John 19:23-24

“ The soldiers therefore, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and made four parts, one for every soldier, and then the tunic;now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top throughout. 24. They said therefore one to another:Let us not rend it, but let us cast lots for it whose it shall be. That the Scripture might be fulfilled which says:They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did. ”

Here, also, John completes his predecessors, so far as the description of the tunic and the accomplishment of the prophecy are concerned. The Roman law De bonis damnatorum adjudged to the executioners the garments of the condemned. It is generally held that the entire detachment was composed of four men. Keim thinks that each cross had its particular detachment. The soldiers performed two operations. They divided among themselves either the different pieces of clothing, such as the caps, girdles, under-garments, sandals and tunics of the two malefactors, or the garments of Jesus alone (αὐτοῦ, of him, John 19:23), if the question is only of the particular detachment which had to do with Him.

Then, as the tunic of Jesus could not be divided, and was too precious to be placed in one of the parts, they cast lots for it. This tunic was undoubtedly a gift of the women who ministered to Jesus (Luke 8:2-3, Matthew 27:55). It was woven throughout its whole length, as, according to Josephus, the garment of the priests was. Hence the use of the lot (therefore, John 19:24). Thus was realized to the very letter the description of the Psalmist, as he drew the picture of the King of Israel at the height of His sufferings. Criticism claims, it is true, that the two members of the verse quoted by the evangelist (Psa 22:19) are entirely synonymous, and that John is the sport of his own imagination in wishing to distinguish either between the verbs to divide and to cast lots, or between the substantives ἱμάτια, garments, and ἱματισμός, robe (LXX). But a more profound study of the parallelism in Hebrew poetry shows that the second member always adds a shade or a new idea to the idea of the first. Otherwise the second would be merely an idle tautology. It is not repetition, but progression. Thus, in this verse, the gradation from the plural בְּגָדִים, garments, to the singular לְבוּשׁ, H4230, tunic, is manifest.

The first term designates the different pieces making up the outer clothing and the second the vestment, properly so called, after the removal of which one is entirely naked, the tunic. The passage in Job 24:7-10 confirms this natural distinction. The advance from one verb to the other is no less perceptible. It is already a great humiliation to the condemned person to see his garments divided. After this he must say to himself that there is nothing left for him except to die. But what greater humiliation than to see lots drawn for his garments, and thus see them treated like a worthless plaything! David meant to describe the two degrees, and John calls to the reader's notice the fact that in the crucifixion of Jesus they are, both of them, literally reproduced; not that the fulfilment of the prophecy was dependent on this detail, but it appeared more distinctly by reason of this coincidence; and this the more because everything was carried out by the instrumentality of rude and blind agents, the Roman soldiers; comp. the remarks on John 12:15-16.

It is on this last idea that John wishes to lay stress when he concludes the narrative of this scene with the words: These things therefore the soldiers did. The Roman governor had proclaimed Jesus the King of the Jews; the Roman soldiers, without meaning it, pointed Him out as the true David promised in Psalms 22.

Strauss thinks (new Vie de Jesus, p. 569ff.) that, when the Messianic pretensions of Jesus had been proved false by the cross, the Church sought in the Old Testament the idea of the suffering Messiah, and found it there, especially in Psalms 22, 69. Thenceforward there was imagined in this programme a whole fictitious picture of the Passion. Thus the facts, in the first place, created the exegesis; then the exegesis created the facts. But 1. The idea of the suffering Messiah existed in Jewish theology before and independently of the cross (Vol. I., pp. 311f. 324). 2. It will always be difficult to prove that some righteous person, whoever he may have been, under the Old Covenant could have hoped, as the author of Psalms 22 does, that the effect of his deliverance would be the conversion of the Gentile nations and the establishment of the kingdom of God even to the ends of the earth (John 19:26-32).

The filial legacy: