Not This Man, But Barabbas
NOT THIS MAN, BUT BARABBAS
MATTHEW 27:15-31
Barabbas went free because Jesus died instead of him, and as a result of Jesus’ death many still go free.
The Barabbas incident, mentioned in all four Gospels (cf. Acts 3:14), is associated with a custom not elsewhere attested (27:15). In 27:16-17 some textual authorities read “Jesus Barabbas” instead of simply “Barabbas”; this fuller reading may be right, and is specially effective in 27:17. It is strange indeed that the man released had been rightly convicted of the very charge of sedition on which Jesus was wrongly condemned. The episode of 27:19 is recorded by Matthew only. If Pilate’s tribunal was set up within the Antonia fortress, north-west of the temple area (which would thus for the time being have constituted the “praetorium” or “governor’s headquarters” of 27:27), then his wife’s message may have been sent from more comfortable quarters in Herod’s palace on the western wall. Such a message would be taken seriously; every knowledgeable Roman was aware that Julius Caesar would not have been assassinated on the Ides of March, 44 BC, if he had paid heed to his wife’s dreams and stayed at home instead of going to the senate. “Let him be crucified” (27:22-23) may imply “Let him have the cross which was designed for Barabbas”; in any case, crucifixion was the regular penalty for sedition except where the accused was a Roman citizen. Scourging (27:26) was a normal preliminary to crucifixion; it was a murderous torture in itself, and strong men sometimes died under it.
The incident of Pilate’s hand-washing (cf. Deuteronomy 21:6-9), with the people’s response (27:24f.), is peculiar to Matthew. The people’s response (27:25) is seen by Matthew as fulfilled in the siege and destruction of Jerusalem (cf. Luke 19:41-44; 23:28-30). The Jewish commentator who wrote of the “oceans of human blood, and a ceaseless stream of misery and desolation” occasioned by these words, was right in so far as they have been grossly misapplied as though fastening messianic blood-guilt on the whole people of Israel in successive generations. That Christian readers have too often misinterpreted the words in this sense is sadly and shamefully true. Nor is there any ground for supposing that the call for Jesus’ crucifixion came from those who had shouted “Hosanna” on Palm Sunday: the city mob must be distinguished from Galilean pilgrims.
The soldiers’ barrack-room horse-play, caricaturing their prisoner’s kingly claim (27:27-31), is commonly and perhaps rightly believed to have been enacted on the “pavement” beneath the Convent of the Sisters of Zion, where the Antonia fortress then stood. The “scarlet robe” (27:28) was a military cloak; the thorns (27:29) may have been those of a species of date-palm whose thorns or spikes are sometimes twelve inches long, arranged in the form of a “radiate crown” as affected by “divine rulers” in the Hellenistic world.