Mark 15:6-8
The custom at the feast
The governor released one prisoner at the feast, and the crowd comes up to ask for the thing he was wont to do. The mechanism of the release is ordinary.
People of the Bible
Barabbas
Woke up guilty and condemned, and went home for reasons that had nothing to do with him.
The gospels do not soften him. Mark says he lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection. Luke says the same, sedition and murder. John calls him a robber, a word used for the armed bandits of the period rather than a pickpocket. He is exactly the kind of man the crowd might have preferred: a rebel who had already fought Rome and killed doing it.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Barabbas
- 01
- 02
Mark 15:7
Who had committed murder in the insurrection
Mark gives the charge without hedging. Nothing in the text suggests a mistaken conviction or an unjust sentence in his case.
- 03
Matthew 27:20-21
They persuaded the multitude
The choice is engineered. The chief priests and elders work the crowd, and when the question comes the answer is already prepared.
- 04
Luke 23:24-25
He released him that had been cast into prison
Luke states the exchange as flatly as a ledger: the man asked for is released, and Jesus is delivered to their will.
Why it matters
His whole appearance lasts a few verses and he never speaks. Pilate offers the Passover release expecting to be handed an easy out, and the chief priests move the people to ask for Barabbas instead. The choice is put twice and answered the same way. The name itself carries the point in Aramaic, bar abba, son of the father, and some early manuscripts even give his first name as Jesus. A guilty man walks out of the cell and the innocent one goes to the cross that was standing ready.
11 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
Matthew 27:57-66; Mark 15:42-47; Luke 23:50-56; John 19:38-42
A Stone at the Door
Matthew 27:1-31; Mark 15:1-20; Luke 22:63-23:25; John 18:28-19:16
Behold the Man
Matthew 27:32-56; Mark 15:21-41; Luke 23:26-49; John 19:16-37
It Is Finished
