[ p. 449 ]
THE CRUCIFIXION
Mt xxvii. 31-66 j Mk. xv. 20-47 ; Lk. xxiii. 26-56; Jo. xix. 17-42.
It was now, says St. John, “about the sixth hour,” that is, according to his Asian reckoning, 6 a.m, ; and the soldiers proceeded to execute the sentence! They divested the prisoner of the purple robe and put on His own garments. He was not the only victim that morning. Two others were to be crucified with Him—two brigands, probably accomplices of Bar Abba who, but for the craft of the High Priests, would now have shared their doom. It was the custom that the cruciarius, as the victim was called in Latin, should carry his cross to the place of execution, and also that a placard should be borne thither before him and there fixed over his head—a white board whereon were inscribed in staring black letters his name and his crime. From a pile stacked ready in the courtyard three crosses were taken and laid on the victims shoulders, and three placards were brought to the tribunal where Pilate was waiting for them. On two of them he would write the man’s name and after it “brigand,” and on the third he should in like manner have written “Jesus, a rebel”; but here he saw his chance of taking a malicious revenge on his tormentors, and he wrote large and clear:
JESUS THE NAZARENE THE KING OF THE JEWS
[ p. 450 ]
And that all might read it and understand it he wrote it in Hebrew and Greek and Latin :
ישו-ע הגצרי מלף־ ה יה ו• דים
ΙΗΣΟΥΣ Ο ΝΑΖΩΡΑΙΟΣ Ο ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΤΩΝ ΙΟΥΔΑΙΩΝ
IESUS NAZARENUS REX IUDAEORUM
The Chief Priests raised an indignant protest. “Do not write,” they cried, “‘ The King of the Jews ’ but * He said : I am King of the Jews.’” “What I have
written I have written” he answered disdainfully, and let it stand.
And now the procession was formed. The soldiers escorting the three cross-laden victims emerged from the gateway and descended the steps to the street, and the crowd fell aside to let them pass and then closed in and followed after them. Where were the eleven all the while ? One of them at least had been present at the trial and had watched its progress with anguished interest. It was John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” (Cf. Jo. xix. 17 R.V.) He saw the dear Master leave the Prsetorium staggering beneath His burden, but he did not join the procession. There were anxious hearts waiting to learn the issue—a little company of Galilean women who had come up to the Feast and ci.jo.xix. were lodging together in the city. These were Mary the Lord’s mother and her sister Salome, John’s own mother, and Mary wife of Clopas (Alphseus) and mother of James the Little (Cf. jo. xix. 25; Mt. xxvii. 56; Mk. xv. 40); and with them was Mary the Magdalene who, when her brother and sister fled from the wrath of the rulers, had resolutely remained. And now that the issue was determined and John saw the Master on His way to death, he hastened to tell these loving [ p. 451 ] souls the mournful tidings and comfort them as he might.
The procession moved northward through the city ; for that was the way to the place of execution—a skull-shaped knoll a quarter of a mile outside the Gate of Damascus, now known as Jeremiah’s Grotto and then, from its configuration, as Golgotha, in Latin Calvaria, “the Skull.” First came the victims and their guards urging them forward with scourge and spear-point; then, headed by the exultant Sanhedrists, the jostling throng. All the rabble of the city would be there, eager to feast their eyes on the ghastly spectacle; but there were many besides who had sorrow in their hearts and would have expressed it had they dared—the folk who loved Jesus for the gracious words which He had spoken and the gracious works which He had wrought in their midst.
Exhausted by all that He had undergone, the Lord struggled on beneath His load as far as the gate of the city, and there, tradition says. He sank beneath it (cf. Mt. xxvii. 32.). He could carry it no farther, and the soldiers, after the military usage, commandeered for the service the first suitable man they espied—a Hellenistic Jew named Simon from Cyrene, a city of North Africa where there was a large Jewish colony. He had come to Jerusalem for the Feast and was lodging out in the country and was now on his way to morning prayer in the Temple. Just as he approached the gate the procession came up, and he stood aside till it should pass ; and the soldiers arrested him and laid the Lord’s cross on his shoulders. At the moment it was a sore annoyance and a grievous humiliation for Simon, yet afterwards he would recall it with [ p. 452 ] reverent thankfulness; for it was his introduction to his Saviour. At all events, in telling the story some forty years later, when Simon would be dead and gone, St. Mark identified him as “the father Alexander and Rufus.” (Mk. xv. 21.) Evidently these were well-known Christians at that day, and it may be that the latter is that Rufus whom, in the personal message to the Church at Ephesus appended J 3- to his great encyclical on Justification by Faith, St. Paul so highly commends along with his devoted mother. (Rom. xvi. 13)
While the guards were thus employed, several of the women in the crowd gathered round the Lord, sobbing and wailing in womanly compassion. “Daughters of Jerusalem,” said He, “weep not for Me! Rather weep for yourselves and for your children.” His suffering was near an end, but theirs was all before them. Jerusalem’s calamity was fast approaching. “Days are coming in which they will say: ‘ Blessed are the barren, the wombs which have borne no children, and the breasts which have nourished none.’” Even in His hour of anguish it was for others that He cared, even for the city of His murderers.
