Mat 27:15-26 | PNT | STEP | At [that] feast . The passover. How the custom of releasing a prisoner at the passover arose is unknown, but such customs are common under arbitrary rules.

Matthew 27:15-26

At [that] feast. The passover. How the custom of releasing a prisoner at the passover arose is unknown, but such customs are common under arbitrary rules. A notable prisoner. A leader in an insurrection in which he had committed murder (Mr 15:7 Lu 23:19).

Barabbas. The word means "son of a father". Some have made him a type of the guilty human race which is released from punishment by the substitution of the innocent Christ. Therefore when they were gathered together. After the first examination, Pilate, finding that Jesus was from Galilee, sent him to Herod, tetrarch of Galilee, then in Jerusalem, to be tried by him as belonging to his jurisdiction. Herod, however, after trying to induce him to work a miracle and mocking him, sent him back (Lu 23:6-11). Now they had gathered after his return.

Barabbas, or Jesus? Pilate, desirous of releasing an innocent man, afraid to oppose the Sanhedrin, adopted this expedient in the hope that the increasing multitude of people would demand Christ rather than a blood-stained robber. When he was set down on the judgment seat. Probably while the people were deciding for which one to ask. The judgment seat was a kind of lofty official throne, placed on the pavement (Joh 19:13).

His wife sent unto him. On this sad day the voice of a Gentile woman was the only one that interceded for Christ. That she should speak of Jesus as a "righteous man", shows that she knew much of him and that he had already made a wide and deep impression.

A dream. It may have been entirely natural. She was probably already deeply interested in Jesus and knew that he was to be seized in the night. Her waking thoughts would be reflected in her sleep. Persuaded the multitude. To call for the release of Barabbas, instead of Christ. It is likely that few of the Galileans, so favorable to him, yet knew of his arrest. "The multitudes" were such as the authorities would summon at this early hour. They said, Barabbas. Pilate's artifice had failed. The Jewish nation had not only rejected its Messiah, but chosen a robber instead. Let him be crucified. This is the decision of the Jewish people. He shall suffer the fate which was due the crime of Barabbas who had been released in his stead. What evil hath he done? Pilate's struggle between his desire to be just and to please a body demanding a crime at his hands is pitiable. He repeats the question three times and offers to appease their rage by chastising the innocent (Lu 23:22). He had, however, lost his power when he began to parley with a mob. They, utterly unreasonable, only demand the move vehemently that Jesus be crucified. When Pilate saw that . . . a tumult was made. It was a dangerous time for a tumult, with more than a million Jews in Jerusalem, and probably not a thousand Roman soldiers in the castle. If one occurred, it would be reported to Rome, and he could hardly make a plausible defense to the emperor. He therefore yielded, and gave his sanction to confessed wrong, rather than endanger himself.

Washed [his] hands. A symbolic act, meaning that the responsibility of the sin was upon the Jewish authorities and people instead of himself. His blood [be] on us. That is, let us have the responsibility and suffer the punishment. A fearful legacy, and awfully inherited. The history of the Jews from that day on has been the darkest recorded in human annals. He had Jesus scourged. Scourging usually preceded crucifixion. It was an awful punishment, inflicted by brutal soldiers, and continued until the victim was fainting under the torture.