The Jews consult how to put Jesus to death. 375 clxxxv. heaven: and then they that condemned, and insulted, and pierced SECT. him, shall mourn because of him, (Rev. i. 7.) May we be now so wise as to kiss the Son in token of our humble allegiance to him, lest he be then justly angry with us: yea, lest we immediately. perish from the way, when his wrath is but beginning to be kindled! (Psal. ii. 12.) SECT. CLXXXVI. Jesus is brought before Pilate: The Jews demand judgment against him, and Pilate examines him. Mat. XXVII. 1, 2, 11—14. Luke XXIII. 1—4. John XVIII. 28-38. Mark XV. 1—5. MAT. XXVII. 1. [AND elders of the people, MAT. XXVII. 1. clxxxvi. Mat. ND straightway] SUCH were the vile proceedings of this hor- SECT. when the morning was come, all the rid and malignant night, and thus was Jesus chief priests held a condemned, and treated as a malefactor by the consultation with the] Jewish rulers. And as soon as morning was XXVII. come, all the chief priests, having put Jesus out I of the room where the sanhedrim met, consulted with the elders of the people, and the scribes, and the whole sanhedrim, what method they should take to execute this sentence they had passed against Jesus, and how they might contrive to put him to death in the most severe and contemptuous manner. [and scribes, and the whole council,] against Jesus, to put him to death. [MARK XV. 1.-] 2 And when they And after he had been insulted by the ser- 2 had bound him, [LUKE vants at the council-chamber, when for the the whole multitude the of them arose, and] greater security they had bound him again", a All the chief priests consulted, &c.] Many critics explain this of their adjourning to consult together, from the house of Caiaphas, to the place where the sanhedrim used to meet: but it appears from Luke this was the place where they had before assembled and passed sentence upon Jesus after his first examination in the house of Caiaphas; and his account of this matter is so circumstantial, that I think it more reasonable to take these words in the order the in which they are explained in the para. b When they had bound him again.] They c Not 576 They carry him to Pilate, to order his execution; SECT. the Romans; and therefore, to procure their livered him to Pontius clxxxvi. order for his death, as well as to render it the Pilate the governor. [MARK XV.--1. LUKE more ignominious and painful, they determined XXIII.1. JOHN XVIII. XXVII. immediately to carry him to them; and to ask, -28.-] Mat. John 2 not a confirmation of the sentence which they 28 JOHN XVIII.-28. they themselves went passover. And though by this time it was broad dayXVIII. light, yet it was very early in the morning, and And it was early, and much sooner than the governor used to appear: not into the judgmenthe was therefore called up on this extraordinary hall, lest they should occasion, but they themselves went not into the be defiled; but that palace, of which the judgment hall was a part, they might eat the because it was the house of a Gentile, and they were apprehensive lest they should be polluted, and so prevented from eating those sacrifices which were offered on this first day of unleavened bread, and were looked upon as a very considerable part of the passover, of which the paschal lamb, which they had eaten the evening before, was only the beginning. 29 Pilate therefore, willing in this instance to oblige the heads of the nation he governed, com c Not having the power of life and death in their hands, &c.] That the Jewish sanhedrim had a power of trying and condemning men for crimes which the Jewish law made capital, cannot I think be doubt ed, and has all along been taken for granted in this work and since the publication of the first edition it has been abundantly confirmed by Mr. Biscoe's learned and elaborate dissertation on the subject, in his Sermons at Boyle's Lecture, chap. vi. part i. p. 123, & seq. But that they had at this time a power of executing such sentences without the express consent of the Roman governor, zeither Mr. Manne's remarks (Essay i. p. 13-19), nor Mr. Biscoe's much larger argumentation, seem to me satisfactorily to prove. I still think what Dr. Lardner has written on the other side of the question unanswerable; and indeed wonder that any can doubt of the matter after reading this story. For surely nothing but a sense of necessity could, on the whole, have brought the Jewish rulers to Pilate on this occasion; plied 29 Pilate then went out since the rendering the execution itself precarious would have balanced the argument their cruelty might find, in the contingency of its being more painful, if it should in fact be obtained. Compare John xviii. 31, p. 377. (See Dr. Lardner's Credib. part i. book i. chap. 2, § 5, 6, Vol. I. p. 65-106, and Joseph. Antiq. Jud. lib. xx. cap. 9 (al. 8.) § 1.) And indeed the Jewish writers own that no such power was exercised by the sanhedrim for forty years before the destruction of the temple, as Dr. Lightfoot shews by several quotations from the Talmud (Hor. Heb. on Mat. xxvi. 3, and John xviii. 31.) though he supposes it was only lost by their disuse of it, and was not taken from them by the Romans.-The chief arguments for their having such a power (from Mat. xxvi. 66. John viii. 33. xviii. 31. Acts vii. 57, 58. xii. 2. xxii. 4, 5. xxiii. 27. xxiv. 6. xxvi. 10.) are either directly answered in the notes, or obviated in the paraphrase, on those places. d A notorious But Pilate endeavours to shift off the affair. 377 out unto them and plied so far with their religious scruples that, SECT. bring ye against this leaving the prætorium, he came out of his house said, What accusation man? clxxxvi. to them; and finding it was an affair of solem- John They answered and said to him, with some in- 30 decent smartness in the expression (the consequence of a secret indignation to find themselves curbed by a superior power), We could not but have hoped you were so well acquainted with the sanctity of our court, and the integrity of our character, as to conclude, that if this man were not a notorious offender, we would not have brought and delivered him to thee; for as we would be far from any thought of punishing an innocent man, so if his crime had not been very great, we might have dealt with him ourselves without thy concurrence. Then Pilate said to them, Take ye him back to 31 your own court again, and judge him according to your law; for I am by no means desirous of interfering with you in the regular exercise of your judicial power. And this he said with a view of shifting off from himself an affair to which in the general he could be no stranger; and which he easily saw would be attended with many perplexing circumstances. Then the Jews said to him again, You well know that it is not now lawful for us to put any man to death without your concurrence (compare Mat. xxvii. 