselves for execution, or to devolve it on the Roman governor.

II THE ROMAN TRIAL, OR TRIAL BEFORE PILATE.

1. Incidents leading to crucifixion. Crucifixion was a mode of death unknown to Jewish law, and unpractised by the Jewish people. It was fearfully familiar as a mode of execution among the Romans this we learn from their writings; as, "Thou shalt not feed the crows on the cross," of Horace; "It makes no difference to Theodore whether he rots on the ground or aloft, i.e. on the cross," of Cicero; also from such expressions as the following:Go , soldier, get ready the cross;" "Thou shalt go to the cross." It was not, however, till the Roman period that it was introduced into Judaea. It was only after Jew and Roman had come into collision, and had taken respectively the position of conqueror and conquered, of sovereign and subject, that this cruel mode of death found its way into the Holy Land. And yet, strange to say, long years before the Romans had risen to pre-eminence and power, and centuries before Judaea had been catalogued as a province of their vast empire, it had been foretold that Messiah"s death would be by crucifixion. We refer to the well-known prediction in the twenty-second psalm, where we read, "They pierced my hands and my feet" ("piercing my hands and my feet," according to Perowne; "geknebelt" "fastened," as the extremities were in crucifixion meine Hande und Fusse," according to Ewald). "Before that prophecy was fulfilled a long series of events had to be evolved; dynasties had to rise and fall; a kingdom had to pass through the hands of many successive rulers and become extinct; an empire, the greatest of ancient times, had to rise to unprecedented power; that kingdom had to be absorbed, and become a province of that empire. In a word, Judaea had to become tributary and Rome triumphant before the event could take place. The facts referred to changed the complexion of our Lord"s trial. Of the many charges they might have manufactured, such as violation of the sabbath law, contempt of oral tradition, purification of the temple, heretical teaching, or esoteric doctrines of a dangerous kind., they elected that of blasphemy, grounded on his own confession of divinity, or of being "the Son of God;" while he strengthens the admission by foretelling that, besides (plhn) the verbal avowal, they would have ocular proof when they should see him the Son of man as well as Son of God at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven." This admission was, as we have seen, extorted after the suborned witnesses had entirely broken down, and the two best of them had shamefully perverted and prevaricated; but, notwithstanding, it was seized by the high priest from his false notions of Messiah as an acknowledgment of the charge preferred. Stoning was the mode of death which the Law appointed for that crime; but though the Jews could pass sentence, they could not execute it. One of the signs of Messiah"s advent thus stared them in the face; "the scepter had thus departed from Judah, and a lawgiver from between his feet." Accordingly, they were obliged to have recourse to the Roman procurator, Pilate; but then they knew that he would not interfere with their religious controversies. What now is to be done? They take new ground; they change the accusation from blasphemy to treason, in order to subject their Prisoner to the secular power.

2. Charges preferred. The charge was really constructive treason, but their indictment as first advanced consisted of three articles. They charged him

a. with perverting the nation;

b. with forbidding to give tribute to Caesar; and

c. with affirming that he himself was Christ, a King.

Pilate pays no attention to the first and second, and only notices the third. His mode of procedure was in accordance with the Roman respect for law and sense of justice. He refused to confirm the sentence of the Sanhedrim, and proceeded to hold a private and preliminary examination (anakrisiv : as we read in Luk_23:14, anakrinav), having removed Jesus into the Praetorium, or governor"s palace. This examination Pilate conducted in person, as he had no quaestor; and was satisfied of the harmlessness of the title of King by the Savior"s explanation that his kingdom was not of this world. Pilate was convinced of our Lord"s innocence, but hearing Galilee mentioned, he at once caught at the idea of shifting the responsibility, or at least sharing it with Herod Antipas, and at the same time of conciliating the tetrarch by an act of courtesy; and in consequence remitted (anepemqen) the accused to Herod"s as the higher court, or technically from the court apprehensionis to the court originis. Herod, having been disappointed by seeing no miracle performed by the reputed miracle-worker, and dissatisfied by his dignified silence, sent him back to Pilate, arrayed in a white or gorgeous (lampran , from law , to see) robe, thus caricaturing his candidateship or claim to royalty, and thereby hinting to Pilate that instead of a punishable offense, it was rather a matter of contempt and ridicule. Pilate is perplexed, and no wonder; his vacillation now begins to take effect. He sins against his sense of justice as a Roman magistrate; he sins against conscience; he proposes a most unjust and unlawful compromise, namely, the chastisement (paideusav) of an innocent person. But this concession, unrighteous as it was, did not satisfy; and again he tried to avail himself of the custom of releasing one at the feast in compliance with the clamor of the multitude; but the cry of the populace, instigated by the agents of the priests, was, "Not this man, but Barabbas." By a symbolic act, this weak judge seeks to transfer the guilt to the infuriate mob, and still clinging to the hope that the multitude would be content with a compromise, he delivered Jesus to be scourged, and that, not with the rods of the lictors, but with the horrible scourge tipped with bone and lead (fragellwsav).

