Bible Study series: Luke 23:1-12. The decision will ultimately be Pilate’s, but Herod was curious about Jesus. Herod wanted to see a miracle.
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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: Luke 23:1-12
1 Then the whole group of them got up and led him to Pilate. 2 They began to accuse him, saying, “We have found this man to be misleading our nation and forbidding them from giving tribute to Caesar and saying of himself that Christ is king.” 3 Pilate asked him, saying, “Are you the king of the Jews?” In reply he said, “You are saying this.” 4 Pilate said to the chief priests and the group, “I find nothing of a legal charge against this man.” 5 But they were persisting, saying, “He is stirring up the people, teaching all the Jews, beginning from Galilee to here.”
6 When Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean; 7 knowing that Herod had this jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem for these festival days. 8 And when Herod saw Jesus, he was really thrilled, because for a long time he was wanting to see him since he heard about him and was hoping to see some sign done by him. 9 He questioned him with many words, but he did not answer him at all. 10 The chief priests and teachers of the law had been standing there accusing him vigorously. 11 After Herod treated him contemptuously, along with his soldiers, and ridiculed him and threw elegant clothes around him, he sent him back to Pilate. 12 Herod and Pilate became friends with each other on that day; previously they had been enemies towards each other. (Luke 23:1-12)
Comments:
Including the final six verses in the previous chapter, we have four different trials of Jesus, if one can call them trials:
(1). The council of the elders (22:66-71);
(2). Before Pilate (23:1-6);
(3). Before Herod (23:7-12);
(4). Before Pilate again (22:13-25) (BTSB, p. 1879).
Garland (p. 916) sees Jesus’s crucifixion and death in four sections, each with a statement by Jesus:
1.. On the way to the cross, with Jesus’s lament over the mourning women (23:28-31).
2.. The crucifixion, with Jesus’s request to forgive the perpetrators (23:39-43).
3.. On the cross: the mockery, with Jesus’s announcement to the repentant criminal that he will be with him in paradise (23:39-43).
4.. His death, with Jesus entrusting his spirit to the Father (23:46).
1:
Pilate: The Christian creeds remember him as the governor under whom Jesus Christ suffered (1 Tim. 6:13) (see the Apostles Creed). The NT calls him governor while other sources call him prefect (his official title). Pontius was his nomen (tribal name) and Pilate was his cognomen (family name). His praenomen (personal name) is nowhere recorded. He came to power in A.D. 26. He was an anti-Semite. He brought into Jerusalem the insignia of the Roman military bearing the image of Caesar. He planted armed Roman soldiers, disguised as civilians, among the populace. This may have been the historical occasion for Luke 13:1, which says that Pilate mingled Galilean blood with their sacrifices. It is surprising then that he felt pressure from the Jewish authorities to put Jesus to death. However, he could have believed his position in the empire was precarious; John 19:12 says that if he released Jesus, he would be no friend of Caesar. The NT writers were eager to show that he was innocent in regards to Roman law. Yet the only way the Jewish Council could convict Jesus was to accuse him of claiming to be king. Finally, Pilate’s name does not appear in Judea after A.D. 36/37, and this indicates he was removed shortly after he slaughtered Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim (Holman’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary).
2:
Bock says that the leading Jews accused him of three accusations (pp. 1810-1811).
(1). They charged him with misleading the nation. Answer to the charge, from his point of view:
46 Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? 47 Everyone coming to me and hearing my words and acting on them—I’ll show you what he is like: 48 He is like the person who builds a house and dug deep and established the foundation on the rock. When the flood came, the river burst upon that house, but was not strong enough to shake it because it was built well. 49 But the one hearing and not acting is like the person building a house on the ground without a foundation. The river burst on it and immediately it collapsed, and how great was the crash of that house! (Luke 6:46-49)
Jesus was doing the exact opposite of misleading the nation. He was in fact leading them away from oppressive laws and traditions piled up by the religious establishment. He was leading them to a relationship with the Father. Instead, it was the Jerusalem establishment who were misleading the nation—leading them right into judgment.
(2). As to the charge that he forbad them from paying tribute to Caesar:
22 Is it lawful to give tribute tax to Caesar or not?” 23 He detected their craftiness and said to them. 24 “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription does it have?” They said, “Caesar’s.” 25 He said to them, “Therefore give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” 26 Then they were unable to catch him in his word in front of the people, and marveling at his answer, they fell silent. (Luke 20:22-26)
(3). The third charge—that he was the Anointed One—was true, but not in the sense that Jews thought—to be an earthly king.
The first accusation was dependent on the point of view of either side. The second one was an outright lie. The accusers brought it up because the charge of blasphemy in a Jewish context was insufficient for the Romans. The Jewish legal authorities had lost the right to execute people. They needed Rome’s permission.
3:
Pilate asked a fair question, but Jesus was ambiguous. Why? He wanted to allow the falsehoods to pile up. When people cannot spot the truth but are arrogant and powerful, they are often victims of divine irony. Irony is this: you think you know, but you do not; you are actually ignorant. When you add a religious component to it, it become “divine irony.”
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.
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. 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 simply means he did not put up a defense or give a long speech, say, as Paul will do in Acts.
But Pilate did “exceedingly” marvel at it, because no doubt he had heard many trials when the courtroom erupted in words.
