Bible Study series: John 19:1-16. Pilate was reluctant, so he had Jesus flogged, but the Jerusalem and temple establishment pushed Pilate to sentence Jesus to die.
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Scripture: John 19:1-16
1 So then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2 And the soldiers plaited a crown of thorns and placed it on his head and tossed a purple robe around him. 3 They kept coming up to him and saying, “Greetings, King of the Jews!” And they kept giving him slaps. 4 Then Pilate went back outside and said to them, “Look! I am bringing him outside to you, so that you may know that I find no basis of a charge in him!” 5 So Jesus came outside, wearing the thorny crown and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “See! Here is the man!” 6 When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they shouted, saying, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “You take him yourselves and crucify him, for I do not find a cause (of accusation) in him!” 7 The Jews replied to him, “We ourselves have a law, and according to the law he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God!”
8 So when Pilate heard this statement, he feared even more 9 and went back into the residence and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus did not give him an answer. 10 So Pilate said to him, “You do not speak to me? Don’t you know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” 11 Jesus replied to him, “You have no authority whatsoever against me, except what is given to you from above. For this reason, the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin.” 12 From this time on, Pilate began to look for a way to release him. But the Jews shouted, saying, “If you release him, you are no ally to Caesar! Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar!”
13 Then, when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat in his judgment seat on the place called the Stone Pavement, which in Aramaic is called Gabbatha. 14 It was the Preparation Day for the Passover. It was the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Here is your king!” 15 So these shouted, “Away, away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your king?” The chief priests replied, “We have no king but Caesar!” 16 So then he handed him over to them, that he would be crucified. So they accompanied Jesus. (John 19:1-16)
Comments:
1-3:
So it seems that Pilate saw no basis of an accusation in him. He was apparently sincere and was intent on releasing him. However, he was not thinking this through. If Jesus made himself king of the Jews, then he opposed Caesar or the emperor. The establishment Jews were about to remind him of this opposition in vv. 12 and 15.
Then the soldiers regressed to their mammal nature and mocked a man who was apparently weak—never mind that he could have called down twelve legions of angels (Matt. 26:53). I am reminded of this verse: “… by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8, ESV). And “although he was a son, he learned obedience by what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8, ESV). Death was the ultimate act of obedience, but until that moment (19:28-30), there are other stages of obedience. Being flogged and slapped and then mocked by the purple robe and wearing the thorny crown are the earlier stages of learning obedience. The flogging, depending on which weapon is used, is designed to leave the body in a bloody pulp, because the straps of the whip were embedded with pieces of metal or bones. The flogging itself could bring about the victim’s death. The crown of thorns was probably the Phoenix dactylifera or the date palm, which could radiate outward and serve for a crown. (Please look these images up online.)
Flogging: Mark 15:15 says a scourging or flogging happened after Pilate delivered the death sentence, while John says here in v. 1 that he was beaten before the sentence. How to resolve this? Jesus received, first, the least severe flogging (fustigato), intended to appease the Jewish establishment. Then, second, he got the severest kind (verberatio) after the sentence of crucifixion was pronounced (Carson, comment on v. 1). But as usual, this sequence of events does not matter (to me at least). See v. 14 for more comments on the bigger perspective.
4-5:
Pilate brought Jesus out to the Jewish establishment because maybe the governor thought his disfigurement would placate their irrational wrath. Pilate saw no basis for an accusation of death against Jesus. So now will you stop pressuring me (Plate) to execute him?
“crown”: the word is used of wreaths of victory, for winners, for example, at the Games. A palm tree’s greenery can be used to make a crown of mockery, because the thorns radiate outwards (Morris, comment on v. 2, note 5). Think of the crown on the Statue of Liberty. So the purpose is more mockery, not physical torment.
However, if you insist on believing that the thorns inflicted further torture, then look up online the Euphorbia milii.
When the Roman soldiers mocked and slapped Jesus, they were really expressing their contempt for Jews generally, not so much against their representative named Jesus of Nazareth. In effect: “Here is what we think of you Jews and your government and nation! We put a crown of thorns on him and a purple robe and call out to him, ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’ This is how we show our contempt for you Jews!” (HT: Bruce, comment on v. 6).
