John 19:28-30

“ After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, says, I thirst. 29. There was a vessel there full of vinegar; and the soldiers, having filled a sponge with vinegar and having put it on the end of a hyssop stalk, brought it to his mouth. 30. When Jesus therefore had taken the vinegar, he said, It is finished. Then, having bowed his head, he gave up his spirit. ”

John completes by means of some important details the narrative already known respecting the last moments of Jesus. Μετὰ τοῦτο, after this, must be taken in a broad sense, as throughout our whole Gospel. It is between the preceding incident and this one that the unspeakable anguish of heart is to be placed from the depth of which Jesus cried out: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

The expression: All is finished, refers to His task as Redeemer, so far as He was able to accomplish it during His earthly existence, and, at the same time, to the prophetic picture in which this task had been traced beforehand. There remained, however, a point in the prophecy which was not yet accomplished. Many interpreters (Bengel, Tholuck, Meyer, Luthardt, Baumlein, Keil) make ἵνα, that, depend on τετέλεσται : “Knowing that all was accomplished to this end, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” This sense does not seem to me admissible. The fulfilment of the Scriptures cannot be regarded as the end of the accomplishment of the work of Jesus. Moreover, it follows precisely from John 19:28-29 that, if the redemptive work was consummated, there was, nevertheless, a point still wanting to the fulfilment of the prophetic representation of the sufferings of the Messiah, and that Jesus does not wish to leave this point unfulfilled. The that depends therefore on the following verb λέγει : Jesus says. So Chrysostom, Lucke, de Wette, Weiss, etc.

Only we must not, with Weiss, attribute the purpose to God; it is that of Jesus Himself, as the εἰδώς, knowing that, shows. By saying I thirst, Jesus really meant to occasion the literal fulfilment of this last point of the sufferings of the Messiah: “ They gave me vinegar to drink ” (Psa 69:22). Jesus had been for a long time tormented by thirst it was one of the most cruel tortures of this punishment and He could have restrained even to the end, as He had done up to this moment, the expression of this painful sensation. If He did not do it, it was because He knew that this last point must still be fulfilled, and because He desired that it should be fulfilled without delay. John says τελειωθῇ, and not πληρωθῇ (which is wrongly substituted by some documents). The question, indeed, is not of the fulfilment of this special prophecy, but of the completing of the fulfilment of the Scripture prophecies in general. Keil thinks that this momentary refreshment was necessary for Him, in order that He might be able Himself to give up His soul to God.

The drink offered to Jesus is not the stupefying potion which He had refused at the moment of the crucifixion, and which was a deadening wine mixed with myrrh (Mark) or wormwood (Matthew). Jesus had refused it, because He wished to preserve the perfect clearness of His mind until the end. The potion which the soldier offers Him now is no longer the soldiers' wine, as it was ordinarily called; for, in that case, the sponge and the stalk of hyssop would have been to no purpose. It was vinegar prepared for the condemned themselves.

In the first two Gospels, the cry of Jesus: “Eli, Eli!...My God! my God!...” had called forth from a soldier a similar act, but three hours had elapsed since then.

Hyssop is a plant which is only a foot and a half high. Since a stalk of this length was sufficient to reach the lips of the condemned person, it follows from this that the cross was not so high as it is ordinarily represented.

Ostervald and Martin translate altogether wrongly: “They put hyssop around [the sponge];” or “ surrounding it with hyssop.” A Dutch critic, de Koe (Conjecturaal Critik en het Evangelie naar Johannes, 1883), has proposed to substitute for ὑσσώπῳ, (hyssop) ὑσσῷ, a lance. The conjecture is ingenious, but not sufficiently well founded. “ I thirst ” was the fifth expression of the Saviour, and “ all is finished ” the sixth. The first three of His seven expressions on the cross had reference to His personal relations: they were the prayer for His executioners (Luke), the promise made to the thief, His companion in punishment (Luke), the legacy made to His mother and His friend (John). The following three referred to His work of salvation: the cry “My God...” (Matthew and Mark), to the moral sufferings of the expiatory sacrifice; the groan: “ I thirst ” (John), to His physical sufferings; the triumphant expression: “ It is finished,” to the consummation of both. Finally, the seventh and last, which is expressly mentioned only by Luke: “ Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” is implied in John in the word παρέδωκε, he gave up; it refers to Himself, to the finishing of His earthly existence. This Greek term is not exactly rendered by our phrase to give up the ghost. It expresses a spontaneous act. “ No one takes my life,” Jesus had said; “ I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again ” (John 10:18); it would be necessary to translate by the word hand over (commit). Such was also the meaning of the loud cry with which, according to Matthew and Mark, Jesus expired.

