Matthew 27:32-34

ON THE WAY TO GOLGOTHA

TEXT: 27:32-34

32 And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to go with them, that he might bear his cross.

33 And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, The place of a skull, 34 they gave him wine to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted it, he would not drink.

THOUGHT QUESTIONS

a.

Do you think that Jesus carried His entire cross or merely the crossbeam?

b.

Why do you think the soldiers forced Simon of Cyrene to carry Jesus-' cross? Had Simon done something wrong or did Jesus simply need this help?

c.

Do you think they suspected him of being a secret follower of Jesus and intended to make him share His humiliation?

d.

Why was Jesus crucified outside of town?

e.

Why, if Matthew is writing for Jews, did he feel it necessary to translate the term Golgotha, which any of them could have understood without the translation? Did he simply copy from Mark, as some assert?

f.

Why did someone offer Jesus some wine to drink? Was this normal?

g.

Why do you think Jesus refused it?

PARAPHRASE AND HARMONY

So the soldiers took Jesus along, leading Him out to crucify Him. He went out, carrying His own cross. As they were leaving the city, they happened upon a man named Simon. (He was a Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus.) He was passing by on his way in from the country. The soldiers seized him and pressed him into service. They made him shoulder the cross to carry it behind Jesus.
Also following Him was a large number of people, including grief-stricken women who were wailing for Him. Jesus, however, turned to them to say, Women of Jerusalem, do not cry for me. Weep, instead, for yourselves and for your children, because, remember, the time is coming when the wail will be, -How fortunate are those women who never had any children, never gave birth to babies or nursed them!-' That will be a time when people will begin to cry to the mountains, -Fall on us,-' and to the hills, -Hide us.-' For if people do this when the wood is tender and green, what will happen when it is old and dry?
Two other men, both criminals, were led away to be executed with Him. The soldiers brought Him to the place called Skull-place. (In Aramaic it is called Golgotha.) There He was offered wine drugged with myrrh, but, after tasting it, He refused to drink it.

SUMMARY

Jesus carried His cross to the edge of Jerusalem where it became apparent He could bear it no more. The Romans impressed a Cyrenian, forcing him to carry it out to Calvary. Jesus-' suffering excited the compassion of women but He refused it as misdirected. On Golgotha He also rejected a compassionate anesthetic. His humiliation was increased through guilt by association, since He was to suffer with two criminals.

NOTES

Shame converted to glory

Matthew 27:32 And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to go with them, that he might bear his cross. Whether or not condemned men normally shouldered an entire crosseither already assembled or the unjoined beamsor merely the horizontal cross-arm to the place of execution, John described Jesus as going out bearing his own cross (John 19:17; cf. Matthew 27:32; Luke 23:26), Jesus-' attempt to bear His own cross gives character to His challenge that we take up our cross and follow Him (Matthew 10:38; Matthew 16:24).

At the edge of Jerusalem, utterly exhausted from His trials and the pain of the scourging, He apparently collapsed under its weight, unable to continue. However, the soldiers-' duty was to guard the condemned men against escape or liberation. Because they dare not expose themselves to attack by helping him, a substitute is required to carry Jesus-' cross. Seeing Simon just then coming into town, the soldiers requisitioned his services to carry it, following Jesus to Calvary. (So, the Synoptics.) The impressment of Simon's help implies that his strength was needed to bear the cross, not merely the upper crosspiece.
That Simon came from Cyrene, an important north African city, does not decide whether this Jew were a resident of the Jerusalem area to be distinguished from hundreds of other Simons by his city of origin, or one of the millions of Passover pilgrims who arrived from Jewish colonies around the Roman world. (Cf. Acts 2:10; Acts 6:9; Acts 11:20; Acts 13:1; 1Ma. 15:23; 2Ma. 2:23; Ant. XIV, 7, 2; XVI, 6, 1.5; Against Apion, II, 4.) He is later identified as the father of Alexander and Rufus, men apparently well-known to the early Church (Mark 15:21; Romans 16:13?) That he was selected out of the crowd for so lowly a service does not prove him a slave, because the Romans would not bother about his social status but judge him on his strength to carry the cross to the place of execution. Impressment or requisition of anyone's service for certain limited service was the Roman right. (Cf. Matthew 5:41.)

But that he was coming in from the country does not prove (1) that he were a farmer who had been working in the fields that day, nor, consequently, (2) that the day in question were anything but Friday morning of Passover week, as if travelling were forbidden on regular feast days. To suppose him to be a farmer one must also see him as returning from field work about nine o-'clock a.m. (Cf. Mark 15:25.) Perhaps out meditating in the glorious morning air of a country springtime, he was just returning for the hour of prayer at the temple.

The death march was composed of a centurion leading probably 12 soldiers divided into three details responsible for guarding the two malefactors and Jesus (Luke 23:32). Wending their way through the crowded streets of the city, they encounter a great multitude of the people and of womenprobably not His followerswho, out of well-meaning, motherly sympathy, raised a funeral lament for this popular young man so unjustly condemned to death (Luke 23:27 ff.). A death wail of the wailing women was customary and would be taken up almost immediately upon death. (Cf. Matthew 9:23; Luke 8:52. See Matthew 11:17.) Ever grateful, compassionate and self-forgetful, the Lord paused to warn these unbelieving sentimentalists of their own future desperation when at the fall of Jerusalem, their sons would be massacred by wicked men and their own death would be preferable to their fear and wretchedness. (Cf. Matthew 24:19.) Despite the immediate atrocity He Himself must undergo, He could picture His own future as glorious (Hebrews 12:2).

