“Behold the Man!”
19 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2 The soldiers also twisted together a crown of thorns and placed it on his head. Then they threw a purple robe around him. 3 They kept coming to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they kept hitting him in the face.
4 Pilate went outside again and said to them, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.”
5 So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!”
6 When the chief priests and guards saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”
Pilate told them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no basis for a charge against him.”
7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”
8 When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. 9 He went back inside the palace again and asked Jesus, “Where are you from?”
But Jesus gave him no answer.
10 So Pilate asked him, “Are you not talking to me? Don’t you know that I have the authority to release you or to crucify you?”
11 Jesus answered, “You would have no authority over me at all if it had not been given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin.”
12 From then on Pilate tried to release Jesus. But the Jews shouted, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar! Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar!”
13 When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside. He sat down on the judge’s seat at a place called the Stone Pavement, or Gabbatha in Aramaic. 14 It was about the sixth hour[a] on the Preparation Day for the Passover. Pilate said to the Jews, “Here is your king!”
15 They shouted, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!”
Pilate said to them, “Should I crucify your king?”
“We have no king but Caesar!” the chief priests answered.
16 So then Pilate handed Jesus over to them to be crucified.
“They Crucified Him”
So they took Jesus away. 17 Carrying his own cross, he went out to what is called the Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. 18 There they crucified him with two others, one on each side, and Jesus in the middle.
19 Pilate also had a notice written and fastened on the cross. It read, “Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews.”
20 Many of the Jews read this notice, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek.
21 So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that ‘this man said, “I am the King of the Jews.”’”
22 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
23 When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier. They also took his tunic, which was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. 24 So they said to one another, “Let’s not tear it. Instead, let’s cast lots to see who gets it.” This was so that the Scripture might be fulfilled which says:
They divided my garments among them
and cast lots for my clothing.[b]
So the soldiers did these things.
Jesus’ Compassion for His Mother
25 Jesus’ mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene were standing near the cross.
26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son!” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother!” And from that time this disciple took her into his own home.
Jesus Gives Up His Life
28 After this, knowing that everything had now been finished, and to fulfill the Scripture, Jesus said, “I thirst.”
29 A jar full of sour wine was sitting there. So they put a sponge soaked in sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth.
30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished!” Then, bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.
The Piercing of Jesus’ Side
31 Since it was the Preparation Day, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses over the Sabbath (because that Sabbath was a particularly important day). They asked Pilate to have the men’s legs broken and the bodies taken away. 32 So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man who was crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other man.
33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear. Immediately blood and water came out. 35 The one who saw it has testified, and his testimony is true. He knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe. 36 Indeed, these things happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, “Not one of his bones will be broken.”[c] 37 Again another Scripture says, “They will look at the one they pierced.”[d]
Jesus’ Burial
38 After this, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him remove Jesus’ body. When Pilate gave him permission, he came and took Jesus’ body away. 39 Nicodemus, who earlier had come to Jesus at night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-two pounds.[e]
40 They took Jesus’ body and bound it with linen strips along with the spices, in accord with Jewish burial customs.
41 There was a garden at the place where Jesus was crucified. And in the garden was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. 42 So they laid Jesus there, because it was the Jewish Preparation Day, and the tomb was near.
Footnotes
- John 19:14 The word about indicates an approximate time reference. Likely this was in the first part of the day, between 6 am and 9 am, using the time system of the Roman civil day, which began at 12 midnight. Mark 15:25 states that Jesus was crucified at 9 am. John also seems to use Roman civil time to calculate the day in John 20:19 (because the evening is considered part of the first day of the week; Jewish time regarded sunset as the beginning of the next day).
- John 19:24 Psalm 22:18
- John 19:36 Exodus 12:46; Numbers 9:12
- John 19:37 Zechariah 12:10
- John 19:39 Literally one hundred litras. Greek litra is the Roman pound (327.45 grams or 11.55 ounces, by weight).