3. Retrospect at the indignities. The first act of insult and violence was, as we have seen, during the inquisition by Annas, who sought to entangle him by insidious interrogatories, when one of the officers struck Jesus with his hand or with a rod (rapisma), as St. John informs us. The next was in the course of the second Jewish trial, which was conducted by Caiaphas, and by which the confession of being "the Christ, the Son of God," was extorted. In describing this sad scene, no less than five forms of beating are mentioned by the Evangelists Matthew and Mark and Luke. The latter has

(1) derontev , properly to skin or flay, and then beat severely;

(2) etupton , imperfect, they kept smiting him;

(3) paisav , to inflict blows or strike with violence; St. Matthew has

(4) ekolafisan , they buffeted with clenched fist; and

(5) errapisan , they struck with open palms or rods; while St. Mark has rapismasin ... eballon , they received him with blows of the hands or strokes of rods.

It was on this occasion they did spit in his face and blindfold him, derisively bidding him "prophesy, who is it that smote thee?" with many other vilifications, in some or all of which the members of the council, as well as the menials of the court, took part. We now hasten from such a disgraceful scene from the scornful spitting, the shameful scoffing, the savage smiting, the ribald revilings, the shocking cruelties, and the savage barbarities of the miscreants of the Sanhedrim and pass on to his treatment by Herod. He joins with his men of war in setting him at nought and mocking him, and arrays him in a gorgeous robe, as if to caricature his pretensions, or, as some think, a bright or white robe, as though in mimicry of his candidature for royal honors. Thus sent back to Pilate, he is scourged by the procurator"s command. The very thought of that scourging makes the blood run cold and the heart sick. All that preceded, cruel as it was and devilish as it was, caused but little of bodily pain as compared with the scourging. He had indeed suffered dreadfully, in both body and mind. He had been betrayed by one disciple, denied by another; three slept when they should have sympathized; at length all forsook him and fled. He has been hurried from one tribunal to another from the Sanhedrim to the Roman governor, from the Roman governor to the Tetrarch of Galilee, and from Herod back to Pilate. See him the night preceding in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the midst of his agony, when perspiration bathed his body, and that bloody sweat trickled in big drops down to the ground. See him now in the place where he is scourged, cruelly scourged, his face marred, his body mangled, the quivering flesh fearfully torn with the bits of lead and bone plaited into the leathern thongs, while he is still barbarously smitten, and savage stripes inflicted on him. See him again, surrounded by a band of ruffian soldiers provincial or rather Roman soldiers, to their disgrace be it recorded who plait a crown of nabk thorns, and press it down so that the sharp and prickly points more painfully pierce his temples and lacerate his bleeding brows. While his body is still smarting from the wounds made by the scourging, while the blood is still running down on every side from the thorn-crown, while insult is being heaped on insult and added to injury, they smite his sacred head with a reed as if to gash that head more brutally, and leave the thorns yet deeper in the skin. One other act in that bloody tragedy precedes and prepares for the crucifixion itself. Instead of the gorgeous or white robe with which Herod and his men of war had, in their bitter mockery, clothed him, the Roman soldiers of the governor arrayed him with the military scarlet or purple war-cloak, mimicking the imperial purple. He is stripped a second time the mock-garments are pulled off him, and his own put on; and thus all his wounds are opened afresh and their pain renewed. During the mock-coronation, in which the leaves of thorn burlesqued the imperial wreath of laurel, the reed the royal scepter, and the soldier"s cloak the emperor"s purple, they spat upon him, they smote him on the head, they bowed the knee in mockery, and they scoffed him, saying," Hail, King of the Jews!

