Bible Study series: Matthew 27:11-31. Pilate will sentence him to die.
A warm welcome to this Bible study! I write to learn, so let’s learn together. I also translate to learn. The translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to see many others, please click on this link:
In the next link to the original chapter, I comment more and offer the Greek text. At the bottom you will find a “Summary and Conclusion” section geared toward discipleship. Check it out!
In this post, links are provided for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Matthew 27:11-31
11 Jesus stood before the governor. The governor questioned him, saying, “Are you the king of the Jews?” But Jesus said, “You are saying so.” 12 And while the chief priests and elders were accusing him, he did not answer anything. 13 The Pilate said to him, “Don’t you hear how many things they are testifying against you?” 14 But he did not answer one thing, nothing, so that the governor was greatly amazed.
15 On each festival, the governor had the custom to release one prisoner to the crowd, whomever they wanted. 16 At that time they held a notorious prisoner called Jesus Barabbas. 17 So when they had gathered together, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release to you? Jesus Barabbas or Jesus, called the Christ? 18 For he knew that out of envy they had handed him over.
19 And while he was sitting on the judicial platform, his wife sent a message to him, saying, “Don’t let there be any dealings between you and that righteous man, for today I suffered much in a dream because of him.
20 But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds they should request Barabbas and destroy Jesus. 21 But in reply, the governor said to them, “Of the two, whom do you want me to shall release to you?” And they said, “Barabbas!” 22 Pilate said to them, “What then shall I do with Jesus, called the Christ?” They all said to him, “Let him be crucified!” 23 But he said, “Why? What wrong has he done?” They began to cry out even more, saying, “Let him be crucified!”
24 When Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that an uproar was taking place, he took water and dipped his hands in front of the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood. You shall see to it yourself.” 25 And in reply, the people said, “His blood be upon us and our children!” 26 Then he released to them Barabbas, but he had Jesus flogged and handed him over to be crucified.
27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus away to the governor’s residence and gathered the whole cohort to him. 28 After they stripped him, they put a scarlet robe around him; 29 and after they had woven a crown from thorns, they placed it on his head and a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” 30 And they spit on him and took the reed and were striking his head. 31 And when they mocked him, they stripped the robe off of him and put on him his own garments and led him away to crucify him. (Matt. 27:11-31)
Comments:
This longer passage can be further divided into smaller sections, as follows:
1.. Pilate questions Jesus (vv. 11-14)
2. Pilate sentences Jesus to die and frees Barabbas (vv. 15-26)
3. Soldiers Mock and Beat Jesus (vv. 27-31)
Comments:
Luke 23:2 says that the Jewish authorities brought three charges before Pilate: (1) Jesus’s subversive movement; (2) his opposition to paying taxes to Rome; (3) he claimed to be Christ the king. The Jews found him guilty of blasphemy, but this was insufficient to execute him under Roman law. So those three charges would have to suffice.
11-14:
“not … one thing, nothing.” The Greek is emphatic. My translation reflects it.
Evidently, Jesus intended (1) to let the false accusations fly, so the religious establishment would sink deeper into guilt before God and justly incur his judgment; and (2) the divine plan had to be fulfilled; Pilate had to condemn him to death. France says that Pilate’s surprise indicates a favorable impression (p. 1049). As for Pilate’s apparent capitulation to the Sanhedrin, while Pilate was hostile towards the Jews, France says that the pressure of the Sanhedrin and the Jerusalem crowd was the most prudent course of action for him (p. 1049). The political charge of another king than Caesar had to be dealt with.
Pilate asked him whether Jesus was the king of the Jews, and he answered honestly, without making a big issue of it: “You are saying so.” This is an oblique answer that says, “Yes,” but Pilate was too dull to understand it. So Jesus is playing with the ambiguity in the word king: (a) A Caesar-like king who conquers the world with the military and compels allegiance with bodily threats; (b) a heavenly king who conquers humanity’s heart with the gospel who persuades humanity to have allegiance with love. Jesus fits the second definition. He really was the king of the Jews, but in a spiritual sense, in the new kingdom that God was ushering in. This new kingdom has links to the kingdom God set up over Israel, but now it was entering a new phase, with King Jesus at its head. But the Roman governor and his accusers did not see it. Spiritual and moral blindness.
As to Jesus’s silence, let’s quote these verses one more time, as I did in Matt. 26. Peter summarizes Jesus’s demeanor before the authorities:
For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. (1 Pet. 2:21-23, ESV)
Now let’s turn to the remarkable verse in Isaiah’s accurate prophecy.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth. (Is. 53:7, ESV)
However, he did make a confession before the high priests, chief priests and the elders of the people, quoting Ps. 110:1 and Dan. 7:13 (Matt. 26:64). So let’s not overinterpret the silence here. It just means he did not go into a long speech about how wrong they were and how he really was the Messiah.