Zech. 6:12 says “Here is the man, whose name is the Branch.” Here is the man in Latin translation says, “Ecce homo!” “Behold the man!” This is how the phrase came into English. Apparently there is an arch over the Via Dolorosa titled the Ecce Homo arch. It marks the starting point of the Via (Mounce, comment on v. 5). Klink sees the title as coming from Gen. 3:22, where God pronounces judgment on the Frist Adam, while Jesus is in the process of reversing the judgment of guilt. Jesus will take the guilt on himself (comment on v. 5). He also sees a connection to 1 Sam. 9:7, where Samuel introduces Saul, Israel’s first king. The royal context here in John 19 and the one back in 1 Sam. 9 match up. But Klink really highlights Gen. 3:22.
6-9:
But the chief priests and officers of the temple did not respond as Pilate had hoped. They shouted the death penalty over him. They were fulfilling Caiaphas’ unwitting prophecy about it being better that one man die for the nation, instead of the nation perishing, because Jesus’s mission was to change Israel (and the entire world) (11:49-53). Israel, as it was then configured, and steeped in the sacrificial system and the opinions of the sages about the law of Moses—the Talmudic oral traditions and later writings—would have come crashing down.
This is Pilate’s third declaration of Jesus’s innocence (see 18:38 and 19:4) (Mounce, comment on v. 6).
Klink sees that in vv. 6-7 the Gospel is unconsciously spoken by the two protagonists. Pilate pronounces Jesus’s sinlessness, and the Jews claim his death fulfills the law. Excellent insight (Klink gets it from another commentator, Edwyn Hoskyns).
“Son of God”: Let’s look into some more systematic theology (as I do throughout this commentary). Jesus was the Son of the Father eternally, before creation. The Son has no beginning. He and the Father always were, together. The relationship is portrayed in this Father-Son way so we can understand who God is more clearly. Now he relates to us as his sons and daughters, though, surprisingly, in John’s Gospel we are not called “sons,” but “children.” Only Jesus is the Son. In any case, on our repentance and salvation and union with Christ, we are brought into his eternal family.
6. Titles of Jesus: The Son of God
When Did Jesus “Become” the Son of God?
The Trinity: What Are the Basics?
The chief priests, elders, and teachers of the law conclude that he committed blasphemy (see Luke 22:69-71), which deserves death (Lev. 24:10-16, 23). They sentence him to death—all because they could not interpret Scripture correctly. The punishment was stoning the guilty party (Lev. 24:16), but that’s not the Roman method of execution.
Now the question is: Can they make the charge of blasphemy stick before the Roman authorities? They did not allow Jews to execute people (except for a Gentile entering unlawfully into the temple holy place). No, they could not make it stick, so they have to add politics to the charge against him. They falsely accuse him of making himself king (implied in 15:1-5 and stated in Matt. 27:11). And there is no king but Caesar.
In any case, the chief priests, elders and teachers of the law are still swimming around in human ignorance. They are about to advocate the crucifixion of their true Messiah, which also fulfills Scripture they don’t understand: Is. 53. The Messiah has to suffer and die. Their ignorance is just irony—the irony of justice. God did not reveal who his Son truly was to them. So some call this divine irony. God uses people’s arrogance and ignorance, combined, so they can lead themselves into judgment, out of their own free will, dark and unenlightened though it may be.
Darrel L. Bock wrote a book on blasphemy happening before the destruction of the temple in AD 70 and particularly before the Mishnah was collected in AD 200. Commentator Osborne summarizes Bock’s finding:
1.. Blasphemy centered on the misuse of the divine name and acts of blasphemy.
2.. Few were allowed to approach the throne of the holy God—not even the archangel Michael was allowed to sit on the right hand of God, so Jesus’s claiming he was about to sit at the right hand of God was blasphemy.
3.. This was not a capital trial but a hearing, so the Sanhedrin did not have to be technically correct.
4.. Sources of the information of the trial was plentiful (Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus), so this trial / hearing is not a fiction.
5.. Two levels of blasphemy: Jesus claims to have comprehensive authority from God; and then he claims to be the judge of Jewish leaders (violating Exod. 22:28 on not cursing God’s leaders). This latter claim could be used against Jesus because he could be accused of challenging Rome’s authority.
Source: Grant R. Osborne, Matthew: Zondervan’s Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Zondervan, 2010), p. 999.
Even though Pilate was a hard-bitten Roman prefect, as a man of his time, he would have had a “rich vein of superstition” in him (Bruce, comment on vv. 8-9). It was now being exposed. If Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, then to a Greek or Roman this was no capital offense. A strong flogging might cure him. However, Jesus must have made an impression on Pilate because sometimes “more is caught than taught.” Jesus had a divinity about him. “Where are you from” could imply that Pilate believed Jesus had a divine source or origin.