4. Pilate"s last effort to release him. Once more Pilate makes another effort to prevent the crucifixion of Christ. Though scourging was usually the frightful preparation for crucifixion, yet Pilate is most anxious to proceed no further. He seeks to have it regarded, perhaps, in the light of trial by torture without anything worthy of death being elicited, or perhaps he wishes to have it accepted as a sufficient substitute for crucifixion. With some such purpose a purpose, as it is generally and properly understood, of commiseration he exhibits the Savior in that unspeakably sad and sorrowful plight worn, wan, and wasted; his features here befouled with spitting, there besmeared with blood; his face disfigured by blows marred more than any man"s and his countenance more than the sons of men; while blood-drops trickle from many a wound down on the tessellated pavement, lie calls their attention to this woebegone and most pitiable spectacle, saying, in words that have thrilled many a heart, and shall thrill thousands in the generations that may be yet to come, "Behold the Man!" But in vain. The only response was a louder, sterner, fiercer cry: "Crucify him! crucify him!" He deserves to die, "because he made himself the Son of God." Moved to the inmost depths of his being, Pilate struggles on for his release; but, amid the loud clamor for the Victim"s blood, there are ominous growls that boded a possible impeachment on the charge of treason against the governor himself. "If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar"s friend;" "We have no king but Caesar." Shame upon those bloodthirsty hypocrites who could say so; though they hated Caesar and all his belongings, and "were real rebels at heart! And shame upon that cowardly judge, who, as a Roman magistrate, quailed before such cruel clamor, and had not the courage of his own certain convictions!

5. Agencies co-operating to compass the crucifixion. If we glance for a moment at the various influences that were at work to compass our Lord"s death upon the cross, we find in the foreground the envy and malice of chief priests and rulers; the mean-spirited avarice of the wretched traitor Judas; the want of firmness and thorough conscientiousness on the part of Pilate; the fury of a fickle mob misled by designing demagogues; the submission of the soldiers to the orders of their superiors; all obeying the propensities of their own nature, though ignorant of the reason or the results; all fulfilling the predictions of Scripture, though not knowing it; and all accomplishing the purposes of God, though not intending it. But in the background, as we shall see in connection with the crucifixion itself, it was sin on the part of man, and substitution on the part of the Savior. "He bore our sins," says the apostle, "in his own body on the tree." It was determinate counsel and foreknowledge on the part of God. In accordance with that counsel and foreknowledge, and in consequence of our sin and the Savior"s substitutionary self-sacrifice, "ought not Christ to suffer these things?" Was it not necessary for him to become "obedient unto death, even the death of the cross"? J.J.G.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Matt. xxvii, 1, 2; Luke xxii, 66; Luke xxiii, 1; John xviii, 28.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The Trial before Pilate.

Jesus delivered to the Gentiles:

v. 1. And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried Him away, and delivered Him to Pilate.

The account of the events of that memorable Friday morning, as given by Mark, is very brief, since he omits many incidents that do not bear directly upon the Passion story. His account is characterized by the usual vividness and action. Though it must have been some time after midnight before the members of the Sanhedrin left the house of the high priest, there was little rest for them. For without delay, very early in the morning, as soon as the light of the new morning permitted it, they had another meeting. Some commentators state that it was necessary to have a second meeting to ratify a sentence of death, and that this meeting had to be held in the Hall of Polished Stones in the Temple. The importance of the session is indicated by the fact that not only the various groups of the Sanhedrin are mentioned, the high priests, the elders, the scribes, but that their total number is expressly stated to have comprised the chief council. There certainly was need of their coming together for earnest, anxious consultation; for though they had passed the sentence of death, they no longer had the right to carry this into execution. Only the Roman procurator had the power over life and death, and before him they could not urge the fact that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. That was no political offense, no transgression of the laws of the empire. But they finally agreed upon a course of action, and then, having bound Jesus, they led Him away and delivered Him to Pilate, the Roman governor, or procurator, who usually came up to the feast to prevent any disturbances that might arise at such a great concourse of people.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mar 15:21

How little these people knew that they were making this man immortal. What a strange fate that is which has befallen those persons in the Gospel narratives, who, for an instant, come into contact with Jesus Christ. Like ships passing athwart the white ghostlike splendour of the moonlight on the sea; they gleam silvery pure for a moment, as they cross its broad belt, and then are swallowed up again in the darkness.

Consider some of the lessons that arise from this incident:—

I. The greatness of trifles. If that man had started from the little village where he lived five minutes earlier or later, if he had walked a little faster or slower, if he had happened to be lodging on the other side of Jerusalem, or if the whim had taken him to go in at another gate—then all his life would have been different.

II. Note, further, the blessedness and honour of helping Jesus Christ. Though changed in form very truly and really, in substance this blessedness and honour of helping Jesus Christ is given to us; and is demanded from us, too, if we are His disciples. He is despised and set at nought still, He is crucified afresh still. Let us go forth unto Him without the camp bearing His reproach—the tail end of the Cross. It is the lightest. He has borne the heaviest end on His own shoulders; but we have to ally ourselves with that suffering and despised Christ, if we are to be His disciples.

III. Another lesson which may be drawn from this story is, that of the perpetual recompense and record of the humblest Christian work. Surely the most blessed share in that day’s tragedy was reserved for Simon, whose bearing of the Cross may have been compulsory at first, but became, ere it was ended, willing service. But whatever were the degrees of recognition of Christ’s character, and of sympathy with the meaning of His sufferings, yet the smallest and most transient impulse of loving gratitude that went out towards Him was rewarded then, and is rewarded for ever, by blessed results in the heart that feels it.

