John 19

Chap. XIX. Ver. 1—15. Christ’s last hearing before Pilate.—It appears by St. Luke, (Chap. xxiii, 22,) that Pilate proposed to scourge Jesus, and let him go: it has been thought, therefore, that by this severity, and the cruel mockery which [some good MSS. read otherwise,] we must suppose the Evangelists used different [expressions].

Ver. 6. Take ye him.—(Pilate neither did nor could say this seriously; for Priests were ready (notwithstanding it was Passover time) to hurry our Saviour to the dreadful death of crucifixion, which he had himself repeatedly predicted, and which was brought about by a remarkable train of providences. This was not a Jewish punishment, and would hardly have been adopted, had they not been under restraint, as to the power of life and death, which made it necessary to obtain his consent; but for the necessity of which, it is not likely that Pilate would have interfered.

This, however, obliged the Jews themselves to confess that the sceptre was indeed departed from Judah, and that Shiloh was now come. (See (Genesis 49:10).) Another remarkable circumstance is, the title which Pilate put upon the cross, proclaiming him King of the Jews, whom they now crucified. This, indeed, sorely displeased the Jews, who would fain have had it altered: but Pilate, who had sacrificed, as himself owned, an innocent man to please them, would not, from the same motive, alter a line or a letter of what he had himself written; and though the different inscriptions seem in some respects to have varied, they all agreed in this obnoxious sentence, “The King of the Jews,” and proclaimed in the three chief tongues of the then known world, that the Jews had crucified their king, for whom they had so long wished and prayed.

In this event several remarkable prophecies were fulfilled, as we shall presently observe; in the meantime we must notice the affectionate language which Jesus uses towards his mother and his beloved Apostle John. Though, upon his apprehension, his disciples generally were each scattered to his own home, an exception must be made for Peter and John: the former, indeed, had better have fled with the rest, than have stopped to deny his Master; but the latter, who was the youngest of them, kept hovering about him during the walk and, when that was over, secured a station as near as he could to the foot of the cross, with our Lord’s mother and other pious women, whom neither danger nor disgrace could separate from him.

Jesus, in the midst of his acute sufferings, could not contemplate with indifference the forlorn situation of his mother, now a widow, as is generally believed, and a sword having pierced through her own bowels, as had been predicted. (See (Luke 2:35).) While, therefore, he calls her attention to his own sufferings, he calls also the attention of the young apostle to his mother; and he so well understood the Saviour’s hint, that from that hour he took her to his own home: it is also believed, on the authority of an early tradition, that she lived and died with him. Jesus now recollecting that there was one prophecy near him yet unfulfilled said, “I thirst;” and the soldiers themselves fulfilled the prediction of the patriarch David, by giving him vinegar to drink.

He now said “It is finished:” and bowing down his head, “gave up the ghost.” Thus closes the awful history of our Saviour’s sufferings, in which grief rapidly follows grief, like as wave follows wave in the agitated ocean. Well, indeed, might the Saviour cry, “O my God, my soul is cast down within me: all thy waves and billows are gone over me.” ((Psalms 42:7).) Let us hastily recount his successive scenes of misery. He celebrated the Passover on the Thursday evening at Jerusalem—at midnight was arrested in the garden, and carried before the High Priest, and then the Sanhedrim—about six in the morning of Friday taken before Pilate, who, after several vain attempts to pacify the Jews, surrendered him to their fury—nailed to the cross at nine—at noon came on the miraculous darkness, which continued till three, when he expired; and the same evening about sunset was entombed.

Addison describes the closing scene in the following few, but striking lines:—“See where they have nailed the Lord and giver of life! How his wounds blacken, his body writhes, and his heart heaves with pity and with agony! O, Almighty sufferer, look down, look down from thy triumphant infamy! Lo, he inclines his head to his sacred bosom!—Hark, he groans!—See, he expires!—The earth trembles; the temple rends; the rocks burst; the dead arise—which are the quick?—which are the dead?—Sure Nature, all Nature, is departing with her Creator.”