10-12:
To cover up is uneasiness, Pilate throws his weight around, when Jesus was silent. I have authority to release you or crucify you. Now Jesus finally replies. Pilate is not the one with the authority; only God is. Jesus said the authority comes from “above,” which means a heavenly derivation. The authority comes from God. So how does this work out? The chief priests handed Jesus over because of their blasphemy laws. But their motive was also political, as Caiaphas himself admitted even without his knowing it (John 11:49-53). Jesus was about to overturn their entire system. Pilate was a pagan Roman also acting under the authority of the emperor, and in fact he was intent on releasing Jesus. So if both Caiaphas and Pilate were acting under God’s authority to bring about Jesus’s crucifixion, then Caiaphas has the greater sin because he has sinister, political, and envious motives and does not see things clearly.
Another option is that the one who has the greater guilt is Judas, but this is not likely because he is now out of the picture, and he was a weak pawn. Judas handed Jesus over to the Jewish establishment, not to Pilate. So, the real contest is between the sin and guilt of Caiaphas or Pilate. Jesus says the one (singular participle) who handed him over has the greater sin or guilt.
God will not take down the Roman empire in A.D. 70, but he will take down the Jerusalem temple, as judgment on the Jerusalem establishment for rejecting his Messiah.
Matt 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 and 17 in Parallel Columns Are Finally Clear
Pilate is using the Greek term exousia (pronounced ex-oo-see-ah) to mean imperium—a commission to speak for the emperor in far-flung provinces. Pilate had this authority, as the emperor’s lieutenant. But Jesus was reminding him that he was a near-passive actor in God’s purposes. I say near-passive because humans have free will. And Pilate was on the verge of releasing Jesus, but the chief priests and officers played their trump card or winning hand: Jesus cannot be released because he was in competition with the emperor. So God can uses even unjust circumstances and deficient worldviews to bring about his purposes in the human mind. Pilate’s freedom was painted into a very small corner, but he still could have released him, even though this decision may have cost him his political career. Therefore, he bears some responsibility, but Caiaphas is guiltier because he could not recognize the Suffering Servant in Is. 52:13-53:12 (and other passages), and he was the religious leader of the people of Israel. He had received God’s authority from God and the privileges and responsibilities of the high priesthood. Pilate was a mere pagan.
Bruce points out that “friend of Caesar” (which I translate as “ally of Caesar”) was not an official title as it was under Vespasian (ruled AD 69-79), though the title was appropriate politically at the time of Jesus in an unofficial sense (comment on v. 12).
Klink (comment on v. 12), referring to a sympathetic Jewish commentator (Joseph Blinzler), note that the irony is rich for the Jews of two thousand years ago. In saying they are allies with Caesar, the Jews have become Roman, so to speak, thus relinquishing their God-given right to be God’s people and their God-given King for life in paganism. And this happens during Passover, the time to celebrate liberation!
13:
The judgment seat can also be called the tribunal; it was a raised platform on which the Roman magistrate discharged his judicial functions (Bruce, comment on v. 13). Now, ironically, Jesus will one day sit on his judgment seat (bēma, pronounced bay-mah) at final judgment, representing God (Rom. 14:10; 2 Cor. 5:10). He will then be the one who judges.
“Aramaic”: John uses the generic “Hebrew” either for the Hebrew language or the related Aramaic dialect,
Bruce identifies the Pavement Stone beneath the Ecce Homo (“Behold the Man”) arch and the convent of Our Lady of Zion. Originally it measured 3,000 square yards (a little smaller than 3,000 square meters). It has been further identified as the courtyard of the Antonia fortress.
A few translations say that Pilate had Jesus sit on the bēma seat, as some sort of mockery with a divine purpose behind it, meaning that Jesus is the true judge, thought Pilate and the chief priests do not realize it. However, the Greek reads that the subject of the two verbs “brought” and “sat” is Pilate.
14:
“sixth hour” this was at 12:00 or noon. Jesus was going to die when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered. But there were so many lambs being slaughtered to feed the Passover pilgrims that the bloody event happened over a long period.
Mark indicates that Jesus was crucified at 6:00 a.m. (6:00h); One option is to believe that Mark followed the Palestinian method of counting the hours from sunrise (the third hour was 9:00 a.m. or 9:00h), while John was counting by the method by the custom in Asia Minor, which starts the counting from midnight (the sixth hour would be 6:00 a.m.). (Mounce, comment on v. 14).