A. Maclaren, A Year’s Ministry, 2nd series, p. 45.

Bearing the Cross.

Cross-bearing means now a spiritual action. The only cross in prospect now is a cross for the soul. Such a spiritualisation of the word "cross" began in the teaching of Jesus Christ. In several instances, He said, in various ways, "If a man become My disciple, let him take up his cross and follow Me."

I. Carrying a cross after Christ means, for one thing, enduring suffering for Christ. "Cross" was the name once given to the most fearful engine of agony for the body; and the words "cross," "crucial," "excruciate," and similar words, have come into our language from that material cross; and they now point, in a general way, to what has now to be suffered, not in the body, but in the soul.

II. To carry a cross for Christ means: To have a great weight on the mind for Christ’s sake. To carry a cross for Christ means that this suffering and heavily weighted condition should be open, not secret; for the cross-bearer is seen.

III. It means: That the man who is willing to carry the cross for Christ is willing to suffer scorn for Christ. No one carried a cross in the old Roman days but one who was the very refuse of society. To be willing to carry a cross for Christ means willingness to suffer ignominy, willingness to go forth without the camp, bearing His reproach.

IV. View the cross-bearing as something practical in distinction from something only emotional, and answer the question: Who is now willing to become a cross-bearer for Christ? There is much that is called religion that is only useless emotion, and that only belongs to a character that is not made of stuff stern enough to carry crosses. Christ said to the weeping daughters of Jerusalem, as they stood by the via dolorosa: "Weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves."

V. In view of the principle that nothing is accepted by Christ but willingness, I ask: Who is willing this day to become a cross-bearer? Jesus Christ will not have you against your will: if you carry His Cross you must be willing.

VI. In view of the strength Christ gave for this, I ask, Who is willing? As your day your strength will be. Mark the footsteps that are on the road before you. Every cross-bearer found it so. So you will find it.

C. Stanford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 282.

References: Mar 15:21.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi., No. 1853; Homiletic Magazine, vol. viii., p. 73.

Mar 15:23

Christ refusing any Alleviation of His Sufferings.

Standing before the scene these words picture, I would ask, devoutly and earnestly: What does it mean? What light does it shed upon Christ? What help does it render us in life? I think it illustrates:—

I. The source of the moral majesty of the Son of Man. In this brief occurrence I read at once the greatness, and the origin, of that majestic character which raises Jesus so immeasurably above all others of the sons of men. He refused to receive a balm for His agony; in that He exhibited a moral strength utterly unparalleled, and in that very refusal we learn from whence His strength came. He received not His strength from man, and from the relief man offered Him He turned away; He received His might from God, and the secret of that might lay in perfect submission to His will.

II. What was the meaning of the consummation of Christ’s sufferings? It has been truly remarked that He drank the last drop of His cup of agony by refusing that which would alleviate its final pangs. We have said that He did not do that for the mere sake of enduring, but in surrender to the will of Heaven. The question comes, What means that will? Christ died, not to reconcile God, nor yet to compensate for so much evil; but to restore the loving spirit of man to the eternal Father. For that restoration two things were requisite; man must learn the majesty of God’s law; and he must be drawn by love to the Divine One. Both these receive glorious illustration from the words before us.

III. We learn, too, from this history, the clearness of Christ’s vision of death. He resolved to die with His mental vision clear and calm. In full self-possession He went to face death’s horror. There is a deep significance in this, in relation to the manner in which Christ conquered death for every man.

IV. The duty of Christ’s disciples. When suffering meets us in the path of obedience, we must not shrink back from its approach; but, trusting in Christ’s strength, calmly, resolutely, fearlessly face it.

E. L. Hull, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 213.

References: Mar 15:23.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 233. Mar 15:23-32.—H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man, p. 366.

Mar 15:24-41

What took place around the Cross of Christ.

I. Notice what men did during the crucifixion of Christ. (1) The soldiers. They are careless and confident. They cast lots for the clothes of the Lord. Their thoughts are all for this world. So many among ourselves know well the Lord’s mantle, and have it in their hands—namely, His Word and Sacraments, the means of salvation which the Church offers. But the use they make of it is thoughtless and careless. (2) The crowd of Jews. They pass by mocking and shaking their heads; some from malice, others from ignorance and a darkened mind. Many pass the Cross merely as spectators— as if it were possible for any of us to be no more than a spectator of it. We shake our heads doubtfully, we understand the Lord’s words imperfectly or wrongly, and then we complain that they are foolishness. (3) The little group of friends. They stood afar off, beholding—partly from fear of the Jews—partly from fear of the heartrending sorrow of a near approach. So with us. But the nearer to the Cross the richer the blessing. This is well illustrated in the case of the penitent thief.

