Matthew 26:66

Mat 26:66. Τί ὑμῖν δοκεῖ, what think ye?) He treats the matter as already finished. Moses says, “Let the blasphemer die;” Caiaphas says, “Jesus is a blasphemer;” his assessors, from these premises, draw the conclusion, “Let Jesus die.” St Mark has (ch. Mar 14:64) τί ὑμῖν φαίνεται, how does it seem to you?—θανατου, of death) Such is also their declaration to Pilate. See Joh 19:7.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mat_26:66. At this point the high priest, notwithstanding the precipitancy with which the trial is being hurried through, and notwithstanding the candid confession just made by the accused, calls for a formal vote, the result of which is a verdict of guilty, and that of an offence deserving to be punished by death. The next thing that had to be considered was the course to be adopted with a view to the carrying out of the sentence. It was this that formed the subject of deliberation at that conclave to which reference is made at Mat_27:1.

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.

Mat 26:66 . ἔνοχος θανάτου : death the penalty of blasphemy, Lev 24:15 , and of being a false prophet, Deu 18:20 .

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

Verse 66. He is guilty of death.] ενοχος θανατου εστι, he is liable to death. All the forms of justice are here violated. The judge becomes a party and accuser, and proceeds to the verdict without examining whether all the prophecies concerning the Messiah, and the innumerable miracles which he wrought, did not justify him. Examination and proof are the ruin of all calumnies, and of the authors of them, and therefore they take care to keep off from these two things. See Quesnel.

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

(66) He is guilty of death.—In modern English the word “guilty” is almost always followed by the crime which a man has committed. In older use it was followed by the punishment which the man deserved. (Comp. Num_35:31.) The decision, as far as the meeting went, was unanimous. Sentence was passed. It remained, however, to carry the sentence into effect, and this, while the Roman governor was at Jerusalem, presented a difficulty which had to be met by proceedings of another kind. The Jews, or at least their rulers, who courted the favour of Rome, ostentatiously disclaimed the power of punishing capital offences (Joh_18:31).

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

66. He is guilty of death] i. e. “has incurred the penalty of death.” The Sanhedrin do not pass sentence, but merely re-affirm their foregone conclusion, and endeavour to have sentence passed and judgment executed by the Procurator.

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.

Then did they spit in his face,.... Not the judges, the members of the sanhedrim, but the servants of the high priest, and the officers that had Jesus in hold, and were the guard upon him; see Luk 22:63, who seeing him condemned as guilty of death, thought they might insult him at pleasure, and use him in the most indecent and barbarous manner; and therefore, in a way of contempt, spit in his face; than which nothing was more reproachful and disgraceful: the Jews (x) say, that he that spits before, or in the presence of his master, is guilty of death, so nauseous and filthy was it accounted; and how much more must it be so, to spit in the face of anyone? hereby a prophecy was fulfilled, Isa 50:6, "I hid not my face from shame and spitting": and hereby, together with his sweat and blood, his visage was more marred than any man's, and his form than the sons of men:

and buffeted him; cuffed, or boxed him with their double fists:

and others smote him, with the palms of their hands; gave him many a slap on the face with their open hands, or struck him on the face with rods, as the word will bear to be rendered: they rapped him with the wands they had in their hands, and struck him on the head with the rods or staves they had with them; whereby was accomplished the prophecy, in Mic 5:1, "they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek". This was very injurious treatment, the Jews themselves being witnesses; who have in their canons enjoined (y), that "if a man strikes his neighbour with his double fist, he must give him a shekel; R. Judah says, on account of R. Jose the Galilean, a pound: if he gives him a slap of the face, he must pay him two hundred zuzims, or pence; and if with the back of his hand (which was accounted (z) the more ignominious) four hundred zuzims: if he plucked him by his ear, or plucked off his hair, or spit, so as that the spittle came upon him, or took away his cloak--he must pay four hundred zuzims, and all according to his honour or dignity.

All these indignities were done to Christ; see Isa 50:6.

(x) T. Bab. Erubin, fol. 99. 1. (y) Misn. Bava Kama, c. 8. sect. 6. (z) Maimon. & Bartenora in ib.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

66 What think ye? They answered and said, He is guilty of death.

Ver. 66. He is guilty of death] Servile souls! they dare do no otherwise than concur with Caiaphas. So in Popish councils and conclaves the bishops and others (those aiones et negones aulici) have no more to do, but simply inclinato capite to say Placet to that which in the pope’s name is proposed unto them. The envoys in the Council of Trent were blamed for suffering the article of priests’ marriage to be disputed. And in Colloquio Possiaceno, after that Beza had spoken much of the eucharist before the young king of France, the queen mother and the princess of the blood, a Spanish Jesuit, having reproached the Protestants, did reprehend the queen mother for meddling in matters that belonged not to her, but to the pope, cardinals, and bishops.

