Biblion Bible Commentary
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Behold, the Man!
John 19:1-7
1 So Pilate then took Jesus and flogged him. · WEB
A governor has an innocent man flogged as a compromise, and presents the result to the crowd.
So Pilate then took Jesus and flogged him John 19:1.
One sentence for the worst physical thing in the chapter, and the placement is what makes it appalling. He has just declared twice that he finds no charge; the flogging is not a preliminary to execution here but a substitute for it — a lesser cruelty offered in the hope that it will be enough for the crowd.
That is what a compromise costs when the thing being traded is a man.
The soldiers twisted thorns into a crown and put it on his head, and dressed him in a purple garment. They kept saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" and they kept slapping him John 19:2–3.
The tenses are continuous — they kept saying, kept slapping. This is not a moment but a pastime, and a barracks full of soldiers is enjoying itself.
Every prop is accurate and every one is meant as a joke. Purple for the imperial color, thorns for the laurel, and the greeting given to an emperor. They are performing a coronation they think absurd, and the reader of this book knows that every element of it is true.
"Behold, I bring him out to you, that you may know that I find no basis for a charge against him" John 19:4.
Pilate's logic is the logic of a man managing a crowd. Producing a beaten prisoner is meant to prove the case is trivial — look what I have reduced him to, he is no threat to anyone.
Jesus therefore came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple garment. Pilate said to them, "Behold, the man!" John 19:5.
The words are meant with contempt or with pity, and this Gospel never lets a hostile character say something without it turning over. Behold, the man — and the reader has been told since the prologue that the Word became flesh John 1:14.
What is being displayed to shame him is exactly what the book has been describing. A crown, a robe, and a man; and the governor's sarcasm is the truest description of the scene.
They shouted, saying, "Crucify! Crucify!" John 19:6. The strategy fails completely. The sight of him produces the opposite of pity, which Pilate had not allowed for.
"Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no basis for a charge against him." The second finding, and the instruction with it is not serious — they cannot crucify anybody, as they had told him at the door John 18:31. It is exasperation.
"We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God" John 19:7.
The real charge finally appears. Everything political has been a wrapper; what they came about is the claim, and they name it in the same words used in chapter five and chapter ten John 5:18 John 10:33.
And they are right about their law. Blasphemy carried death Leviticus 24:16. The only question their law cannot answer is the one nobody in the courtyard is asking, which is whether it is true.
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