[ p. 435 ]
THE TRIAL:
(II) Before the Roman Procurator
Mt. xxvii. 11-30; Mk. xv. 1-19; Lk. xxiii. I-25 ; Jo. xviii. 28-xix. 16.
It was a heavy misfortune for the imperial province of Judaea when in the year 25 B.C. Pontius Pilate was appointed its procurator. Arrogant, pitiless, and overbearing, he was ill adapted for dealing with a people so tenacious of their traditions, so sensitive to insult, so reckless in defiance ; and no sooner had he assumed office than he provoked them to implacable antagonism. They had an inveterate abhorrence of images, and his predecessors, scrupulous in eschewing needless offence, had refrained from displaying in the Holy City the military standards emblazoned with the Emperor’s effigy. But Pilate disdained what seemed to him a weak compliance with a contemptible superstition, and when the troops went to winter there, he ordered that they should carry their standards into Jerusalem. It was night when they made their entry, but in the morning the impious emblems were seen planted on the citadel hard by the Temple. The indignant Jews hastened in large numbers to Caesarea, the official capital of the province, and for five days they besieged the procurator with unavailing entreaties. At length on the sixth day he accorded them an audience in the race-course, where he had a military detachment privily stationed; and when they renewed their [ p. 436 ] protestations, he signalled to the soldiers, and they surrounded the suppliants and threatened them with instant death unless they forbore their clamour and went peaceably home. He expected that they would be terrified into submission ; but he little knew as yet what manner of men he had to deal with. They cast themselves on the ground and, baring their necks, declared that they had rather die than endure the transgression of their sacred Law.
The procurator had overreached himself. He durst not fulfil his threat and so kindle a conflagration in his province. He bade the soldiers sheathe their blades and issued an order that the standards be removed. It was an ignominious and fatal denouement . He had committed the ruinous blunder of announcing an ultimatum which he could not execute ; and from that hour his authority was broken. He was at the mercy of his resentful subjects. They perceived that he feared the Emperor’s displeasure and that they need only clamour and threaten insurrection in order to overbear him.
It was a luckless inauguration of the procurator’s administration, and his relations with his subjects had become more and more difficult during the interval of fully three years which have now elapsed. It had been a time of corruption, oppression, and cruelty requited with indignant hatred; and the unhappy procurator’s embarrassment had recently been aggravated by a quarrel with his neighbour Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea. Probably the occasion was that atrocity which he had perpetrated some eight or nine months ago (Cf. Lk. xiii. 1), when he slew a company of Galilean worshippers in the Holy City. Being [ p. 437 ] Galileans, they were subjects of Antipas, and he would naturally resent the outrage.
It boded ill for the issue of our Lord’s trial that the decision rested with an arbiter so embarrassed. Even were he minded to do justice, he durst not. Already a report of his maladministration had reached the Emperor and had earned him a stern reprimand, and further trouble would ensure his recall and disgrace. He was at the mercy of those fanatical Jews, and they knew it and meant to have their way.
They showed it at the very outset. Since it was shortly after 3 a.m. when the Sanhedrin convened, it would be scarce 5 when the hasty trial ended and they adjourned to the Praetorium. Business indeed began early in the sultry East. Even at Rome clients appeared at the houses of their patrons at 6 a.m., and the law-courts sat from 8 to 9 ; and in Judaea still earlier hours were kept. But even there 5 a.m. was an untimeous hour for business, and the Sanhedrists evinced their small esteem for their procurator in thus early presenting themselves and demanding his attention. And they carried their insolence still farther. A heathen dwelling was ceremonially unclean, and had they entered the Praetorium they would have been unclean for the remainder of that day, which had begun at sunset on the previous day and lasted till sunset that evening. And thus they would have been incapacitated, as the Evangelist observes, for “eating the passover”—a phrase denoting not merely the Paschal Supper which they had already eaten, but the sacrificial thankoffering ( chagigah ) which they had still to present that afternoon (Jo. xviii. 28). Their fitting course was to postpone the trial until the Feast was [ p. 438 ] ended ; but they were eager for the Lord’s condemnation, and with undisguised insolence they would not enter the Praetorium but stayed outside before the gateway and summoned the procurator to come forth and deal with them there.
