The King Is Crucified and the Work Is Finished

In Mark and Matthew the scourging follows the sentence as the prelude to crucifixion. The Book of John sets it in the middle of the trial, where it looks like the lighter beating Luke has Pilate propose, “I will therefore chastise him, and release him” (Luke 23:16), used here as an attempt to satisfy the crowd.

“Platted” is plaited, woven. The thorns were likely whatever thorny scrub grew nearby, and some suggest the spikes stood outward like the radiate crowns on imperial coins, though that is an inference. Mark says purple and Matthew scarlet; a soldier’s red cloak would serve for either.

“Hail, King of the Jews!” parodies the salute Ave, Caesar. Several manuscripts add “and they came to him”, and the verbs are imperfects, so the picture is of soldiers stepping up one after another to salute and strike. The blows are the same open-handed slaps as in 18:22.

Luke also counts three declarations of innocence by Pilate (Luke 23:4, 14, 22). Here the flogged prisoner is paraded as though his condition were proof: a beaten man is plainly no rebel king, so surely the accusers are satisfied.

In the Latin Vulgate this is Ecce homo, the title of paintings by Titian, Correggio and Caravaggio, among many. Some hear Zechariah 6:12, “Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH”, a royal text; the Book of John does not flag it, so that remains an inference.

The Greek cry is the verb alone, twice, with no object: “Crucify, crucify!” Pilate’s reply is a taunt, not a permission, since in 18:31 they have already told him they may not put a man to death. His own “no fault” is now said for the third time.

The law meant is Leviticus 24:16, death for blaspheming the name of the LORD. “Made himself the Son of God” recalls the charges of 5:18, “making himself equal with God”, and 10:33, “thou, being a man, makest thyself God.” The political accusation has been dropped for the religious one.

“The more afraid” implies earlier fear, though none has been mentioned; the Greek comparative can also simply mean “very afraid”. Either way this is the only feeling the Book of John ascribes to Pilate.

Silence before accusers is the servant’s posture in Isaiah 53:7, “as a sheep before her shearers is dumb”, and Mark 15:5 records the same silence before Pilate. In the Book of John it is striking because Jesus has answered Pilate readily until now.

The Greek puts “me” first: “To me you will not speak?” Power is exousia, lawful authority, and a Roman prefect held the right of the sword. Pilate names release second, after crucifixion, as if listing his options in order of likelihood.

“From above” is anothen, the word of 3:3 and 3:31, “born from above” and “he that cometh from above”. Who is “he that delivered me” is debated: Caiaphas, who handed him to Pilate, or Judas, who is repeatedly called the one who delivered him. The singular points to one man.

The threat had teeth. Pilate’s patron at Rome is often thought to have been Sejanus, who fell in AD 31, after which many of his associates were purged. “Speaketh against” is antilegei, to oppose, the language of maiestas, treason against the emperor.

Gabbatha is Aramaic, probably meaning a height or ridge, so it is a second name, not a translation of the Greek Lithostrotos, Pavement. “Sat down” can also be read transitively, that Pilate seated Jesus on the judgment seat, as the Gospel of Peter and Justin Martyr tell it; most take Pilate as the one seated.

“Preparation”, paraskeue, became the ordinary Greek word for Friday and remains so in modern Greek. “Behold your King!” is Pilate’s third “behold” in this scene, after “Behold, I bring him forth” and “Behold the man”.

“Away with him” is aron, literally “lift him up” or “take him off”. Israel’s own confession was that the LORD was king; Gideon refused a crown for that reason (Judges 8:23), and asking Samuel for a king was a rejection of God (1 Samuel 8:7). The chief priests now name Caesar.

The Greek says Pilate handed him over “to them”, though Roman soldiers carry out the sentence (verse 23). “Delivered”, paradidomi, is the verb used of Judas throughout, so the handing over now passes from Judas to the priests, from the priests to Pilate, and from Pilate to the executioners.

The condemned usually carried the crossbeam, the patibulum, not the whole cross. The Book of John leaves out Simon of Cyrene and says Jesus carried it “for himself”. Early writers such as Melito of Sardis compared Isaac carrying the wood up Moriah (Genesis 22:6). Golgotha is Aramaic for skull; the Latin calvaria gives “Calvary”.

The Book of John does not call the two others thieves or criminals, only “two other”. “Jesus in the midst” places him at the centre of the row, the position of honour between attendants, which may be deliberate irony; Luke instead cites Isaiah 53:12, “numbered with the transgressors” (Luke 22:37).

“Title” is titlos, from the Latin titulus, the placard stating a condemned man’s crime, sometimes carried before him or hung round his neck. The four Gospels word it differently, and the Book of John’s version is the longest, the only one with “of Nazareth”.

Hebrew here probably means Aramaic, the spoken tongue of Judea; Latin was the language of the government and Greek of trade across the eastern empire. Manuscripts differ over the order of the three. The city was crowded with Passover pilgrims, so “many of the Jews” read it.

“Chief priests of the Jews” is a phrase found nowhere else in the New Testament, and it sets the priests of the Jews against the King of the Jews in a single sentence. They ask for three words to be added: “he said, I am.”