II. Notice what God did during the crucifixion of Christ. (1) He darkened the sun and made an earthquake. Such phenomena occur also when the Crucified comes near to our spirits, if only we could see them. The life of the senses—formerly so joyous—now loses its charm. We guess then what powers of darkness have been carrying on their work in us. We feel that the decisive hour has come, when light or darkness must win the day. The pillars of our being shake; we feel something beforehand of the day of judgment. (2) The veil of the Temple was rent in twain. On that day heaven and earth were rolled up like worn-out garments, and a new creation began. The way into the holiest of all was opened in the hour that Jesus died. (3) The graves were opened. Thus God showed that the new creation was to be that creation of resurrection and of life for which all saints in the former dispensation had waited. In the hour when Christ comes to us we have this witness also. We feel the dawn of a new day arise, a new life of love and of knowledge. This feeling may pass away, but yet it is like the first coming of spring to our souls; we see the dawn of own resurrection day appear.

R. Rothe, Nachgelassene Predigten, vol. ii., p. 81.

Mar 15:31

In this text a truth is spoken, but it is a truth which the speakers do not know. By this word the railers meant to mock the pretensions of Jesus; by it the Spirit in the Scriptures declares the glory of God in the Gospel of His Son. Like Balaam, these false prophets intended to curse, but their lips were overruled, and framed to express the distinguishing feature of redemption.

I. What the Jewish leaders understood and intended to say is obvious at a glance. They see their Enemy at last in extremities. Now that they have compassed the object of their desire; now that they see Him ready to expire on the Cross, they cannot contain themselves. They must give vent to their exultation. They must triumph over their victory. "He saved others; Himself He cannot save." When they see Him dying, they deem the sight a proof of His weakness. They think that if He had saved others, He would also have saved Himself; and they flourish the fact of His yielding to death as a proof that His miracles had been impostures.

II. This word may be read in two ways. The one is darkness, the other light. The one is a lie, the other is the truth; the truth on which the saving of the lost depends. The leaders read it thus: "We see He does not save Himself from death, and thence we infer that He has not power; and whatever appearances may be, He cannot have saved others." The meaning which, under direction of the Spirit, the word of the Scriptures contains for us is, He saved others, as their covenant Substitute, and therefore He cannot also save Himself from the obligation which He undertook as Mediator. He saved others, and therefore Himself He cannot save. His life has been pledged for the life of His people forfeited; they have obtained their life eternal, and therefore His life, so pledged, cannot be saved. If He had saved Himself from humiliation and suffering, we could not have been saved. If the Son of God had treated the world when it fell as the priest and the Levite treated the man who fell among thieves; if He had looked on us and passed by on the other side—we should have all perished in our sins.

W. Arnot, The Anchor of the Soul, p. 229.

References: Mar 15:33.—J. Vaughan, Sermons, 1869, p. 172; B. F. Westcott, Expositor, 3rd series, vol. v., p. 457. Mar 15:33-38.—H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man, p. 371. Mar 15:34.—Expositor, 1st series, vol. xii., p. 374.

Mar 15:37-38

Truths taught by the Rending of the Veil.

I. If you look into the account of the arrangements and furniture of the Jewish Temple, you will find that there were two veils: the one at the entrance into the holy place; the other between the holy place or the sanctuary, and the holy of holies. The second veil is always considered to have been that which was rent in twain at the death of our Lord; so that the first thing done through the rending was the throwing open that heretofore invisible and inaccessible place, the holy of holies. As the rent rocks and open graves proclaimed Christ victorious in death, so may the riven veil have declared that He had won for Himself an access into heavenly places, there to perpetuate the work which had been wrought out on Calvary.

II. And there are other intimations which may, perhaps, have been conveyed by the occurrence in question. It is possible, for example, that the abolition of the Mosaic economy was hereby figuratively taught. Christ had come to destroy the law, but only that He might substitute for it a better covenant.

III. The rent veil signifies that through Christ alone we have access to the Father, and that supplies of heavenly things may be expected to descend. The privilege of prayer, the privilege of intercourse with our heavenly Father, has been procured for us exclusively by Christ.