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.

What think ye? - What is your opinion? What sentence do you pronounce? As President of the Sanhedrin he demanded their judgment.

He is guilty of death - This was the form which was used when a criminal was condemned to die. The meaning is, he is guilty of a crime to which the law annexes death. This sentence was used before the Jews became subject to the Romans, when they had the power of inflicting death. After they were subject to the Romans, though the power of inflicting capital punishment” was taken away, yet they retained the form when they expressed their opinion of the guilt of an offender. The law under which they condemned him was that recorded in Lev 24:10-16, which sentenced him that was guilty of blasphemy to death by stoning. The chief priests, however, were unwilling to excite a popular tumult by stoning him, and they therefore consulted to deliver him to the Romans to be crucified, “under the authority of the Roman name,” and thus to prevent any excitement among the people.

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

He is guilty of death; i.e. of blasphemy, and so deserves to be stoned to death. (Witham)

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).

66. What think ye? — He presses his advantage to an immediate vote. Guilty of death — His crime is blasphemy; that is the charge. He is worthy of death; that is the penalty. And the verdict is unanimous. Now why did not immediate execution follow? The obstruction is a formidable one. The Jews are under the Roman government. The Romans have taken from them the power of life and death. Besides, the Scriptures require that he should suffer death from Gentile hands, a reason of which they are unaware.

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

What think ye? He wishes to get a vote by acclamation, not in a formal way, as to the guilt of Christ and the punishment which he deserved. He is guilty of (euocov , worthy of, liable to) death . This was the punishment pronounced by the Law on blasphemy; (Lev_24:16) the death was, however, to be by stoning. (Act_7:58) This detail, as they considered it, was now exclusively in the hands of the Romans. We see that this meeting, which virtually doomed Christ to death, was not a regular council of the Sanhedrin; for it was not held in the appointed chamber, and was conducted at night, when criminal processes were forbidden. The meeting next morning (Mat_27:1) was convened for the purpose of considering how this informal sentence should be executed.

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

Matthew

THE REAL HIGH PRIEST AND HIS COUNTERFEIT

Mat 26:57 - Mat 26:68.

John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus was brought before ‘Annas first,’ probably in the same official priestly residence as Caiaphas, his son-in-law, occupied. That preliminary examination brought out nothing to incriminate the prisoner, and was flagrantly illegal, being an attempt to entrap Him into self-accusing statements. It was baffled by Jesus being silent first, and subsequently taking His stand on the undeniable principle that a charge must be sustained by evidence, not based on self-accusation. Annas, having made nothing of this strange criminal, ‘sent Him bound unto Caiaphas.’

A meeting of the Sanhedrin had been hastily summoned in the dead of night, which was itself an illegality. Now Jesus stands before the poor shadow of a judicial tribunal, which, though it was all that Rome had left a conquered people, was still entitled to sit in judgment on Him. Strange inversion, and awful position for these formalists! And with sad persistence of bitter prejudice they proceeded to try the prisoner, all unaware that it was themselves, not Him, that they were trying.

They began wrongly, and betrayed their animus at once. They were sitting there to inquire whether Jesus was guilty or no; they had made up their minds beforehand that He was, and their effort now was but to manufacture some thin veil of legality for a judicial murder. So they ‘sought false witness, . . . that they might put Him to death.’ Matthew simply says that no evidence sufficient for the purpose was forthcoming; Mark adds that the weak point, was that the lies contradicted each other. Christ’s presence has a strange, solemn power of unmasking our falsehoods, both of thought and deed, and it is hard to speak evil of Him before His face. If His calumniators were confused when He stood as Prisoner, what will they be when He sits as a Judge?

Only Matthew and Mark tell us of the two witnesses whose twisted version of the word about ‘destroying the Temple and rebuilding it in three days’ seemed to Caiaphas serious enough to require an answer. Their mistake was one which might have been made in good faith, but none the less was their travesty ‘false witness.’ Their version of His great word shows how easily the teaching of a lofty soul, passed through the popular brain, is degraded, and made to mean the opposite of what he had meant by it. For the destruction of the Temple had appeared in the saying as the Jews’ work, and Jesus had presented Himself in it as the Restorer, not the Destroyer, of the Temple and of all that it symbolised. We destroy, He rebuilds. The murder of Jesus was the suicide of the nation. Caiaphas and his council were even now pulling down the Temple. And that murder was the destruction, so far as men could effect it, of the true ‘Temple of His body,’ in which the fulness of the Godhead dwelt, and which was more gloriously reconstituted in the Resurrection. The risen Christ rears the true temple on earth, for through Him the Holy Ghost dwells in His Church, which is collectively ‘the Temple,’ and in all believing spirits, which are individually ‘the temples’ of God. So the false witnesses distorted into a lie a great truth.