Resuming its march, the procession reached Golgotha, and there on the summit in view of the multitude thronging its slope and the travellers on the northern highway which wound along its base, a quaternion of soldiers addressed themselves to their brutal task. First they planted the upright of each cross in the ground; then they stripped each victim and, laying him on his back over the transom, proceeded to nail his outstretched hands to either extremity. Here their operations were stayed for a brief space. Crucifixion [ p. 453 ] was not a Jewish punishment. It seems to have been invented by that cruel race, the Phoenicians, and the Romans borrowed it from the Carthaginians, a Phoenician colony, in the course of the Punic Wars. They did not, however, inflict it on their own people. They reserved it for slaves and provincials; and the Jews keenly resented it. Being conquered subjects of the Roman Empire, they were powerless to prevent it, but they felt the horror of it; and it is told in the Talmud that there was in Jerusalem a society of charitable ladies who, taking as their motto the ancient precept: “Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto the bitter in soul” provided for deserving sufferers a narcotic of medicated wine to stupefy them and dull their sensibility. The merciful draught was presented to our Lord and, parched with thirst, He took it and put it to His lips ; but when He tasted it and recognised what it was, He put it aside.
Why would He not drink it ? It was not that, after the manner of the Indian gymnosophists and the mediaeval ascetics, He supposed that there was any merit, any atoning efficacy, or anything well pleasing to God in mere physical suffering. The reason was rather that He had two companions in misery, and for those ruffians there was no compassion when they were brought to justice and doomed to suffer on the cross “the due reward of their deeds.” For them no anaesthetic had been provided ; and when the merciful potion was at His lips and He saw them eyeing it wistfully, our Lord put it from Him. With a chivalry surpassing Sir Philip Sidney’s on the field of Zutphen He would not accept a relief which was denied to His [ p. 454 ] companions in affliction. Whom all besides contemned He pitied.
The soldiers resumed their interrupted task. It was usual for the victims, as the nails were driven through their palms, to shriek and entreat and curse and spit at their torturers ; and a cry broke from our Lord’s lips. But it was not a shriek or an entreaty or an imprecation : it was a prayer—an intercession for those rude soldiers who were doing their brutal office as they had done it many a time before, never dreaming what an impiety they were now committing. “Father,” He moaned, “forgive them ; for they know not what they are doing.” The cross-beams with their writhing burdens were hoisted on the uprights, our Lord midmost and a brigand on either hand; and then the victims’ feet were made fast, whether by nails driven through them or, as St. John’s narrative suggests (cf. xx. 20,25, 27.), by cords binding them to the posts— a fashion which, though kindlier at the moment, only prolonged the mortal agony.
The work was now done, and after fixing the placards on the projections of the uprights the soldiers hastened to a congenial office—the allotment of the victims’ garments which, by a usage that survived among ourselves until quite recent days, were recognised as their executioners’ perquisites. There were four executioners, and when they came to the division of our Lord’s garments, a difficulty arose. For a Jew had five articles of dress—a cloak (himation) ; a tunic (chiton), a short-sleeved vest reaching down to the knees; a girdle, encompassing the waist over the tunic ; sandals ; and a turban (tsaniph ). Each of the soldiers took a garment, one the cloak, another the [ p. 455 ] girdle, another the sandals, and the fourth the turban ; but how should they dispose of the superfluous tunic ? The obvious way, which perhaps they had followed in apportioning the brigands’ garments, was to slit it into four pieces useful for patching ; but they observed a peculiarity in the Lord’s tunic. Tradition says that it was a gift of Mary’s, and she had spun it all of a piece without seams. This was a Galilean fashion, but it was a novelty to those Roman soldiers. They had never seen the like, and thinking it a pity to rend it, they agreed to cast lots for it.