IV. Neither was it only the privilege of access to God while we yet dwell on the earth, which was set forth under the figure of the rent veil of the Temple. I read higher things; I see a title to a heavenly inheritance. It is like an opening in the firmament, through which the eye of faith may gaze on the diadem and the palm which are in store for the faithful. What was to occur after death and the resurrection? The rent veil gives the answer. As the opened graves published the great truth of the abolition of death, so did the riven veil publish that of our being begotten again to an "inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away." The veil is rent to show that the Mediator hath made for Himself a passage into heaven, but in nothing does He act for Himself alone. We rose with Him; we ascended with Him; and therefore is the rending of the veil as much a pledge of our admission as of His, who by the efficiency of His sacrifice provided for our not only being sons of God, but joint-heirs with Himself.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1,500.

The veil of the Temple was the curtain separating the holy place from the most holy; for Solomon’s Temple, as the Tabernacle of Moses before it, was divided into two several parts or rooms, both holy, but one holier than the other. The veil or curtain itself was made of blue, purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen of cunning work; it was adorned with images of cherubim, and was hung on four pillars, of some precious wood overlaid with gold.

I. What now is the veil, so drawn across as to separate the two kingdoms of God from one another, yet such as to give hope that it may be one day entirely withdrawn, and the two made altogether one? St. Paul tells us in one word that the veil is the blessed body of our Lord Jesus Christ. For, says the Apostle, He hath provided for us a new and living way through the veil, that is, His flesh. The miraculous rending of the veil at the moment of the death of the Son of God, was a token of the rending of our Lord’s blessed body, by the nails and spear, and of the violent parting of His soul and body for a while.

II. As the veil concealed from the eyes of the worshippers the most holy place made with hands, which was but a figure of the true, so the body of our Lord and Saviour was a kind of veil or shadow drawn over His most high Godhead, the open presence of which is that which makes heaven.

III. The veil being rent signifies pardon, through Christ’s sacrificed body, for sins past; but it also signifies communion with Him, through the same body in time to come. The flesh of Jesus, then, His glorified body, offered by Himself as High Priest, is a new and living way, through which believers, baptized persons, drawing near from time to time, may with reverent boldness enter into the holy places; they are invited, exhorted, encouraged, to do so. The mystery of the spiritual or Divine life of a Christian, taught us by the figure of the veil of the Temple, is this: that the only true happiness is partaking of the Divine Nature, as St. Peter calls it—communion with God in the person of His Son; that the way to this Divine communion is communicating with Him, being made members of Him, as man, the Man Christ Jesus; and this must be through His blessed body, and this again through His Holy Sacrament.

Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. viii., p. 76.

References: Mar 15:37, Mar 15:38.—J. Keble, Sermons for Holy Week, p. 139. Mar 15:38.—T. M. Herbert, Sketches of Sermons, p. 106. Mar 15:39-47.—H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man, p. 376. Mk 15:42-0.—W. H. Jellie, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 285; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xx., p. 141.

Mar 15:43

The Sanhedrim of Jerusalem consisted of seventy members, of whom twenty-four were the heads of the Priesthood, twenty-four were heads of the tribes of Israel, representing the laity, and twenty-two were Scribes learned in the law. Joseph was no doubt one of the noble representatives of the people; and, as such shared, in the functions of government and was conversant with those sacred Scriptures which formed the basis of the Jewish commonwealth.

I. Arimathea is thought to have been situated on the fertile plain of Sharon, where probably Joseph’s property lay. He also possessed an estate in Jerusalem—possibly a house in the city—certainly a garden in the outskirts. Josephus tells that the Holy City was in those times thickly surrounded by groves and gardens; shady retreats in the heat from the crowded streets of the metropolis. Here, under the shades of trees and umbrageous shrubs, we may think of this honourable counsellor as refreshing his spirit in peaceful meditations by day and night, when his public duties permitted his repose. The garden was large enough to require a gardener, so we read in St. John; and in some retired portion of it, at the end, where the boundary rock rose from the soil, Joseph had excavated a new tomb for himself, in which he would lie down in his death-sleep, when the labours of life were ended. How little can he have dreamed that this tomb of his was to be consecrated by the descent of angels, and by the mighty power of God, in raising up, on the third day, the destroyed temple of the body of Him who should be God manifest in the flesh, who should make His life a sin-offering, yet prolong His days by a marvellous resurrection!

II. Joseph was an honourable counsellor, but we are told by St. John that he was only a secret disciple of Jesus till the hour of His death. Like Nicodemus, the other rich man, who began with a nocturnal visit to the Son of God, he grew bolder when the crisis arrived. Timidity is the common sin and weakness of rich men in the upper classes. It requires heroic resolution to go against the superstitution and fanaticism of the upper mob of souls, whose opinion in spiritual matters is seldom of greater value than that of the lower. "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on Him?" was regarded as a decisive argument against Jesus Christ by the common people, although, as in this case, the vulgar considerations which determine upper-class opinion in religion, are as ignoble as any which can sway the violence of their inferiors. Let us, then, honour to the world’s end both Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus; their memories are as fragrant as the precious spices which they brought with fine linen for the entombment of their Lord. The courageous avowal of Truth in the hour of its crucifixion, deserves to be crowned along with Truth in the hour of its triumph.

