CHAPTER XII: The extremity of pain which Christ endured in his body.
CHAPTER XII
The extremity of pain which Christ our Redeemer endured in his body.—His being harassed day and night without a moment's rest.—
His being crowned with thorns, torn with rods, and at last crucified.
The second thing to be considered is the pains and dolours thereof, which are all sorts of ways set forth to us in his story.
1. Immediately afore his death, want of sleep, not that whole night only which preceded his crucifying, in which he was kept waking in the high priest's hall, but three or four nights afore, as Brugensis computeth them. He in preparation to his passion, and being now to leave the world, spent those nights in prayer on mount Olivet, and on the days did teach the people in the temple after his coming into Jerusalem: so towards his end, pouring forth his spirit as a sacrifice to God and his people, ere he was offered up as the sacrifice. He knew his tabernacle was now to be dissolved, and he spared not himself, whom God afterwards spared not, days and nights wearing out himself in private prayer or preaching. Luke's words are these:
Luke 21:37, 'And in the days' (it is in the plural) 'he was teaching in the temple, and in the nights he went out and abode in the mount'
(that is, the whole nights, as abiding implies) 'that was called the mount of Olives.' This was his wonted custom for the time after he came into Jerusalem, confirming by his example what in the words afore he had taught his disciples, verse 36, 'Watch ye therefore, and pray always,' &c. And then, ver. 30, it follows, 'And all the people came early to him in the morning' (that is, every morning of those nights, as knowing his manner and wont) 'for to hear him.' These incessant prayers without rest must needs bring a strong body low in spirits, and weary it out. The fourth night, which was Thursday night, he was apprehended after those long sermons made to his disciples, which John hath recorded, and that solemn prayer put up, John 17.
2. That night and next day they hurried him up and down seven journeys from one place to another (the Messiah had no rest, that those that were weary might have rest in him) according to the compute, of six miles and a half, or seven miles.
3. Whilst he was that last night in the high priest's hall, they smote him with the palms of their hands (which are bones, as our translators render that of Matthew, chap. 26:67), saith Matthew; and with their fists, saith Mark, and both often; others add with rods, as the word ῥαπὶζειν signifies, derived from ῤαπὶς a rod; and these on his mouth or face.
4. He had a crown of thorns plaited on his head, where the nerves tenderest of sense do meet. To harrow men with thorns is made a high and grievous torture and punishment, Judges 8:16. Gideon, when by sense he would teach the men of Succoth, by sense and sore experience to do no more so wickedly, it is said, that 'he took the elders of the city, and thorns of the wilderness, and briars, and with them he taught the men of Succoth.' This crown of thorns was kept upon his head all the time, both in his way to the cross, and whilst on the cross, which pierced those veins and sinews on the temples and forehead, and caused his face, besmeared also with dust in his travel to the cross, to be (as the prophet speaks) more marred than any man's, Isa. 52:14.
5. Add to this weariness and faintness of spirits, which appeared in the carrying of his cross. There was that one thing only, wherein they seemed to pity him, in calling to another to help him, Simon of Cyrene. But the truth of the thing was, that he having watched and spent himself so many days and nights together, he failed so much that they feared he would have fainted, and so expired ere he came to the place of execution, and so they should have missed of their designed malice in crucifying of him. We have wearied him with our sins, and this made him weary and ready to faint. Oh, come to him, all ye that are weary and heavy laden.
6. He was whipped and scourged, which was twice, once, by Pilate's command, and that to the end to move compassion in the Jews, that so he having suffered so cruel a punishment as was sufficient to assuage their malice, and to satisfy for any crime they could in their own imagination think him guilty of, who in Pilate's had deserved nothing of death, they might relent and cease to desire his being crucified. And when he had scourged him, he brings him forth to public view, and cries, 'Behold the man!' And after that he was again scourged (as John relates it), as of custom the Romans used to do those whom they crucified. And these strokes were laid on, not by the Jews, who by their law were limited not to exceed forty stripes, but by the Roman soldiers, who had no bounds set them, but gave as many and as cruel ones as their barbarous nature pleased, unto an abject man, designed and condemned to the highest tortures.
7. He after all was crucified. The evangelists aggravate not that in the circumstances of it; only say, 'he was crucified;' but much is shut up in that one word—the cruelty of that death being known in those days, and by the relation of it in stories, and by those who have made a collection of it, of the manner of it, in these days. The apostle Paul put this emphasis upon his death, 'To death, even the death of the cross,' Phil. 2:8, cruciatus, or the pains of the cross, being commonly used by the Romans (among whom this death was frequent) to express the sharpest pains and tortures. The manner of which was,
(1.) The cross, the person to be crucified was being affixed unto, being laid upon the ground, his hands and feet were stretched out as far as they could extend, and then nailed in the hands and in the feet unto the cross; which the Psalmist, Ps. 22, expresseth by digging holes (foderunt) in his hands and feet, ver. 16, as the vulgar translation reads it. In the hands and feet the nerves again meet and centre, and so they are of the most exquisite sense. Then,
(2.) The rearing up the cross with the man nailed on it (whilst on the ground), and fixing the cross in the hole which was digged for it, with a violent jog to fix it in the earth, as was their manner; this exceeded
all the torments of our racks. In the 22d Psalm, ver. 14, 15, himself tells us that it loosened all his bones, or my bones dispart themselves. And it is not only said, as ver. 17, 'I may tell all my bones,' he hanging naked, but further, ver. 14, 'All my bones are out of joint.'
(3.) And thereon they hung till death, their arms and hands bearing the weight of their whole bodies, so as they died of mere pains (and thus Christ hung on the tree, Acts 5:30), exhausting their spirits. For a man to hold his hands but stretched out, what a trouble is it. Moses could not for a day do it, but was fain to be supported.
(4.) And this put them into an exquisite fever, as such pains do, as appeared by his thirst, as Ps. 22:15, 'My strength is dried as a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws.'
The last (of bodily sufferings) is death itself, which is the separation of soul and body: unto this the curse reached; and it was not his pains or shame or hanging on a cross that would satisfy, unless he also breathe out his soul. This was necessary; 'unless the corn fall into the ground and die' (it is Christ's own similitude, John 12:24), 'it abideth alone.' So he, unless he had died, had been (of mankind) in heaven alone. He was also to be the founder of a will and testament, and that is not of force until the death of the testator; he must therefore die: Heb. 9:16, 17, 'For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead; otherwise it is of no strength at all whilst the testator liveth.' And he was to be the death of death, Hosea 13:14.
And it is a general rule, what he procured virtue for in man's behalf, he did it by undergoing the same. Yea, he thereby made death a dead and ineffectual thing, καταργήσαντος τὸν θάνατον, destroying death,
2 Tim. 1:10. This was held forth in the type, Num. 35:28, in that the murderer or manslayer was then set free from his prison, the city of refuge (which was a confinement to them) when the high priest died, but not till then. Nor should we have been set free unless our High
Priest had died. Now for his soul and body thus to part, and for the