The turning-point of world history

Matthew 27:33 And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, The place of a skull. Mark's they brought him (Mark 15:22: pherousin autón), suggests that, since Jesus-' collapse required help in bearing the cross, the soldiers perhaps supported Him, half-carrying Him to Golgotha ... the place of a skull. Calvary (calvus, bald, scalp calvariae locus) is simply a Latin word that translates the Greek, krànion, (Cf. Latin cranium.) Matthew translates this Aramaic word, not for his Hebrew readers, but for those who read only Greek. (Cf. Matthew 27:46.)

Hebrew law and practice placed executions outside of the camp of Israel or its towns. (Cf. Leviticus 24:14-23; Numbers 15:35 f.; Joshua 7:24 ff.[?]; 1 Kings 21:13; Acts 7:58.) Further, Jesus, who is to be the sin offering for the world, is also symbolized by offerings taken outside the camp of Israel (Exodus 29:14; Leviticus 4:12; Leviticus 4:21; Leviticus 9:8-11; Leviticus 16:10; Leviticus 16:21 f., Leviticus 16:27; Numbers 19:3; Numbers 19:9). Thus, also Jesus-' final torment occurred outside the gate of Jerusalem, yet near the city apparently near a main road (Hebrews 13:11 f.; John 19:20; Matthew 27:39). The precise location of this place of a skull has been obscured by the following difficulties:

1.

The macabre name would be derived, not from unclean skulls lying about (which would require the reading: kranìôn gen.pl. tòpon), but from some historic or topological reference:

a.

its proximity to a cemetery of which nothing is stated in the text;

b.

its regular use as a place for public executions, which is even less supported;

c.

its shape bore free resemblance to a skull. Luke terms it simply Skull (kranion, not kranìou tòpos), as if this were sufficient to describe the place.

2.

Its location may well be affected by the history of Jerusalem:

a.

Around 44 A.D. Herod Agrippa initiated an ambitious project of urban expansion that may have enclosed Golgotha within the city about 14 years after Jesus died there (Wars V, 4, 2f.).

b.

In 70 A.D. after a devastating siege, Jerusalem was virtually destroyed and sites around it were altered by the war itself.

c.

After the ill-fated Bar Cochbah uprising, Hadrian rebuilt the already desolated city as Aelia Capitolina, a Roman city constructed on the ruins of the former Jewish capital.

d.

Any site is affected by the location of the northern wall of Jerusalem in 30 A.D., an archeological puzzle not yet definitively settled.

The traditional site is covered by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. A more convincing candidate is a hill north of the Damascus Gate, which has two small caves that give the appearance of eye sockets of a skull without a jaw. Discovered by Otto Thenius, this site was popularized as Gordon's Calvary. The quite ancient, apparently unused rock-hewn tomb located in a garden at its base argues favorably for this site, although some date the tomb in the second century. Certainty that this location today resembles its appearance two thousand years ago is, however, lacking. That this tomb was apparently never used nor developed in successive ages is motive to ponder..

Matthew 27:34 they gave him wine to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted it, he would not drink. Charitable Jews and Romans both customarily gave condemned men a heavily drugged drink. The former aimed at deadening the pain. The latter were simply facilitating their work of crucifixion: it is easier to handle a drugged man (Proverbs 31:6 f.; cf. Plin. 20, 18; Sen. Ep. 83 cited by Farrar, 638).

Matthew says the wine was mixed with gall; Mark has myrrhed wine (esmurnisménon oìnon) (Mark 15:23). Wine flavored with myrrh was known in the ancient world (Arndt-Gingrich, 766). Perhaps myrrhed connotes spiced without necessarily specifying myrrh. So, Matthew indicates the particular drug involved as gall. But is gall (cholês) anesthetic? The LXX used cholé to translate Hebrew words for (1) gall; (2) poison; (3) wormwood. (See Arndt-Gingrich, 891.) However, in addition to bitter, poisonous substances, gall may have associated with it the idea of anesthetic, espcially when the Hebrew word rosh, translated gall, referred, among other things, to poppy (papamer somniferam, I.S.B.E. 1167).

Or vice versa, cholé often translated gall, simply points generically or figuratively to any bitter substance (Lamentations 3:15; Proverbs 5:4; perhaps also Psalms 69:21), and the particular bitter element added to this wine was myrrh.

They kept trying to give Him the pain-deadener (Mark 15:23: edidoun). Jesus-' refusal of this kindness had nothing to do with its bitter taste, as if the drink's bitterness were intended as an additional cruelty. Although His was not a stoic refusal to shield Himself from pain, some think that He was determined to experience death at its worst to make Himself like His brethren even in this respect (Hebrews 2:9; Hebrews 2:17). Others think He refused, that His sacrifice might be conscious. More simply, the price for keeping His mind clear until the last was having to endure pain as any other man. Even though the use of a powerful drug can be justified for others facing excruciating pain and natural death, His refusal illustrates what it means to be alert and on guard, so as not to enter into trials unaware of their insidious temptations and unprepared (Matthew 26:41).

When he had tasted it, he would not drink. If He did not want any, why taste it? Did He not know what it was? He simply did not use His miraculous knowledge when a taste would supply Him the information. (Cf. notes on Matthew 21:19.)

Could a Jewish reader see an allusion to Psalms 69:21 in this?

FACT QUESTIONS

1.

Where according to Jewish law must executions occur?

2.

Whom did the soldiers compel to carry Jesus-' cross?

3.

Where was he coming from at the time?

4.

Explain why he was compelled to bear Jesus-' cross: (a) what right did the Romans have to do this? (b) what need was there to find someone else to carry the cross? (c) how may this incident be harmonized with John's Gospel that affirms Jesus carried His own cross?

5.

Define the terms: Golgotha and Calvary. From what language does each word come? For what possible motive(s) was the area called this?

6.

Locate the two more famous sites identified for the crucifixion. Explain why identifying the one true location is uncertain at best.

7.

Explain the purpose of the wine mingled with gall.