Luke 23:16

I will therefore chastise him This was the point at which Pilate began to yield to the fatal vacillation which soon passed into guilt and made it afterwards impossible for him to escape. He had just declared the prisoner absolutely innocent.To subject Him, therefore, to the horrible punishment of scourging merely to gratify the pride of the Jews, and to humble Him in their eyes (Deuteronomy 25:3), was an act of disgraceful illegality, which he must have felt to be most unworthy of the high Roman sense of -Justice" The guilty dread which made Pilate a weak man is well illustrated by what Philo says of him (Leg. ad Caium, 38). But he was the unconscious fulfiller of prophecy (Isaiah 53:5). The restless eagerness of his various attempts to secure the acquittal of Jesus is brought out most forcibly by St John.