E. White, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 162.

References: Mar 15:43-46.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx., No. 1789. Mar 15:46.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. xii., p. 140. Mar 16:1-6.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 217. Mar 16:1-8.—Ibid., vol. xii., p. 209; H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man, p. 381.

The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The foregoing chapter gave us an account of Judas’s treason, in delivering our Saviour into the hands of the chief priests. In this chapter we find our Lord brought by the chief priests unto Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, in order to his condemnation.

Whence observe, That it has been the old policy of corrupt church-governors to abuse the power of the civil magistrate, in executing their cruel and unjust censures and sentences upon holy and innocent persons. The chief priests and elders do not kill our Saviour themselves, for it was not lawful for them to put any man to death, being themselves under the power of the Roman government; accordingly they deliver Christ over to the secular power, and desire Pilate, the civil magistrate, to sentence and condemn him.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CXXVIII. Third Stage of Jewish Trial].

CXXVIII. THIRD STAGE OF JEWISH TRIAL. JESUS FORMALLY CONDEMNED BY THE SANHEDRIN AND LED TO PILATE. (Jerusalem. Friday after dawn.) aMATT. XXVII. 1, 2; bMARK XV. 1; cLUKE XXII. 66-23:1; dJOHN XVIII. 28.

a1 Now when morning was come, c66 And as soon as it was day, bstraightway cthe assembly of the [702] elders of the people was gathered together, both chief priests and scribes; and they led him away into their council, aall the chief priests and bwith the elders aof the people band scribes, and the whole council, held a consultation, and atook counsel against Jesus to put him to death [Since blasphemy was by no means a criminal offense among the Romans, the Sanhedrin consulted together and sought for some charge of which the Romans would take notice. As we follow their course it will become evident to us that they found no new ground of accusation against Jesus, and, failing to do so, they decided to make use of our Lord's claim to be the Christ by so perverting it as to make him seem to assert an intention to rebel against the authority of Rome]: csaying, 67 If thou art the Christ, tell us. But he said unto them, If I tell you, ye will not believe [as experience had already proven-- Joh_8:59, Joh_10:31]: 68 and if I ask i you, ye will not answer. [Thus Jesus protests against the violence and injustice of his trial. His judges were asking him whether he was the Christ without any intention of investigating the truth of his claim, but merely for the purpose of condemning him by unwarrantedly assuming that he was not the Christ. They therefore asked in an unlawful spirit as well as in an unlawful manner. Jesus had a good right to ask them questions tending to confirm his Christhood by the Scripture, but had he done so they would not have answered-- Mat_22:41-45. Jesus appeals to them to try the question as to who he was, but they insist on confining the inquiry as to who he claimed to be, assuming that the claim was false.] 69 But from henceforth shall the Son of man be seated at the right hand of the power of God. [See p. 698.] 70 And they all said, Art thou then the Son of God? And he said unto them, Ye say that I am. [The Hebrew mode of expression, equivalent to "Ye say it, because I am."] 71 And they said, What further need have we of witness? for we ourselves have heard from his own mouth. [Thus they unconsciously admit their lack of evidence against Jesus.] [703] 1 And the whole company of them rose up, a2 and they bound bJesus, and carried aled him away, d28 They lead Jesus therefore from Caiaphas into the Praetorium: cand brought him before Pilate. band delivered him up to Pilate. athe governor. dand it was early; [The Sanhedrin could try and could condemn, but could not put to death without the concurring sentence of the Roman governor. To obtain this sentence, they now lead Jesus before Pilate in the early dawn, having made good use of their time.]

[FFG 702-704]

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Mark Chapter 15

Before Pilate (chap. 15), He only witnesses a good confession, a testimony to the truth where the glory of God required it, and where this testimony stood opposed to the power of the adversary. To all the rest He answers nothing. He lets them go on; and the evangelist enters into no details. To render this testimony was the last service and duty He had to perform. It is rendered. The Jews make choice of the seditious murderer Barabbas; and Pilate, hearkening to the voice of the multitude, won over by the chief priests, delivers Jesus to be crucified. The Lord submits to the insults of the soldiers, who mingle the pride and insolence of their class with the hard-heartedness of the executioner whose function they performed. Sad specimens of our nature! The Christ who came to save them was, for the moment, under their power. He used His own power, not to save Himself, but to deliver others from that of the enemy. At length they lead Him away to Golgotha to crucify Him. There they offer Him a soporific mixture, which He refuses; and they crucify Him with two thieves, one on His right hand and the other on His left, thus accomplishing (for it was all they did or could do) everything that was written concerning the Lord. It was now the Jews’ and the priests’ hour; they had, alas for them! the desire of their heart. And they make manifest, without knowing it, the glory and perfection of Jesus. The temple could not rise again without being thus cast down; and, as instruments, they established the fact which He had then announced. Farther, He saved others and not Himself. These are the two parts of the perfection of the death of Christ with reference to man.

