From the examination before Caiaphas we are taken to the trial before Pilate. The scene is in every respect one of the most remarkable in the Gospel, alike in its selection of incidents and vividness of description, and in that tragic under-current of thought by which it reveals the humiliation, the condemnation, and the shame of the guilty Jews, while they clamour for judgment upon One whom a heathen would have set free. Again and again, in rejecting their true King, they confess the degradation to which they have reduced themselves, until at last that degradation culminates in words implying the forfeiture of all that had distinguished Judaism, all that of which it had been most proud. The passage contains one of those double pictures which mark the style of John, and the incidents of the two pictures are so arranged that the second exhibits an advance upon the first.

Continues after advertising
Continues after advertising

Old Testament