And shall deliver him to the Gentiles
To Pilate, an Heathen governor, and to the Roman officers and
soldiers under him; see ( John 18:35 ) .
To mock
him, as they did, by putting on him a scarlet robe, platting a
crown of thorns, and placing it on his head, and a reed in his
hand; and then bowed the knee to him, and cried, hail, king of
the Jews!
and to scourge him:
as he was by Pilate, at least by his orders: Mark adds, "and spit
upon him"; as not only did the Jews in the palace of the high
priest, but also the Gentiles, the Roman soldiers, after they had
mocked him in the manner before described:
and to crucify him:
which, as it was a cruel and shameful death, such as slaves and
the worst of malefactors were put to, so it was a Roman one; for
which reason, the Jews choose to deliver him into the hands of
the Gentiles. The Persic version here adds, "and put him into the
grave": which though it followed his crucifixion, was not done by
the Gentiles, but by Joseph of Arimathea, a Jew, and a disciple
of Jesus; and that not in a contemptuous, but honourable manner
and the third day he shall rise again:
this he said for the comfort of his disciples; but now, though
these things were so clearly and distinctly expressed by Christ,
and which show his omniscience, and give proof both of his deity
and Messiahship, yet Luke observes of the disciples, "that they
understood none of these things, and this saying was hid from
them, neither knew they the things which were spoken": the words
were plain, the grammatical sense of them was easy, but they
could not imagine that they were to be taken literally; which was
such a glaring contradiction to their received and rooted
principles of the temporal kingdom of the Messiah, and the
grandeur of it, that they fancied these expressions carried a
mystical, secret meaning in them, which they were not masters of:
and certain it is, that what our Lord now said, was so far from
destroying, or weakening these prejudices of theirs, that it
rather confirmed them in them; particularly, what he said about
rising again, which seemed to have put them afresh in mind, and
to excite their hopes of this external felicity, as appears from
the following case.