Ver. 31—42. Circumstances which followed the death of Christ, including his entombment.—We confine our remarks here to the circumstances related by St. John: for those related by the other Evangelists, see our remarks on (Matthew 27)and (Luke 22)It was not only by a special Providence, for the fulfilment of prophecy, that the legs of Jesus were preserved unbroken, and his side pierced, but there seems also a mystical design, as our Evangelist afterwards explains it in his first epistle, (ch. v. 6;) “This is he that came by water and blood;” on which we shall only at present remark, that we conceive the fact had a figurative allusion to those two great doctrines of the Christian system—atonement by the blood of Christ, and the washing of regeneration and the renewal of our nature by the influences of the Holy Spirit. So Dr. Watts explains it:— “Our Saviour’s pierced side Pour’d out a double flood.

By water we are purified, And pardon’d by the blood.”

We have already hinted at the many prophetic allusions accomplished in this great event. “To him give all the prophets witness,” ((Acts 10:43);) and none more copiously than the patriarch David, who by the prophetic spirit clearly anticipated this day of sorrows, when he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” and when he speaks of himself as exposed to public scorn and ridicule—“I am a worm and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head; saying, ‘He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, seeing he delighteth in him’….

For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.” ((Psalms 22:1, 6, 7, 16-18),) “They gave me gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” But the most important words of Jesus in this part of the narrative, and nearly the last, which he uttered, were, “It is finished”—meaning, not only that his prophetic and mediatorial work, but the whole series of types and prophecies respecting him, was accomplished. “In this hour the long series of prophecies, visions, types, and figures, was accomplished; this was the centre in which they all met; this the point towards which they had tended and verged throughout the course of so many generations.

You behold the law and the prophets standing, if we may speak so, at the foot of the cross, and doing homage. You behold Moses and Aaron bearing the ark of the covenant; David and Elijah presenting the oracle of testimony. You behold all the priests and sacrifices, all the rites and ordinances, all the types and symbols, assembled together to receive their consummation. Without the death of Christ, the worship and ceremonies of the law would have remained a pompous, but unmeaning institution. In the hour when he was crucified, ‘the book with the seven seals’ was opened. Every rite assumed its significancy, every prediction met its event, every symbol displayed its correspondence,” (Blair’s Sermons, vol.

i. Ser. 5.)

Notes on the verses

Chap. XIX. Ver. 2. A crown of thorns.—[These words, some would render an acanthine crown, or wreath formed out of the branches of the herb bear’s foot, a prickly plant, though not like thorns; but this version is solidly refuted by Campbell. The Gr. word akanthinos, in sacred use and classical, faint denotes thorny, and never made of bear’s foot: and it was so understood by all the ancient and modern translators, and by the Greek and Latin Fathers. “The Naba or Nabka of the Arabians,” says Hasselquist, “is, in all probability, the tree which afforded the crown of thorns put on the head of Christ: it grows very common in the East. This plant was very fit for the purpose, for it has many sharp spines, which are well adapted to give pain; the crown might be easily made of these soft, round, and pliant branches: and what, in my opinion, seems to be the greatest proof is, that the leaves much resemble those of the ivy, as they are of a very deep green.”

]—Bagster.—A purple robe.—See note on (Matthew 27:28). Perhaps so decayed that the colour was scarce distinguishable, 179 crucifixion was not a Jewish but a Roman mode of punishment. The cross was made of two beams, either crossing at the top, at right angles, like a T, or in the middle of their length, like an X: with a piece on the centre of the transverse beam for the accusation, and another piece projecting from the middle, on which the person sat. The cross on which our Lord suffered was of the former kind, being thus represented in all old monuments, coins, and crosses. The feet were usually fastened to the upright beam by nailing the feet to it, and on the transverse piece by nailing the hands; and the person was frequently permitted to hang in this situation, till he perished through agony and lack of food.

This horrible punishment was usually inflicted only on slaves for the worst of crimes. —Bagster. Ver. 8. He was the more afraid.—Lardner, on this text, quotes Beza, as saying, “He was not without reason afraid, that an open sedition might happen, if he did not comply with the multitude.” Ver. 12. Maketh himself a king—i.e. represents himself as such. Ver. 13. The Pavement.—A curious tesselated pavement, such as are often found among Roman antiquities, formed of small stones, in various forms, on which possibly the seat of judgment might be erected, as the Hebrew name Gabbatha implies elevation. Ver. 14. The preparation of the passover.—Campbell, “Of the Paschal Sabbath.” He says it occurs six times in the New Testament, and always means the day before the Sabbath, (Friday.) So Dr.