The Incarnate Word was dumb all the while. He ‘was still and refrained’ Himself. It was the silence of the King before a lawless tribunal of rebels, of patient meekness, ‘as a sheep before her shearers’; of innocence that will not stoop to defend itself from groundless accusations; of infinite pity and forbearing love, which sees that it cannot win, but will not smite. Jesus is still silent, but one day, ‘with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked.’ Caiaphas seems to have been annoyed as well as surprised at Jesus’ silence, for there is a trace of irritation, as at ‘contempt of court,’ in his words. But our Lord’s continued silence appears to have somewhat awed him, and the dawning consciousness of his dignity is, perhaps, the reason for the high priest’s casting aside all the foolery of false witnessing, and coming at last to the real point,- the Messianic claims of Jesus.

Caiaphas was doing his duty as high priest in inquiring into such claims, but he was somewhat late in the day, and he had made up his mind before he inquired. What he wished to get was a plain assertion on which the death sentence could be pronounced. Jesus knew this, and yet He answered. But Luke tells us that He first scathingly pointed to the unreality and animus of the question by saying, ‘If I tell you, ye will not believe.’ But yet it was fitting that He should solemnly, before the supreme court, representative of the nation, declare that He was the Messiah, and that, if He was to be rejected and condemned, it should be on the ground of that declaration. Before Caiaphas He claimed to be Messiah, before Pilate He claimed to be King. Each rejected Him in the character that appealed to them most. The many-sidedness of the perfect Revealer of God brings Him to each soul in the aspect that most loudly addresses each. Therefore the love in the appeal and the guilt in its rejection are the greater.

But Christ’s self-attestation to the council was not limited to the mere claim to the name of Messiah. It disclosed the implications of that name in a way altogether unlike the conceptions held by Caiaphas. When Caiaphas put in apposition ‘the Christ’ and ‘the Son of God,’ he was not speaking from the ordinary Jewish point of view, but from some knowledge, of Christ’s teaching, and there are two charges combined into one.

But Jesus’ answer, while plainly claiming to be the Messiah, expands itself in regard to the claim to be ‘Son of God,’ and shows its tremendous significance. It involves participation in divine authority and omnipotence. It involves a future coming to be the Judge of His judges. It declares that these blind scribes and elders will see Him thus exalted, and it asserts that all this is to begin then and there {‘henceforth’}, as if that hour of humiliation was to His consciousness the beginning of His manifestation as Lord, or, as John has it, ‘the hour that the Son of Man should be glorified.’ Nor must we leave out of sight the fact that it is ‘the Son of Man’ of whom all this is said, for thereby are indicated the raising of His perfect humanity to participation in Deity, and the possibility that His brethren, too, may sit where He sits. Much was veiled in the answer to the council, much is veiled to us. But this remains,-that Jesus, at that supreme moment, when He was bound to leave no misunderstandings, made the plainest claim to divinity, and could have saved His life if He had not done so. Either Caiaphas, in his ostentatious horror of such impiety, was right in calling Christ’s words blasphemy, and not far wrong in inferring that Jesus was not fit to live, or He is the everlasting ‘Son of the Father,’ and will ‘come to be our Judge.’

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

66. He is worthy of death. This is the formal decision of the Sanhedrim to condemn the Lord to death for blasphemy. This was the second trial, the first examination being informal before Annas, and is mentioned only by John. There was a third, named only by Luke, at the dawn of day, because a decision by the Sanhedrim in the night was illegal. See Luke 22:66. This meeting only confirmed the decision reached in the night before three o'clock. It is also referred to in Matt. 27:1.

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.

66. ἔνοχος κ.τ.λ. i.e. ‘has incurred the penalty of death.’ The Sanhedrin do not pass sentence, but merely re-affirm their foregone conclusion, and endeavour to have sentence passed and judgment executed by the Procurator. For ἕνοχος see note, ch. Mat 5:22.

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.

66.] This was not a formal condemnation, but only a previous vote or expression of opinion. That took place in the morning, see ch. 27:1, and especially Luk 22:66-71.

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

(M) 66. What think ye ? And they answered and said, He is worthy of death.] Mk. has: “What seemeth it to you? And they all adjudged Him to be worthy of death.”

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

Guilty of death [ενοχος θανατου] . Rev., worthy of death. See on Mt 23:18. ejn, in, ecw, to hold. The idea is, literally, holden of death; in bonds to death.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.