It shows how he stood in awe of them that he obeyed the summons. Chafing at the indignity, he came out and demanded their errand : “What accusation are you bringing against this fellow ? ” “Unless,” they answered loftily, “he had been a criminal, we would not have delivered him to you.” “You take him,” said he impatiently, “and judge him by your law.” “It is not allowable for us,” was their curt rejoinder, “to put any one to death.” It was a significant intimation : they had already judged Him by their own law and sentenced Him to death, and they had come to have their sentence ratified.
And therewith they presented their formal indictment : “We found this fellow perverting our nation, prohibiting the giving of tribute to Caesar, and alleging himself to be Messiah, a king.” Observe their unscrupulous ingenuity. The Lord’s offence was indeed that He had “alleged Himself to be Messiah,” and on that count the Sanhedrin had pronounced Him guilty of blasphemy. But a charge of blasphemy would not lie before a Roman tribunal, and so in delating Him to the procurator they gave it a political colour. It was easily done, since in those days the Messiah was conceived as a national deliverer ; and, shamelessly oblivious alike of patriotism and of religion, they arraigned Him as a plotter of treason against the Emperor.
It was a grave charge, and Pilate durst not make [ p. 439 ] light of it. Bidding the guards conduct the prisoner into the Praetorium, he retired thither and proceeded to examine Him. Evidently he was impressed by the Lord’s bearing—so weary and dishevelled by rough handling yet so calm and withal so majestic. Surely this was no wild adventurer ! “You,” he said—“are you ‘ the King of the Jews ’ ?” It was courteously spoken, and it deserved a courteous reply. Yet what could our Lord say ? A direct affirmation would have required much explanation which Pilate could hardly have understood ‘‘Is it on your own account, He answered, “that you say this, or did others tell it you of Me ?” The suggestion that he had been in communication with those odious fanatics nettled the procurator. “Am I a Jew ?” he cried. Your own nation and the Chief Priests delivered you to me. What have you done ?” Some explanation was due alike to Pilate and to our Lord Himself. He could not abjure His Messianic claim, but He assured the procurator that it involved no treason : “My Kingdom does not belong to this world. Had My Kingdom belonged to this world. My attendants had striven to prevent My being delivered to the Jews. As it is, My Kingdom lies not here.” “So,” said Pilate, “you are a king—you !” “So be it” He answered. “It is for this that I have been born and for this that I have come into the world—that I may testify to the truth. Every one who belongs to the truth hearkens to My voice.”
Ah ! now Pilate thought he understood. He had heard this sort of thing before. Was it not a paradox of the Stoic philosophy that “the wise man is a king” ? Plainly the prisoner was merely one of those harmless [ p. 440 ] dreamers who were the jest of shrewd, practical Romans. “What is truth ?” said he with a laugh; and, bidding the guards follow with the prisoner, he strode out to the gateway and confronted the Sanhedrists and a curious crowd which had assembled. “I find in him,” he announced, “no fault.”
That was his verdict. The prisoner was pronounced innocent, and He should forthwith have been acquitted; but the Sanhedrists raised an angry protest, insisting that He was a dangerous person. He was stirring up the people by His teaching. He had begun in Galilee, and now He was there in Judaea carrying on His propaganda. Pilate would gladly have disregarded their clamour, but situated as he was he durst not. The prisoner was standing by silent, and he appealed to Him in the hope that He would refute the charges : “Do you not hear what charges they are bringing against you ?” It was a poor, cowardly evasion. He ought to have defied them and done justice at all hazards ; and to his astonishment the prisoner, who a little ago had been so frank with him, now maintained a scornful silence.