Jennings.—And about the sixth hour.—We cannot but suspect with Doddridge, and for the reasons which he gives, that a slight error has here crept into the text, and that we should here read with (Mark 15:25), ‘the third hour,’ which has the sanction ways of reckoning, which is very [probable]. Ver. 17. Bearing his cross.—Whether the cross was put together, or in two separate pieces, it appears to us, (on mature reflection,) that they compelled Jesus to drag it to the gate of the city nearest Calvary; at which gate they met Simon of Cyrene, and finding Jesus unable to proceed with it, they compelled this countryman to carry it the rest of the way to Calvary. Compare note on (Matthew 27:32).—Golgotha.—{Golgotha, of which the Greek Kranion, and Calvaria, are merely translations, is supposed to have been a hill, or a rising on a greater hill, on the north-west of Jerusalem.

—Bagster. Ver. 19. Wrote a title and put it on the cross.—This was the usual custom of the Romans, when any were condemned to death, to affix to the instrument of their punishment, or to order to be carried before them, a writing, expressing the crime for which they suffered: and this writing was called in Latin, Title.—Lardner’s Cred. [The apparent discrepancy between the accounts of this title given by the Evangelists, which has been urged as an objection against their inspiration and veracity, has been most satisfactorily accounted for by Dr. Townson; who supposes, that, as it was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, it might have slightly varied in each language; and that, as St. Luke and St.

John wrote for the Gentiles, they would prefer the Greek inscription; that St. Matthew, addressing the Jews, would use the Hebrew; and that St. Mark, writing to the Romans would naturally give the Latin.]—Bagster. Ver. 20. Nigh to the city.—The cross stood by the way-side, where persons were continually passing, and where it was usual to erect crosses to make public examples of malefactors, to deter others from committing the like crimes. Alexander the emperor ordered a eunuch to be crucified by the way-side, in which his servants used commonly to go to his country-house.—Orient. Cust. No. 1305. Ver. 23. Without seam.—Josephus represents the tunic of Aaron as wove in this manner; nor is this unusual.

See Orient. Lit. No. 1376. Ver. 29. A vessel full of vinegar, &c.—See notes on (Matthew 27:34, 48). [This hyssop is termed a reed by Matthew and Mark; and it appears that a species of hyssop with a reedy stalk, about two feet long, grew about Jerusalem. See Bochart.]—Bagster. But some think the herb itself was mixed with the vinegar upon the sponge, before being raised by a reed. Harris’s Nat. Hist. Ver. 39. It is finished.—These do not appear to have been absolutely the last words of our Saviour, for the three other Evangelists state, “That he cried again with a loud voice, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” and then gave up the ghost. Ver. 31. That the bodies should not remain.—See (Deuteronomy 21:22-23).—A high day.—Not only a Sabbath, but the second day of the feast of unleavened bread, on which they offered the sheaf of new corn. Ver. 32. Brake the legs.—[Lactantius says, that it was a common custom to break the legs of criminals upon the cross; which was done, we are told, at the instep, with an iron mallet; and appears to have been a kind of coup de grace, the sooner to put them out of pain.]—Bagster. Ver. 34. Blood and water.—Blood from the heart itself, and water from the pericardium, or bag which contains the heart. [It appears from this, that the spear went through the pericardium, and pierced the heart; and that the water, or aqueous humour, proceeded from the former, and the blood from the latter.

It affords the most decisive evidence that Jesus died for our sins; and thus the conduct of the soldiers was overruled to take away all pretences to the contrary, by which his enemies might have attempted to invalidate the reality of his resurrection; and to accomplish two most important prophecies.]—Bagster. Ver. 36. A bone of him shall not be broken.—See (Exodus 12:46); also (Psalms 34:20). Ver. 37. They shall look.—See (Zechariah 12:10). Ver. 39. A hundred pound weight.—This has [seemed] incredible; but the Talmud says, eighty pounds were used at the funeral of Rabbi Gamaliel the elder. At the funeral of Herod, Josephus says, five hundred domestics followed, carrying spices.—Orient. Cust. No.

1308. Ver. 40. As the manner of the Jews is to bury.—Campbell, “Which is the Jewish manner of embalming.”