Mark 10:34

and they shall mock Him, and shall scourge Him, and shall spit upon Him, and shall kill Him; and the third day He shall rise again.

The nearer they came to Jerusalem, the more clearly the object of Christ's journey was brought out by His bearing and by His words. They had spent some time in their journey down the valley of the Jordan, and had now crossed the river and were slowly ascending toward the range of hills, on one of which Jerusalem was situated. The bearing of Jesus became stranger as time went by. It was characterized by a resoluteness, by a firmness that troubled and astonished the apostles, and caused all those that followed Him to fear. The strong emotion under which He was laboring, the majesty and heroism which shone forth from His manner, the fact that He preferred to walk alone and ahead of them: all these factors filled all the disciples with fear and with forebodings of an impending calamity. In addition, He took the opportunity of impressing once more on His apostles the fact and the manner of His Passion. He took the Twelve aside, He wanted these, His intimates and His successors in the work of preaching, to realize that they must give up their carnal ideas of an earthly Messianic kingdom. The prophecy which He here spoke is more detailed than the foregoing ones. It specifies that the Jewish authorities would deliver Him into the hands of the Gentiles, the Romans; it enumerates the indignities which He would have to endure during His Passion: mocking, spitting, scourging. These facts were vivid, not in His imagination, but in His knowledge. But always, like a shining beacon, came the comforting assurance of the resurrection. By the constant repetition of this fact Jesus hoped to impress the disciples that they would remember it at the critical period.