In partial agreement, Morris is probably right, when he says that both texts are approximates for the morning hours. He also quotes Roman historian Pliny who says: “The actual period of a day has been differently kept by different people: the Babylonians count the period between two sunrises, the Athenians that between two sunsets … the common people everywhere from dawn to dark, the Roman priests and the authorities who fixed the official day, and also the Egyptians and Hipparchus, the period from midnight to midnight (Natural History, 5.188).
I like Carson here:
More than likely we are in danger of insisting on a degree of precision in both Mark and John, which, in days before watches, could not have been achieved. The reckoning of time for most people, who could not carry sundials and astronomical charts, was necessarily approximate. If the sun was moving toward mid-heaven, two different observers might well have glanced up and decided, respectively, that it was ‘the third hour’ or about ‘the sixth hour.’ Mark’s concern is to set the time frame in which three hours of darkness occur (Mark 15:25, 33). By contrast, John’s point appears to be the proceedings had dragged on quite a long time, beginning with the ‘early morning’ (18:28) commencement of the proceedings before Pilate. During all this time it became ever clearer that justice demanded Jesus be released while evil’s tide rolled inexorably on and brought him to the cross—the evil of the Jews, the evil Pilate, the evil of all those for whom the Lamb of God died. (comment on v. 14a)
In other words, don’t demand precision before the invention of atomic clocks. That sounds reasonable to me.
“preparation of the Passover”: It was also preparation of the Sabbath, both days coincided and provided a special and holy occasion (see comments at v. 31).
To coordinate the timeline between the Synoptic Gospels and John, see my summary of Carson’s analysis at John 13:1 and 27:
Pilate again present their king to him. Does Pilate and the chief priests know what they are talking about, or are the victims of irony? He really is their king, but they are ignorant of this divine truth. This is Johannine (adjective of John) irony.
Recall that irony means that you believe you know something but you really do not. In the Book of Job, Job and his friends really believed they knew the ways of God, and maybe they did a little, but when God showed up in Chapters 38-42, he set them straight. They did not know as much as they had once believed. They were victims of irony. Here, neither Pilate nor the chief priests knew what they were talking about; the chief priests were unable to see their true king, and Pilate did not know he was the true king.
15-16:
Pilate wants the chief priests to recognize that Jesus was their king, but he is speaking with mockery or under the power of ironical ignorance. But not only so they not recognize him, they insist that Pilate must take him away or remove him and crucify him. Caesar is the only sovereign they recognize, and up to a point this was true because he did give them freedom to practice their religion, but ultimately they did not want his authority to rule over the Chosen People. Come to think of it, maybe some of them did, just to keep the peace. But then again—no. They remembered how Assyria conquered the northern kingdom and the Babylonians conquered the southern kingdom, all ordained by God as judgment. This was religious and national humiliation. Shouting that their only king or emperor was Caesar risked offending Jewish patriots, but they would take the risk, to get rid of Jesus.
“handed (him) over”: Beasley-Murray says that this verb indicates a judicial sentence, and a semi-official use of the term is seen in Matt. 5:25: they will hand you over to the synagogues (note on v. 16, p. 343). This same verb will appear in v. 30, when Jesus hands over his spirit to his Father. See my comments there.
The soldiers—four of them, we learn in v. 23—accompanied Jesus in the sense of compelling him to carry the cross-piece of the instrument of death. The upright stake was probably already there. Jesus went out means that he left the precinct of Pilates praetorium or residence and exited through one of the gates (Heb. 13:12). Lev. 24:14 and Deut. 17:5 says that execution were to happen outside the city.
In any case, Bruce is right theologically: “And in fact that these words were spoken towards midday on Passover Eve, he implies something else: Jesus is the true paschal lamb, about to suffer death at the appropriate hour of the appropriate day for the life of his people” (Bruce, comment on vv. 14-15).
Klink says that the establishment Jews are speaking truthfully, for they reveal their true loyalties are with the Romans, who maintain their power (comment on v. 15).
John implies that Pilate pronounced the sentence of death while sitting on his judgment seat. Now comes the crucifixion.
GrowApp for John 19:1-16
1. Jesus willingly submitted to mistreatment for your salvation. How does this show his love for you?
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3. Archaeology and John’s Gospel
SOURCES
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