Jesus was in fact about to become king of the whole world, at his resurrection and ascension. However, in no place in Luke’s Gospel does he proclaim himself king by words. He does this symbolically, here:
37 He was already approaching the descent of the Mount of Olives, and the entire crowd of disciples celebrated and began to praise God with a loud voice about all the miracles they saw, 38 saying,
“Blessed is the one coming,
the king, in the name of the Lord, [Ps. 118:26]
Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
39 And some of the Pharisees from the crowd told him, “Teacher, scold your disciples!” 40 He replied, saying, “I tell you, if these people kept quiet, the stones would cry out!” (Luke 19:37-40)
He does not stop the crowds from shouting honor and praise. The whole episode refers to Zechariah’s prophecy:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zech. 9:9, ESV)
However, it was the people who proclaimed him king, a seditious act from the establishment’s point of view, but never from his own words.
The religious accusers and Pilate were confused, not having a clear picture. Pilate must have concluded that Jesus was a “harmless enthusiast”; he did not fit the profile of a king plotting to overthrow Rome or Judea run by Rome (Bock, citing the early commentator Plummer, p. 1812). So Jesus was letting them stew in their ignorance and false and incomplete accusations. They may have caught on that he claimed to be the Messiah and Son of God, but they knew by their own wisdom that his could not be true. He didn’t fit their profile or job description. But they were deeply ignorant.
Let divine irony play out, Jesus seems to say.
4:
Garland says (comment on 23:4) that Luke is careful to emphasize Jesus’s innocence:
1.. Pilate declare Jesus innocent (23:4, 14, 22)
2.. Herod agrees with Pilate’s assessment (23:15)
3.. Jesus ≠ Barabbas, an insurrectionist (23:18-19, 25)
4.. Jesus is crucified with criminals, and one declares that they alone are guilty of the charge, but Jesus is not guilty (23:41)
5.. The centurion declares Jesus righteous (23:47)
6.. Joseph of Arimathea, described as a good and righteous man and open to the kingdom, a member of the Sanhedrin, did not consent to the verdict.
7.. The righteousness (innocence) of Jesus is affirmed throughout Acts (3:14; 7:52; 13:28).
Pilate’s pronouncement that he could see no legal basis on which to condemn him to death was risky. The Jerusalem establishment saw the weakness, so they had to push the political angle. Jesus said he was a king. How can a king exist without permission from Rome? It was seditious. It is better to eliminate him from Pilate’s “to-do” list and order him executed.
“chief priests”: Please learn more about them here:
Quick Reference to Jewish Groups in Gospels and Acts
5:
There is a lot of meaning in the verb “stirring up.” It has connotations of a revolution: shaking up, movement, instability. Does Pilate want instability in his governorship? What would Rome think?
“teaching all the Jews.” So we have jealousy about numbers. The teachers of the law did not have his success. And there is also their belief that his teaching was misleading the entire nation. “stirring up” means that they believe he is leading an insurrection or at least not following Pax Romana or Roman Peace.
Now we move to Herod’s palace.
6-7:
Pilate was “passing the buck.” Pilate’s wife had suffered in a dream that Pilate should have nothing to do with Jesus (Matt. 27:19). This explains why Pilate was so hesitant. No doubt he too had heard about the miracles that Jesus did. Pilate was nervous about the whole episode.
7-11:
Herod Antipas was a son of Herod the Great. He ruled over Galilee and Perea from 4 BC to 39 AD. Herod had heard about everything that was going on when Jesus was ministering in Galilee. He was perplexed because maybe John the Baptist had been raised from the dead, whom Herod had already beheaded (Luke 9:7-9). A report came from the Pharisees to Jesus that Herod was seeking to kill him. Herod wished to kill Jesus (13:31). Jesus replied by calling him an old fox, not a compliment (Luke 13:32). Jesus was not going to die prematurely.
I really like how Jesus was completely silent before this insincere inquisitor. Jesus was no circus juggler who did tricks on command. This is a lesson for the really charismatic healers who believe they can command the gift of healing whenever they want. Don’t be a circus clown for other people. God loves people, and when he chooses to meet their needs because he sees faith in them, he will tell you. Don’t step out on your own as if you can get a word of knowledge every single time. This is much too self-dependent, lording over the gifts from God. God gives the gift, you don’t ginger them up.
Herod was dissatisfied with the silence. He mocked Jesus and treated him with contempt. His soldiers joined in. Then he put elegant clothes on him, just out of spite and mockery. Now we know that Herod must have asked Jesus whether he was a king, and the Jews were vehemently or vigorously accusing him of this sedition.
Why was Jesus silent and not throw off the robe? It would have done no good, for the soldiers would have forced him to wear them. Also, he again was allowing these political rulers to pile up their injustices, so their own judgment would be strong. If the Roman and Jewish establishments were so unjust, then judgment on Jerusalem would be all the more justified. Political leaders swimming around in divine irony and use their “fake or seeming knowledge” or ignorance as a weapon incur a greater judgment.
“chief priests”:
“teachers of the law” (some translations call them “scribes”):
See this post for more comments.
Quick Reference to Jewish Groups in Gospels and Acts
12:
The NET translator and commentator says that Pilate and Herod may have become friends on the death of Pilate’s superior, named Sejanus. Apparently Sejanus had been anti-Jewish, and so Pilate had been treating the Jews insensitively. Herod had a Jewish background.
GrowApp for Luke 23:1-12
1. Read Rom. 13:1-5. We are supposed to treat rulers with respect, but do we have to follow every word when it is unjust? How do we decide?
RELATED
11. Eyewitness Testimony in Luke’s Gospel
3. Church Fathers and Luke’s Gospel
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
BIBLIOGRAPHY 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.