What should he do ? Amid the clamour of the Sanhedrists he had caught their reference to Galilee, and this suggested to him a way of escape. If the prisoner were a Galilean, He was a subject of Herod Antipas, and the Tetrarch was then at Jerusalem, attending the Passover. It would be a graceful act to refer the case to Antipas. It would be some atonement for the recent massacre of Galilean worshippers and appease the Tetrarch’s resentment; and besides it would relieve the procurator of his present embarrassment. Accordingly he despatched the [ p. 441 ] prisoner to the old Palace of the Asmonaeans where Antipas resided when he visited Jerusalem, and the Sanhedrists followed thither to prosecute the case before him.
It was a welcome surprise to the Tetrarch when our Lord was ushered into his presence; for ever since he had spilt the blood of John the Baptist he had been haunted by the memory of the crime, and of late the fame of our Lord’s Galilean ministry had created in his mind the superstitious notion that He might perhaps be the martyr raised to life again, and he had been anxious to see Him and ascertain who He really was. Now at length he had the opportunity which he desired (Cf. Matt. xiv. 1,2; Mk. vi. 14-16; Lk. ix. 7-9); and it was a relief to him when he discovered the baselessness of his apprehension. He proceeded to question the prisoner regarding His teaching and proposed that He should work a miracle before him. Our Lord treated the licentious and cowardly tyrant with merited disdain. He vouchsafed no answer to his questions and solicitations, and when the eager Sanhedrists poured out their accusations, He maintained a dignified silence. It was not thus that the Tetrarch was wont to be treated, and he took an ignoble revenge. He procured a purple robe from his wardrobe and arrayed the prisoner therewith in derision of His regal claim, and he and his men-at-arms paid Him mock homage. Then, when he had enough of the stupid sport, he dismissed his visitors, and the prisoner was conducted back to the Prsetorium in His motley bravery.
It was a sore annoyance to Pilate when the case was thus thrown back on his hands. There was nothing for it but that he should pronounce judgment [ p. 442 ] and on this distasteful errand he betook himself to the gateway and confronted the expectant Sanhedrists and the attendant crowd. It was a punctilio of Roman law that no sentence was valid unless pronounced from a tribunal, and since trials had frequently to be conducted not in a regular law-court but, as occasion required, in market-places or theatres or on the highway, a magistrate was provided with a portable tribunal. Such a tribunal had now been set at the gateway of the Praetorium, on the Gabbatha, the broad and richly tesselated landing whence the steps descended to the street. On this Pilate took his seat, and proceeded to deliver his verdict (Cf. Jo. xix. 13; Mt. xxvii. 19): “You brought this man to me on a charge of seducing the people ; and, look you, on examining him before you I found in this man none of the faults of which you accused him. No, nor did Herod; for he sent him back to us, and, look you, nothing deserving of death has been committed by him/’ Here he paused. The only reasonable sequel to so emphatic a declaration of the prisoner’s innocence was a full acquittal, and this Pilate would fain have pronounced. “I will therefore,” he should have concluded, “release him ” ; but the sight of those lowering faces intimidated him, and he suggested a feeble and unrighteous compromise: “I will therefore chastise him and release him.”
It would have been greeted with a storm of angry protest but for an opportune interruption. It was a politic ordinance of the imperial government that in honour of the Feast the procurator should at every Passover season gratify the populace of Jerusalem by granting a free pardon to any prisoner whom they [ p. 443 ] might name ; and just at that moment a noisy throng, the rabble of the city, came surging up to the gateway to claim their annual privilege. Here Pilate recognised an opportunity to gain his end. It chanced that there was then lying in prison under sentence of death a criminal who by a curious coincidence was also named Jesus. [1] He was a notorious personage. He was a brigand, one of those ruffians who had their fastnesses in the wilderness of Judaea and infested the Ascent of Blood, plundering travellers between Jerusalem and Jericho (cf. Lk. x. 30); and he had been taken red-handed in a sanguinary affray. It intensified the horror wherewith he was regarded that he was the son of a venerable Rabbi, whence he was generally known as Bar Abba , “the son of the Father,” that is, the Rabbi.