As they sat chaffering thus, their victims were hanging in pain, and all eyes were directed to the middle cross. The Jewish rulers had gathered beneath it, and were taunting the helpless sufferer. “He saved others,” they jeered: “himself he cannot save. He is the King of Israel: let him now descend from the cross, and we will believe in him.” The coarse rabble abetted them, and even His fellowsufferers, thinking to ingratiate themselves with the rulers and perhaps even yet, as sometimes happened, obtain a respite. And presently, when they had settled their business, the soldiers joined in the game. They had with them a beaker of “vinegar,” the thin, sour wine which slaves drank and also soldiers on duty, and they were refreshing Lk. xxiu. themselves after their exertions (Jo. xix. 29; Lk. xxiii. 36). And as they drank, they held up their cups and derisively drank to “His Majesty.”
In the midst of this base sport a little company appeared on the scene—John and those four women. He had told them the heavy tidings, and despite all remonstrance nothing would content Mary but that [ p. 456 ] she should go to Calvary and be near the son of her love in His mortal anguish. They all went with her. And now they arrive and, pressing through the throng, take their stand beneath His cross. Their appearance was welcome to Him; for it afforded Him an opportunity of discharging His last earthly care. He had been thinking how Mary would fare when He was gone. She had indeed other sons, but remember what manner of men they were. It is no small evidence of His heavenly origin that, though born in the same home which sheltered His childhood and brought up in His companionship, they were men of coarse fibre, narrow-minded, unimaginative, and misjudging Jews, until at length their souls were mastered by His transforming grace. He seemed to them a crazed enthusiast, and they had actually imbued Mary with their crass opinion. Once, hearing tidings of His activities at Capernaum (Mk.iii. 20 ,21,31-35.), they had concluded that He was mad, and they and she had betaken themselves thither with the design of laying hold of Him and putting Him under restraint. What wonder then that in His dying agony He was loath to leave her in their charge ? When He saw her there leaning on the disciple whom He loved, He committed her to his care. “Woman,” said He, “see, your son : see, your mother.” He meant that John should take His place and thenceforth be a son to Mary. Nor was His trust belied. Mary was overcome by emotion, and John conveyed her from the distressful scene, and from that day she was an honoured inmate of his home.
It was a moving incident, nor was it lost upon the spectators. It appealed especially to one of the two [ p. 457 ] brigands, stirring in his breast memories of tenderness. He held his peace, and when his companion persisted in his ribaldry, he remonstrated with him. “Do you not even fear God ? You are sharing his doom. And we deserve it; for we are getting the due reward of our deeds ; but as for him—he did nothing outrageous/’ And then, turning his eyes to the meek face beside him, “Jesus,” said he, “remember me when you come to your kingdom.” A little ago it would have been a taunt, a mock petition to “the King of the Jews” ; but the tone of the supplication bespoke a change of heart. The dying sinner had perceived the grace and majesty of his fellow-sufferer, and acknowledged, though he could not understand, His claims. And his ignorant trust had its reward. “Verily I tell you,” the Lord answered, “to-day will you be with Me in Paradise.” In the Jewish phraseology of those days Paradise was the highest of the Seven Heavens, “the dwelling place of the Great Glory,” (cf. 2 Cor. xii. 4) the immediate presence of God ; and the promise was at once intelligible and exceeding comfortable to that poor, ignorant penitent. It was an assurance that when his soul parted from his tortured body, it would be with its Saviour in God’s good keeping.
It is worth while pausing here to observe that we owe the record of this incident to St. Luke. St. Matthew and St. Mark tell how both the brigands joined in taunting the Lord, but they are silent regarding the blessed sequel. Surely had they known of it, they would have told it; nor is the explanation far to seek. Evidently when John conveyed Mary away, the other three women remained. They [ p. 458 ] witnessed the brigand’s repentance,and heard his prayer and the Lord’s gracious response ; and it would be from their lips that St. Luke heard the story in the course of the diligent research which he made when he had in view the writing of a fuller record of the Lord’s ministry (Cf. Lk. i. 1-4.). Already it has appeared how he resembled the Lord in his sympathy with despised women-folk, and his learning this gracious story from Salome and the two Marys is an example of his constant manner.
Thus passed three hours. It was nine o’clock when the Lord was crucified, and now it was noon. The unseasonable cold of the previous night had been ominous, and it proved to have been the harbinger of an earthquake (Mk. xv. 25; Cf. Jo. xviii. 18.), a dread and frequent visitation in the region of Syria. Just sixty years previously one of unusual violence had occurred in Judaea. That disastrous day, when ten thousand had perished in the ruin of their houses, was fresh in remembrance; and now when a thick haze overspread the landscape, concealing the sun, a solemn hush fell on the multitude. At length at three o’clock the silence was broken by a cry from the central cross. What marvel that amid the sore anguish of our Lord’s mortal flesh and the desolation of His heart that faith in His Father’s love, that trust in His Father’s will, which had been so sure and stedfast all the days of His earthly pilgrimage, was for a moment shaken ? Eli , Eli , He cried, echoing the Psalmist’s plaint in the mother-tongue so sweet in sorrow to Jewish lips (Ps xxii 1), lama sabachthani , “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? " For the first, the only time in all His [ p. 459 ] earthly life His vision of God was clouded ; and surely it is well for us that our Incarnate Redeemer suffered that most terrible of human experiences. In truth the Father was never so near Him and never so well pleased in His beloved Son as in that His hour of supreme devotion; and His exceeding bitter cry is His people’s reassurance.