But Pilate did “exceedingly” marvel at it, because no doubt he had heard many trials when the courtroom erupted in words.
15-26:
Back in Matt. 20:19, Jesus predicted he would be handed over, flogged, and crucified and mocked. Verse 26 here and the rest of the Matt. 27 (minus the burial and guard) fulfills the prediction.
Jesus Barabbas and Jesus the Messiah? Is this confusing? No, it’s very simple. In Hebrew Jesus is really Joshua. And Joshua was a common name. But the power and character of the two persons behind the same name is very different. Barabbas was a notorious criminal, while the Lord Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God. The custom was a Passover amnesty.
3. Titles of Jesus: The Son of David and the Messiah
The entire pericope (pronounced puh-RIH-koh-pea) or section of Scripture is tragic and awful, full of injustice and bitterness and blindness against the most just man who ever lived. It was a wrong decision based on a shouting match. Pilate was weak because his tenure in Judea had weakened by his cruelty, but the Father was behind the scenes, orchestrating the push for his Son to die. That’s how much he loved you. Someone had to die for sins. You or someone else. God, represented in the Son of God, did this for you.
Pilate was reluctant because his wife had a dream, and dreams were taken seriously in the ancient world. Rational Bible interpreters may dismiss them, but not the ancients (and not me, or at least a few of them). This dream may have prompted him to wash his hands of the whole affair. Also, he perceived their motive—envy, not justice. France says that the intervention of Pilate’s wife deepens the guilt of the Jewish leaders. God told this Gentile woman that this innocent and righteous Jew was innocent, in contrast to the unjust accusation of the religious leaders (p. 1055).
See my post:
Dreams and Visions: How to Interpret Them
But none of this exonerates the foolish mob. Their hearts had been hard and filled with injustice and moral blindness. God simply allowed their hearts to drink the full cup of their preconditioned unrighteousness. In other words, they were unrighteous before the trial began and were part of the opponents. For all we know, they may have been part of the temple complex, including the families of the money-changers whose tables he had overturned.
This leads us to the question: How many were shouting in favor of crucifixion? It was not the whole city, for the people liked Jesus, but it was enough of a crowd to shout so loudly that they prevailed or dominated the outcome.
“judicial platform”: it is the noun is used 12 times in the NT and literally means “a step or footsteps, space to set one’s foot on; an elevated place ascended by steps; a tribunal, throne” (Mounce, p. 1048). It is an official’s place or seat of judgment. Think of a judge sitting behind his “bench” today. Therefore it is often means “judgment seat.” Paul uses it in Rom. 14:10 for God’s judgment seat, and in 2 Cor. 5:10, for Christ’s judgment seat. It is clear where he got the image from—right here (and other places). In Acts 12:21, it is used of Herod’s throne, where he delivered a speech. Also see Acts 25:6, 10, 17.
In v. 24, “you see to it yourselves” closely parallels the chief priests’ and elders’ words to Judas in v. 4. So this is irony again. Justice comes right back on them, and they don’t even realize it.
By the way, a clever interpreter on TV has noted that the name Jesus Barabbas literally means “Jesus, son of the Father.” The interpreter connects the contrast between Jesus, who is the true son of the Father, and Barabbas, to the Day of Atonement. Recall that there were two goats during this most holy day: one was sacrificed, and the other was released. Evidently, the interpreter wants us to draw the inference that Jesus was sacrificed, while the scapegoat was released out into the wilderness, with the sins of the nation still on him. This interpretation is clever, and you can decide what to do with it. I don’t emphasize it myself because I don’t believe in outsmarting the original author.
The Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16 from a NT Perspective
If you don’t like the connection, then just realize that the guilty man (Barabbas) goes free, while the innocent one (Jesus) suffers for the guilty one. This is a perfect picture of penal substitution of the atonement.
The crowd was mixed with the people of Jerusalem and Judea in the south and the people of Galilee in the north. Generally, the southerners did not like the Galileans. This explains why some of the crowd turned against Jesus—they were likely from the south. Their self-incriminating words recall Jesus’s prediction that the blood of all the righteous from Abel would come upon his contemporaries (Turner, on 27:24-26).
Why was Pilate so weak? The commentator and translator for the NET says on Luke 23:12 that Pilate had a superior, named Sejanus, who had died recently. Apparently Sejanus had been anti-Jewish, and so Pilate had been treating the Jews insensitively. Now he was intending to please them by having Jesus flogged and crucified.