Here was Pilate’s opportunity. “Which of the two,” said he, “will you have me release to you—Jesus the Bar Abba or Jesus the Christ, as he is called ?” It was an astute stratagem. A moment more, and it would surely have succeeded. Bar Abba had been a public terror and our Lord the popular hero, and the rabble would certainly have chosen Him and borne Him off in triumph. A moment more, and He would have been free ; but just then a message was brought to Pilate. It was from his wife Claudia Procula. During those days which she had spent in the city, she had been told of Jesus, perhaps by her servants ; and it may be that she had seen Him and even, as she passed, heard Him discoursing to the multitude. [ p. 444 ] Her womanly heart had been touched, and on learning the previous night that the Jewish rulers had obtained a troop of soldiers for His arrest she had been troubled. Her solicitude had shaped itself into a disquieting dream; and on waking and finding that her lord had been summoned early and what the business was, she took alarm and penned a hasty message to him : “Have nothing to do with that righteous man. I have been greatly troubled on his account in a dream.” It would take Pilate no long time to unseal the missive and read and re-read it; but it was long enough for the mischief to be done. The malignant Sanhedrists, seeing how their prey was like to be snatched from them, prompted the leaders of the rabble ; and when Pilate looked up and repeated his question : “Which of the two will you have me release to you ?” they answered to his chagrin “The Bar Abba.” “Then,” he objected, “what am I to do with Jesus the Christ ?” “Crucify him” they cried. “Why,” he remonstrated, “what ill has he done ?” The choice lay with the rabble, and after the manner of their sort they resented dictation. They all took up the cry and shouted lustily “Crucify him !”
What could the unhappy procurator do but acquiesce ? He might, he should, have defied the Sanhedrists and acquitted the prisoner whom he had pronounced innocent; but that would have been his own undoing, and he durst not face it. To save himself from the doom which overtook him six years later when Vitellius the legate of Syria sent him to Rome to answer for his maladministration, he yielded to clamour and perpetrated a judicial crime. “He released at their desire one who for riot and murder [ p. 445 ] had been cast into prison and delivered Jesus to their will.” It was, as he viewed it, an odious necessity ; yet, dissemble it as he might, his conscience was ill at ease, and he vainly sought to silence its rebuke by a dramatic repudiation of responsibility He had a basin and towel fetched him, and in sight of the Sanhedrists and the mob he washed his hands. “I am innocent of this man’s blood” said he : “you will see to it.” “His blood,” they answered, “be upon us and upon our children !” Did their children recall that impious defiance forty years later when Jerusalem perished amid fire and blood and tears ?
Crucifixion was the doom of the vilest criminals, and the inhuman custom was that after sentence they should be scourged and mocked. Our Lord was accordingly conducted from the Gabbatha into the courtyard of the Prcetorium, and there six lictors took Him in hand. They stripped Him, bound Him to the whipping post, and plied the scourge on His back and shoulders. It was an horrible instrument, aptly nicknamed “a scorpion”—a knout of leathern thongs loaded with sharp spikes which at every stroke cut into the quivering flesh till the sinews and bones were laid bare (Cf. 1 Ki. xii. 11). When the brutal work was done, they unbound Him and made sport of Him. Over His bleeding shoulders they cast the Tetrarch’s purple robe ; from the fuel-heap they took twigs of the thorny sidr tree which still flourishes so luxuriantly in the Jordan valley, and, weaving a chaplet, set it on His head and put a reed in His hand for a sceptre. And then they paid Him mock homage, kneeling before Him and saluting Him: [ p. 446 ] “Hail, King of the Jews !” And presently they spat upon Him and buffeted Him, and one snatched the reed from His hand and smote His thorn-crowned head.