“It went up from the Holy’s lips amid His lost creation,
That, of the lost, no soul should use those words of desolation,”
that, when their flesh and their heart fail, they may remember that He passed that way before them and so be of good cheer.
The Jews about the cross would understand that Hebrew sentence, but it puzzled the Roman soldiers Eli , “My God,” suggested to them the name Elias, and they fancied that He was calling for a friend. Just then He moaned “I thirst” ; and one of them took pity on Him and ran to the beaker of vinegar. “Let a-be !” shouted his comrades, “let us see if Elias comes to save Him” ; but he persisted in his compassionate purpose. The cross was high, and he could not reach up to the Sufferer; but he would not be foiled. The mouth of the beaker was stopped not with a cork but, after the ancient fashion, with a sponge ; and this, saturated with the liquor, he took and, fixing it on the point of his javelin, [1] reached it up and moistened the parched lips.
It was the last kindness that our Lord received, and it was precious to Him. It lifted the cloud from His soul. The human pity which it expressed spoke to [ p. 460 ] Him of the Infinite Compassion, and He leaned thereon in peaceful content. “Father,” He prayed, employing once more the language of Holy Writ, “into Thine hands I commend My spirit.” (Ps. xxxi. 5) A sharp, sudden pang shot through His heart, wringing from Him a cry of agony. “It is finished !” He murmured, and His head sank on His breast. “The Son of Man,” … He had once said, “has nowhere to lay down His head” (Mt. viii. 20; Lk. ix. 58; Jo. xix. 30); but now, observes the Evangelist, “He laid down His head and surrendered His spirit.” At last, because His work was finished, the unresting Saviour took His rest.
The hush which had fallen on the spectators was rudely broken. The solid earth trembled and heaved beneath them, and the rocks were shaken and rent. It was the dreaded earthquake, and the terrified multitude dispersed and hastened to the city. Presently Calvary was deserted save for the soldiers, who remained at their posts, and Salome and her two companions and several other Galilean women who had been in the crowd watching from afar and now came forward and joined the three. To the rude soldiers, already impressed by what they had seen and heard of our Lord, it seemed as though this latest happening were a supernatural attestation of His claims, and their commander voiced their thoughts. “Truly,” he exclaimed, “this man was ‘the Son of God’ !”
The tremor which had shaken the hill of Calvary was naturally more severely felt in the city with its closebuilt tenements ; and the returning crowd were confronted by a scene of alarm and confusion. One incident especially excited their wonderment. The solid masonry of the Temple had been shaken, and [ p. 461 ] when the shock passed, the priests found on entering the Sanctuary that the Veil, the curtain separating the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, (Ex. xxvi. 31-33) which in Herod’s Temple was a magnificent fabric—“a Babylonian curtain broidered with blue and fine linen, scarlet and purple”—had been rent in twain from top to bottom. It was indeed an impressive incident; and, natural though it was, to the believers of early days it justly seemed providentially significant. The Holy of Holies was the Divine Presence-chamber, whereinto only the High Priest might enter once every year on the Day of Atonement, “not without blood” (Heb. ix. 7); and the rending of the Veil which closed it in proclaimed to them the blessed difference which the Lord’s Atoning Sacrifice had accomplished. “Having therefore, brethren,” it is written, “boldness to enter into the Holies by the blood of Jesus, by the way which He dedicated for us, a fresh and living way, through the Veil, that is, His flesh, let us approach with a true heart.” (Heb. x. 19-22)
Perhaps the only men in Jerusalem who remained unmoved were the Sanhedrists. The earthquake was past, and they addressed themselves to their business. They had indeed no time to lose ; for it was Friday afternoon and at sunset the Sabbath would begin (cf. Dt. xxi. 23), and it would be a desecration of the xxl,23# Holy Day were the criminals’ bodies left hanging on the crosses. The desecration would have been specially intolerable on the high Sabbath succeeding the Passover. Crucifixion was a lingering doom, and its victims often hung for days ere death released them from their agony unless the end were accelerated by [ p. 462 ] the cruel mercy of the crurifragium , “the breaking of their limbs”—the doing of them to death by blows with a heavy mallet. Accordingly the Sanhedrists waited on Pilate and requested that the victims should be thus despatched. He gave the order and the soldiers executed it. They put the two brigands out of their pain, but in the case of our Lord it was needless. He was already dead; but to make quite sure one of them—traditionally named Longinus—drove his spear into His side.