2, p. 576): but it is a capital crime d A notorious offender.] So I render in this connection, because they bad still the power of inflicting slighter punishments; so that their bringing him to Pilate was a proof that they judged him to have incurred a capital sentence. The word malefactor has much the same sense in our ordinary speech. e With a view of shifting off from himself, &c.] Pilate could not be entirely ignorant of the case before him; for he began his government at Jerusalem before Jesus entered on his public ministry; and, besides many other extraordinary things which he must formerly have heard concerning him, he had, no doubt, been in formed at large of his public entrance into Jerusalem the beginning of the week; and also of his apprehension, in which the Jewish rulers were assisted by a Roman cohort, And 378 clxxxvi. LUKE XXIII. 2. And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fello:0 They accuse him to Pilate as setting up for a king. SECT. Crime of which the prisoner here before you is convicted, and as, after a fair trial, he has received such a sentence in the sanhedrim, we only John XVIII31 wait your warrant to proceed to execution. Luke And, as Pilate could not but inquire of what XXIII.2 crime he had been convicted, they resolved to mention that charge which might render him most obnoxious to the Roman power, and to re- perverting the nation, present the matter in its most malignant view; tribute to Cesar, sayand forbidding to give and accordingly they began with great violence to ing, that he himself is accuse him, saying, It is not merely on a religious Christ, a King. account that we have brought him before you, but we have also found this seditious [fellow] perverting the whole Jewish nation, from one end of the country to the other, and in effect forbidding to pay tribute to Cæsar, by saying. that he himself is Messiah, a King, whom many of the Jews have expected to rescue them from all subjection to a foreign power and this claim he has had the assurance to avow in open court; so that it is but a necessary piece of respect to thee, and to the emperor, whose lieutenant thou art, to bring him hither to be condemned, and indeed to leave him to be executed by you. John And though they aimed at nothing more by this XVIII. than to make sure of their murderous designs, 32 and to add new circumstances of shame and agony to the execution, yet Providence was pleased to over-rule it with a wise intent, that should die. the saying of Jesus might thus be fulfilled, which he spake more than once (see John iii. 14. xii. 32, 33. and Mat. xx. 19.) signifying or implying by what kind of death he should die, even by being lifted up from the earth, or by crucifixion, which was a Roman punishment; whereas according to the Jewish law (Lev. xxiv. 16.) he would have been stoned (as his servant Stephen afterwards was), having been impiously adjudged by them to have deserved death as a blasphemer. (Compare Mat. xxvi. 65, 66, and Mark xiv. 64, p. 362.) Mat. JORN XVIII. 32. That the saying of Je. sus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he MAT. XXVII. 12. And when he was ac And when he was thus accused by the chief XXVII. priests and elders, who aggr gravated the matter cused of the chief 12 by the addition of many other things, either en- priests and elders [of tirely false, or grossly misrepresented; reproach- many things, he nothing. ing him as a blasphemer, a sabbath-breaker, and answered f And when he was thus accused, &c.] a magi other evangelists relate the story in such an order, as to shew the propriety of this little transposition. As Jesus was silent, Pilate takes him in and examines him. 379 clxxxvi. a magician; and, in a word, omitting nothing SECT. which they thought might blacken his character," 13 Then saith Pilate he made them no answer at all. Then Pilate Mat. unto him, [Answerest said to him, Dost thou answer nothing to all XXVII. thou nothing?] Hearest thou not? [Behold] this? Hearest thou not the several charges they 13 14 And [Jesus yet] answered him to nethat [Pilate] the governor marvelled greatly. [MARK XV. 5.] ver a word, insomuch XVIII. 33 But yet, as the governor had heard an honour- John able report of Jesus, and observed in this silence an air of meek majesty and greatness of spirit, rather than any consciousness of guilt or any indication of a fierce contempt, he was willing to discourse with him more privately before he proceeded farther. Pilate therefore entered again into the prætorium, which he had quitted to oblige the Jews (ver. 29, p. 576), and called Jesus in and [as] Jesus stood before the governor there, Pilate asked him, saying, Art thou indeed the king of the Jews, and dost thou really pretend to any right to govern them? Jesus answered him, Dost thou say this of thy-34 self, from the knowledge of any seditious practices which thou hast ever observed in me? or is it only what thou hast gathered from the present clamour made against me, and have others told it thee concerning me? Pilate immediately replied, am I a Jew? or 35 do I know any thing of your peculiarities, further than I am informed by others? I do not at all pretend to it: but thou knowest that thine own nation, and those who are esteemed the most sacred persons in it, even the chief priests themselves, have delivered thee to me as a malefactor, and have charged thee, among other crimes, with treason against Caesar, in setting up for king of the country: tell me therefore freely what hast thou done to deserve such a charge for the more frank thou art in thine acknowledgment, the greater favour mayest thou expect. Jesus answered him, My kingdom is not of this world, nor is it my business or design to erect a temporal 3 B 36 |