Jesus was flogged or scourged and then handed over to the mob to be crucified. Of the flogging, Keener writes: “The preliminary scourging here (27:26) is more serious than the maximum thirty-nine lashes administered by synagogue communities (10:17; cf. 2 Cor. 11:23) and more severe than most Roman public corporal disciplines as well (cf. Acts 16:22; 2 Cor. 11:25…); sometimes this kind of scourging caused death itself … Unlike the lesser fustigatio (beating) the severer disciplines of flagellatio (flogging) and especially verberatio (scourging) accompanied the death sentence …,” though the Gospel writers may not have made such distinctions (p. 672).
Keener continues: Romans used rods or sticks on soldiers, they used scourges on slaves and provincials of equivalent status. “Thus, Pilate here orders the preliminary scourging that, whether with rods or ships, generally preceded crucifixion and other forms of capital punishment” (p. 672).
On v. 25, which says that his blood should fall on their heads, Osborne writes:
But this does not constitute anti-Semitism, and the use of this passage in the Crusades, the pogroms, and the Holocaust was a terrible tragedy that has led to acts of horrible depravity. Matthew does not say anything that was not said often by the OT prophets, and he nowhere says that God and the church have rejected the Jews. While they are indeed guilty of the death of Jesus, so are the Romans—indeed so are all of us! In 28:18, the Jews are part of the nations to whom the gospel will go (see on 10:5-6; 15:24). This is also true of the Jewish sermons in Acts, which also stress the Jewish guilt but say in effect, “You put Christ on the cross, but he died for you. Come to him and be saved!” (Acts 2:36-39; 3:17-20; 13:27-29, 38-39).
I say that only the Jerusalem establishment and the Jews of Jerusalem egged on by the establishment were shouting their self-imposed guilt, so the guilt does not fall on all Jews. So I partly disagree with Osborne (though I’m sure Osborne would not say this, either).
Blomberg’s opinion is more balanced:
Clearly the crowd is not condemning their entire race. All of Jesus’ followers at this stage were also Jews, and the crowd does not refer to them. What is more, only a small subsection of even the uncommitted masses is involved. “On our children” does not refer to all Jewish people for all eternity but reflects a formula of corporate solidarity and a strong protestation of the crowd’s innocence (cf. Lev 20:9–16). In fact, the rhetoric of this verse has been shown to be relatively mild by ancient conventions. [L. T. Johnson, “The New Testament’s Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic,” JBL 108 (1989): 419–41.] (comment on 27:25).
As usual, we must take things in their historical context, to get the right perspective.
27-31:
“cohort”: usually 600 soldiers or a manipulus, about one-third of that number. Matthew is probably using the term loosely, not precisely. Hundreds of soldiers is the main idea (Keener, p. 674)
“reed”: some translate it as a “stick.”
This whole scene, yes, was animalistic, but it was also satanic. There is just something deeply irrational and unnecessary about this abuse. Only several demons, believing that they had won the victory over the Son of God, would inspire this much cruelty. For all we know, Satan himself may be here, invisible. However, the text does not say this openly, so we should not press this invisible demonic presence too far.
To forestall any criticism that this abuse could not be of God, once again, please see my post:
Christ’s Death on Cross = Cosmic Child Abuse?
No, God did not cause this abuse; evil humans did this. But I really like this verse, to clarify matters: Jesus had to suffer, in order to relate to humanity. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).
As many were astonished at you—his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance. (Is. 52:14, ESV)
After the attendants had finished striking him (Matt. 26:67-68), the Roman soldiers had their turn. No wonder Isaiah prophesied that his appearance would be marred, beyond human semblance. Beating his head with a reed, while the thorny crown was on it, added to the disfigurement.
Jesus’s “kingship” here is seen as a joke. However, their mock enthronement with cheap substitutes like the scarlet robe and reed or stick for a scepter will be replaced and smacked down with the real enthronement in Matt. 28:18.
The soldiers are subject to divine irony—they “know” that he is a false Messiah and King, but in reality he is the true Messiah and King! So they dress him up in the accoutrements of a king. Eventually, these soldiers (or some soldiers in the crew) will give homage and worship for the conquering son of Man (Dan. 7:13-14; Phil. 2:9-11). “They will soon rethink their mockery” (Turner on 27:28-31).
GrowApp for Matt. 27:11-31
1. Jesus was unjustly put on trial. Do you believe God still has a plan when you suffer injustice? How do you trust him?
2. Jesus was being physically abused, but he could not flee. He was destined to die for the whole world. However, you can flee abuse. Do you have a personal story to tell or know of a story you can recount?
RELATED
9. Authoritative Testimony in Matthew’s Gospel
1. Church Fathers and Matthew’s Gospel
2. Archaeology and the Synoptic Gospels
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
SOURCES AND MORE
To see the bibliography, please click on this link and scroll down to the bottom. You will also find a “Summary and Conclusion” for discipleship.
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