A strange thing ensued. When the spear was withdrawn, it was followed by a gush of “blood and water.” John had returned to Calvary and was standing with the women by the cross, and he witnessed the phenomenon. He could not understand it, and when he told the story long afterwards (Jo. xix. 35), he attempted no explanation but simply affirmed the astonishing fact with an assurance that he had seen it with his own eyes. It remained a mystery until near the middle of last century, when an English physician, Dr. Stroud, in his treatise On the Physical Cause of the Death of Christ presented an explanation which was approved by other physicians no less distinguished, including Professor J. Y. Simpson, whose employment of chloroform has ranked him among the chief benefactors of suffering humanity. The cause of our Lord’s death, they tell us, was lesion or rupture of the heart, which happens when the organ is distended by strong emotion until its walls are torn (Mt. xxvii. 50; Mk. xv. 37; Lk. xxiii. 46). The agony is intense and utters itself in a piercing shriek ; and death ensues more or less swiftly according to the extent of the rupture. Only by a post-mortem examination [ p. 463 ] is it possible to ascertain that an actual rupture has taken place ; and the evidence then is that the blood has escaped from the interior of the heart into its investing sheath, the pericardium , where it separates, after the manner of extravasated blood, into the two elements of crassamentum or red clot and limpid serum. Precisely this was revealed by that rude post-mortem examination—the piercing of His side by the soldier’s spear. The point punctured the pericardium, and its withdrawal released the contents—the red clots and the clear serum: “there came forth immediately blood and water.”
And thus in very fact our Lord died of a broken heart—an “o’er fraught heart ” swollen with “desperate tides of the whole great world’s anguish.”
There was another besides the Sanhedrists who waited on Pilate that afternoon. Where all the while had Nicodemus been—that old Rabbi who had the memorable interview with our Lord on Mount Olivet at the beginning of His ministry, and six months ago had timidly entered a protest on His behalf in the high court ? (Jo. iii. 1-21, vii. 50-52) He was a believer at heart though he had never dared to proclaim his faith. And there was another Sanhedrist in like case— Joseph of Arimathaea, the town known of old as Ramathaim-Zophim. They both were members of the Sanhedrin, yet neither had raised his voice that morning against the Lord’s condemnation. Indeed their protests would have been unavailing, and probably they had stayed away. But when they saw Him done to death, they were stricken with grief and shame, and with a heroism which surely atoned for their pusillanimity, they resolved that they would now [ p. 464 ] confess Him—now when confession was supremely difficult and might seem useless. One service at least they could render Him. The rule was that the mangled bodies of crucified criminals should be cast into the loathsome pit of Gehenna, the public refusedepot. That would be the fate of the unbefriended bodies of the two brigands; and it would have been the fate also of our Lord’s, but Joseph and Nicodemus agreed that they would obtain it and give it an honourable burial. It was a costly undertaking; for not only were a sepulchre and cerements needed but Pilate had an evil reputation for greed, and they reckoned that they must purchase his permission by a heavy bribe. But they were rich men, and they would gladly bear the expense between them. Joseph, as it happened, owned an orchard on the north-western slope of Olivet close to Calvary, where he had newly hewn a vault in the rock ; and there in his own family burial-place he proposed, in all love and reverence, to lay the Lord’s body.
He undertook the errand to the Prsetorium, and it proved easier than he had anticipated. Pilate’s sin was heavy on his conscience. Evidently Joseph presented himself before the Sanhedrists, and his report was the procurator’s first intelligence of what had happened at Calvary. It surprised him to learn that the Lord was so soon dead; and when Joseph stated his errand and offered the customary bribe, he refused it and, says the Evangelist, not merely “gave him the body ” (Mk. xv. 45) but, as the word signifies and as tradition expressly avers, “made him a free gift of it.” Joseph rejoined Nicodemus, who had meanwhile been busy procuring a winding-sheet of fine [ p. 465 ] linen and embalming spices in lavish abundance—an hundred pounds’ weight, enough for the burial of a king. Therewith they hastened to Calvary and claimed the sacred body from the soldiers and, aided by the women, conveyed it to the sepulchre and laid it there.(Cf. 2 Chr. xvi. 14)
2 G
Reading in Jo. xix. 29 hysso , “javelin,” for hyssopo, “hyssop.” ↩︎