But, whatever might be the thoughts of Christ and His sufferings with regard to men (those dogs, those bulls of Bashan), the work which He had to accomplish contained depths far beyond those outward things. Darkness covered the earth-divine and sympathetic testimony of that which, with far deeper gloom, covered the soul of Jesus, forsaken of God for sin, but thus displaying incomparably more than at any other time, His absolute perfection; while the darkness marked, in an external sign, His entire separation from outward things, the whole work being between Him and God alone, according to the perfectness of both. All passed between Him and His God. Little understood by others, all is between Himself and God: and crying again with a loud voice, He gives up the ghost. His service was completed. What more had He to do in a world wherein He only lived to accomplish the will of God? All was finished, and He necessarily departs. I do not speak of physical necessity, for He still retained His strength; but, morally rejected by the world, there was no longer room in it for His mercy towards it: the will of God was by Himself entirely fulfilled. He had drunk in His soul the cup of death and of judgment for sin. There was nothing left Him but the act of dying; and He expires, obedient to the end, in order to commence in another world (whether for His soul separate from the body, or in glory) a life where evil could never enter, and where the new man will be perfectly happy in the presence of God.

His service was completed. His obedience had its term in death-His obedience, and therefore His life, as carried on in the midst of sinners. What would a life have meant in which there was no more obedience to be fulfilled? In dying now His obedience was perfected, and He dies. The way into the holiest is now opened-the veil is rent from top to bottom. The Gentile centurion confesses, in the death of Jesus, the Person of the Son of God. Until then, the Messiah and Judaism went together. In His death Judaism rejects Him, and He is the Saviour of the world. The veil no longer conceals God. In this respect it was all Judaism could do. The manifestation of perfect grace is there for the Gentile, who acknowledged-because Jesus gave up His life with a cry that proved the existence of so much strength-that the Prince of life, the Son of God, was there. Pilate also is astonished that He is already dead. He only believes it when certified of its truth by the centurion. As to faith-far from grace, and even from human justice-he did not trouble himself at all on that point.

The death of Jesus did not tear Him from the hearts of those feeble ones who loved Him (who perhaps had not been in the conflict, but whom grace had now brought out from their retreat): those pious women who had followed Him and had often ministered to His wants, and Joseph, who, although touched in conscience, had not followed Him, until now, strengthened at the last by the testimony of the grace and perfection of Jesus (the integrity of the counsellor finding in the circumstances, not an occasion of fear, but that which induced him to declare himself)-these women and Joseph are alike occupied about the body of Jesus. This tabernacle of the Son of God is not left without those services which were due from man to Him who had just quitted it. Moreover the providence of God, as well as His operation in their hearts, had prepared for all this. The body of Jesus is laid in the tomb, and they all wait for the end of the sabbath to perform their service to it. The women had taken knowledge of the place.

John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1–20. The chief priests … bound Jesus … and delivered him to Pilate. See notes on Matt. 27:1, 2; 11–31. Mark's account differs a little from that of Matthew. Compare Luke 23:1–35; John 18:28–40; 19:1–16.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

Connecting Statement:

When the chief priests, the elders, the scribes, and the council gave Jesus over to Pilate, they accused Jesus of doing many bad things. When Pilate asked if what they said was true, Jesus did not answer him.

they bound Jesus and led him away

They commanded for Jesus to be bound, but it would have been the guards who actually bound him and led him away. AT: "they commanded for Jesus to be bound and then he was led away" or "they commanded the guards to bind Jesus and then they led him away" (See: Metonymy)

They handed him over to Pilate

They had Jesus led to Pilate and transferred control of Jesus over to him.

You say so

Possible meanings are 1) by saying this, Jesus was saying that Pilate, not Jesus, was the one calling him the King of the Jews. AT: "You yourself have said so" or 2) by saying this, Jesus implied that he is the King of the Jews. AT: "Yes, as you said, I am" or "Yes. It is as you said" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

were presenting many charges against Jesus

"were accusing Jesus of many things" or "were saying that Jesus had done many bad things"

translationWords

chief priests

elder

scribe

council

Jesus

hand

Pilate

King of the Jews

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.