Steeled as he was by custom, Pilate was moved; and it occurred to him that perhaps, if they saw the prisoner now, those merciless Jews would be softened and let Him go. Bidding the soldiers conduct Him thither, he strode to the gateway. “See,” he cried, “I am bringing him out to you. Understand that I find no fault-” [2] He was about to say “in him” when he was interrupted by the emergence of the guards supporting the prisoner, faint and bleeding, and wearing the thorny crown and the purple robe. “Look you !” he cried, “the man.” It was an appeal to their compassion. Surely they would relent and proceed no further ! Evidently not only the fickle rabble but, at the moment, even the Pharisees were touched; for it was from the merciless Chief Priests and their obsequious officers that the response came. “Crucify ! crucify !” they roared. “Take him you,” cried Pilate in disgust, “and crucify him ; for I find no fault in him” ; but they sternly held him to his task. The execution of the sentence lay with him and not with them. “We have a law, and by the law he must die, because he made himself the Son of God.”
“The Son of God” was a Jewish name for the Messiah, and this is all that they meant; but the designation was novel to Pilate and he construed it after the heathen fashion. Already he had recognised in our Lord a spirit which was not of this world. [ p. 447 ] Could it be, he reflected, that after all there was truth in those old fables of deities appearing among men in human guise, and that this mysterious personage (cf. Ac. xiv. 11,12), so meek yet so majestic, was indeed a heavenly visitant ? The idea startled him, and he conducted the prisoner within. “Whence are you ?” he eagerly inquired. It was a sorry part that Pilate had played all through the drama which was now so nearly ended, and never, not even when he cowered before those hateful Jews and to save himself consented to a shameful wrong, had he shown so mean and base as now shaken by superstitious dread. The Lord surveyed him disdainfully and vouchsafed no reply. “You do not speak to me !” blustered the wretch. “Do you not know that I have authority to release you and I have authority to crucify you ?” It ill became one who had played so pusillanimous a part to vaunt his authority thus; and the Lord spoke out and told him what his authority was worth. He was in truth nothing but a blind instrument in the hands of Almighty God, accomplishing unwittingly His sovereign purpose “You had no authority against Me—none, unless it had been given you from above. Therefore,” He added, hastening after His wont to make generous allowance, “the man who delivered Me to you has greater sin.” He meant the Chief Priest who, knowing the Scriptures, had nevertheless rejected the Saviour to whom they testified.
Bewildered yet impressed, Pilate returned to the gateway and pleaded for the prisoner’s life. But they would not listen. “If,” they shouted, “you release this fellow, you are no friend to Caesar. Every one who makes himself a king is a rebel against Caesar.” [ p. 448 ] It was a significant menace. Truly it would fare ill with the procurator were it reported at Rome that he had made light of treason. He would bite his lip; yet he could not refrain from a retort. He led the prisoner to the tribunal and, seating Him there as on a throne in His mock regalities, he turned to his tormentors. Would they insult their nation by treating seriously the pretensions of that broken, helpless creature ? “See !” he cried, “your King” “Awy with him! away with him !” they roared ; “crucify him !” “Am I to crucify your King ?” he sneered. “We have no King but Caesar.”
It was the Chief Priests that spoke; and surely there was a flush of shame on the faces of the patriotic Pharisees when they heard the dominion of the heathen tyrant thus confessed, and confessed, moreover, on that day of all the days of the year (Jo xix. 14). It was, observes the Evangelist, “Friday of the Passover” ; [3] and only last evening they had been celebrating the sacred Feast which celebrated the deliverance of their fathers from the land of bondage. Surely the hearts of the Pharisees would burn within them at that ignoble confession; but whatever they may have felt, they held their peace and raised no protest; and Pilate delivered the prisoner to His doom.
On the testimony of authorities earlier than our oldest MSS. Origen had this reading before him and disapproved it because he thought it unfitting that a brigand should bear the sacred name. ↩︎
The original reading on textual evidence. ↩︎
Not “the Preparation of the Passover.” Preparation (paraskeue) was the Jewish name for our Friday, the sixth day of the week, when preparation was made for the Sabbath, the Day of Rest. The Jewish name was taken over by the primitive Christians, and it is still the name for Friday on the Greek Calendar. Cf. Mk. xv. 42, where paraskeue is defined as prosabbaton , “the day before the Sabbath.” ↩︎