Pilate answers with two Greek perfects, gegrapha, gegrapha: what I have written stands written. The same perfect, gegraptai, “it is written”, is the formula for quoting Scripture. The Roman governor unknowingly speaks like a scribe of Scripture.

Four soldiers made a quaternion, the squad the Book of Acts mentions when Peter is guarded by “four quaternions” (Acts 12:4). The coat, chiton, was the tunic worn next to the skin. Josephus says the high priest’s robe was woven in one piece without a seam, and some see a priestly hint here; the text does not say so.

The Greek links the two halves of the scene with men... de, “on the one hand... on the other”: “These things therefore the soldiers did” and, in the next verse, “now there stood” the women. The soldiers gamble at one side of the cross while the women stand at the other.

It is unclear whether three women or four stand here. If “his mother’s sister” is someone other than “Mary the wife of Cleophas”, she may be Salome of Mark 15:40, and there are four; two sisters both named Mary seems unlikely. Hegesippus, in the second century, called Clopas the brother of Joseph.

Neither Jesus’ mother nor “the disciple whom he loved” is ever named in the Book of John. The two unnamed figures closest to him are joined here into one household. Addressing his mother as “Woman” was respectful in Greek, the same address used for Mary Magdalene in 20:15.

“From that hour” uses the Book of John’s word for the hour of Jesus’ glory, as if the new household were part of it. Later tradition places Mary with John at Ephesus, and a house there is still shown to pilgrims; the text says only that the disciple took her home.

“Accomplished” and “It is finished” in verse 30 are the same Greek word, tetelestai, bracketing the cry of thirst. Instead of the usual verb for fulfilment, the Book of John uses teleioo here, “that the scripture might be perfected”, found only in this place with Scripture as its subject.

Hyssop is a small bushy plant with thin stems, which seems too flimsy to lift a wet sponge; one late manuscript reads hysso, a javelin, and some modern scholars follow it. But hyssop dipped in blood marked the doorposts at the first Passover (Exodus 12:22), and the Book of John may intend exactly that echo.

“Bowed his head” is the phrase Jesus used when he said the Son of man “hath not where to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). “Gave up the ghost” is paredoken to pneuma, he handed over the spirit, with paradidomi, the verb for handing over that ran through the betrayal and trial. Now he does the handing over.

Deuteronomy 21:22-23 forbade leaving a hanged man’s body on the tree overnight. The Sabbath was “an high day” because in this chronology it coincided with the first day of Passover. Breaking the legs, crurifragium, hastened death by taking away the victim’s ability to push up and breathe.

In 1968 an ossuary at Giv’at ha-Mivtar in Jerusalem held the heel bone of a man named Yehohanan with an iron nail still through it, the only skeletal evidence of crucifixion from this period. Early reports said his shins were broken; later examination doubted that.

Mark says Pilate “marvelled if he were already dead” and checked with the centurion before releasing the body (Mark 15:44). Crucified men often lingered for a day or more, so a death within a few hours was unusual enough for both accounts to remark on it.

“Pierced” is nysso, to prod or stab. The Latin Vulgate follows a reading “opened his side”, and Augustine saw the church’s sacraments flowing from the side of the sleeping Christ, as Eve was drawn from the side of the sleeping Adam. Later legend named the soldier Longinus.

“He knoweth” is ekeinos oiden, “that one knows”. It may mean the eyewitness himself, or it may point to another who vouches for him, Christ or God; commentators divide. A similar note of attestation closes the book in 21:24.

The first words spoken about Jesus in the Book of John were “Behold the Lamb of God” (1:29). Numbers 9:12 repeats the Passover rule of unbroken bones beside Exodus 12:46. The first title and this last detail meet at the cross.

The Book of John follows the Hebrew of Zechariah 12:10, “look upon me whom they have pierced”. The Greek Old Testament had misread the Hebrew verb and says “because they danced in mockery”. Revelation 1:7 uses the same Hebrew-based wording as here.

Arimathaea is probably Ramathaim-zophim, the hometown of Samuel (1 Samuel 1:1), north-west of Jerusalem. Mark calls Joseph an “honourable counsellor”, a member of the council (Mark 15:43). He fits exactly the rulers of 12:42 who believed but would not confess for fear of the Pharisees.

A Roman pound, litra, was about 327 grams, so a hundred pounds is roughly 32 kilograms of spice, an amount fit for a king. When King Asa was buried he was laid “in the bed which was filled with sweet odours and divers kinds of spices” (2 Chronicles 16:14).

“Linen clothes” are othonia, strips or sheets, and the same word describes what Peter finds lying in the empty tomb (20:5-7). “Wound” is deo, to bind, the verb used when Jesus himself was bound (18:12) and of Lazarus coming out “bound hand and foot” (11:44).

The site beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was an old quarry outside the walls of the time, and rock-cut tombs of the period survive there. A tomb “wherein was never man yet laid” matches the colt “whereon yet never man sat” (Luke 19:30): things unused, set apart for a king.

The burial is presented as a matter of haste: the tomb was near and the Sabbath at hand. That may explain Mary Magdalene’s assumption in 20:15 that someone has moved the body: “tell me where thou hast laid him.” “Nigh” is the same word used of the place of crucifixion in verse 20.