Mark 14:43

‘And immediately, while he yet spoke, comes Judas, one of the twelve, and with him a host with swords and staves, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders.'

Now that He was ready they came to arrest Him, and along with them was Judas, almost unbelievably ‘one of the twelve'. The appellation is emphasised to bring out the horror of the idea. Those twelve privileged men, who had spent so much time with Jesus, who had preached and healed and cast out spirits in His name, whom He had loved and to whom He had revealed so much. For whom He had purposed privileges beyond compare. And the betrayer was one of them.

‘And with him a host.' In the full moon and the flickering lights of the torches the disciples discerned those who came with Judas, men with swords and staves, temple guards and hastily conscripted helpers, including slaves of the High Priest, sent on the authority of the Jewish leadership, (the Jerusalem Sanhedrin had powers of arrest and restraint), and behind them a host of people who were but shadows in the darkness.

It is possible, though not certain, that it included a group of Roman soldiers, depending on how we interpret John. John's account may be seen as indicating that they included a body (‘cohort') of Roman soldiers under their Chiliarch, brought along to make the arrest completely official. If so they would play no major part in the actual arrest except by exercise of their authority. They were there as a final seal of official approval, arranged so that the Jewish leaders would later be able to divert attention from their own guilt. But the presence of such Roman soldiers is open to debate. The words ‘band' or ‘cohort' (John 18:3) and ‘Chiliarch' (John 18:12) may have been loosely used among Temple soldiery of themselves and their leader. However it makes little difference in the event.

The whole story from now on is a strange admixture. The Jewish leaders determined on Jesus' death and yet seeking to place the blame in the eyes of the people on Pilate, the Roman governor. And Pilate, lending grudging support to the affair in view of what he had probably been told was a dangerous revolutionary, but wanting to leave the Jews to sort it out under the terms of their own authority because he was not really convinced and suspected that they had their own motives for what they were doing. And because he did not like them.