The word κλίνας, “ having bowed His head,” indicates that until then He had held His head erect. The breaking of the legs: John 19:31-37; John 19:31. “ The Jews therefore, that the bodies might not remain on the cross during the Sabbath, because it was the preparation (for the day of that Sabbath was a high day), asked Pilate that the legs of the crucified might be broken, and that they might be taken away. ”

John describes here a series of Providential facts, omitted by his predecessors, which occurred in quick succession, and which united in impressing on the person of Jesus, in His condition of deepest humiliation, the Messianic seal. The Romans commonly left the bodies of the condemned on the cross; they became the prey of wild beasts or of dissolution. But the Jewish law required that the bodies of executed criminals should be put out of the way before sunset, that the Holy Land might not, on the following day, be polluted by the curse attached to the lifeless body, a monument of a divine condemnation (Deuteronomy 21:23; Joshua 8:29; Joshua 10:26, Josephus, Bell. Jude 1:4; Jude 1:4.5, Jude 1:2). Ordinarily, no doubt, the Romans did not trouble themselves about this law. But, in this particular case, the Jews would have been absolutely unable to bear the violation of it, because, as John observes, the following day was neither an ordinary day nor even an ordinary Sabbath; it was a Sabbath of an altogether exceptional solemnity. Those who think that, according to John himself, the Jewish people had already celebrated the Passover on the preceding evening, and that at this time the great Sabbatic day of the 15th Nisan was ending, give to the word παρασκευή, preparation, the technical sense of Friday, and explain the special solemnity of the Saturday which was to follow by the fact that this Sabbath belonged to the Passover week.

They call to mind also the fact that on the 16th of Nisan the offering of the sacred sheaf was celebrated, a well- known act of worship by which the harvest was annually opened. But neither the one nor the other of these reasons can explain the extraordinary solemnity which John ascribes to the Sabbath of the next day. The 16th of Nisan was in itself so little of a Sabbath that, in order to cut the ears on the evening of the 15-16th, which were intended to form the sacred sheaf, the messengers of the Sanhedrim were obliged to wait until the people cried out to them: “The sun is set;” then only did the 16th begin, and then only could they take the sickle. Thus in Lev 23:11-14 the 16th is called “the day after the Sabbath. ” How could the weekly Sabbath derive its superior sanctity from its coincidence with this purely working day? As to the technical sense of Friday, given to παρασκευή, it is set aside here by the absence of the article. Finally, the γάρ, for, clearly puts the idea of preparation in a logical relation to that of the extraordinary sanctity of the Sabbath which was to begin at six o'clock in the evening, and thus obliges us to keep for this word its natural sense of preparation. Hence it follows that the time of Jesus' death was the afternoon of the 14th, and not that of the 15th, since the Sabbatic day was on the point of beginning, not of ending. The words: “ For it was the preparation,” signify at once preparation for the Sabbath (as Friday) and preparation for the great Paschal day (as the day before the 15th of Nisan). There was, therefore, on this day a double preparation, because there was an accumulation of Sabbath rest on the following day, which was at once the weekly Sabbath and the great Sabbath, the first day of the feast. By the words: “it was the preparation,” the evangelist reminds us indirectly that the essential act of the preparation, the slaying of the lamb, took place in the temple at that very moment, and that the Paschal supper was about to follow in a few hours.

This was the reason why it was a matter of absolute necessity, from the Jewish point of view, that the bodies should be put out of the way without delay, before the following day should begin (at six o'clock in the evening).

Pilate, respecting this scruple, consented to the thing which was asked of him. The breaking of the legs did not occasion death immediately, but it was intended to make it certain, and thus to allow of the removal of the bodies. For it rendered any return to life impossible, because mortification necessarily and immediately resulted from it. The existence of this custom (σκελοκοπία, crurifragium), among the Romans, in certain exceptional cases, is fully established (see the numerous passages cited by Keim). Thus Renan says: “The Jewish archaeology and the Roman archaeology of John 19:31 are exact.” If Keim himself has, notwithstanding this, raised difficulties, asking why the Synoptics do not mention this fact if it is historical, it is easy to answer him: Because Jesus Himself was not affected by it. But His person alone was of importance to them, not those of the two malefactors. Neither would John have mentioned this detail except for its relation to the fulfilment of a prophecy, which had so forcibly struck him.

Is it necessary to understand ἀρθῶσι, might be taken away, simply of removal from the cross. I think not. What concerned the Jews who made the request was not that the bodies should be unfastened, but that they should be put out of sight. The law Deuteronomy 21:23, which required of them this request, had no reference to the punishment of the cross, which was unknown to Israel.