John 19:12

John 19:12. Upon this Pilate sought to release him. The verb ‘sought' in the original implies that Pilate now made repeated attempts, not recorded, to effect with consent of the Jews the release of his prisoner. The attempts were vain.

But the Jews cried out, saying, If thou release this man, thou art not Cæsar's friend: every one that maketh himself a king speaketh against Cæsar. The term ‘Cæsar's friend' had been, since the time of Augustus, conferred by the emperor upon legates and prefects as an honourable distinction. It is not improbable that the hope of obtaining it might even now be floating before Pilate's eyes. The argument, although not deliberately reserved for this moment, but dictated by the quick insight of excited passion, was thus fitted to tell most powerfully upon him. How it did tell the sequel shows. We shall err, however, if we imagine that the only object of John in mentioning the circumstance is to point out the consideration to which Pilate yielded. He has another object far more nearly at heart, to exhibit the woeful, the self-confessed, degradation to which the proud Jewish people, by their opposition to Jesus, had reduced themselves. Something similar had been already noted by him at John 11:48, but that fell far short of what is exhibited here. In order to effect their guilty end, they by whom the friendship of Cæsar was regarded as degradation and not honour, appeal to the desire for it as a noble ambition; they who would fain have trampled the authority of Cæsar under foot as the source of the oppression from which they suffered, and of the loss of all the ancient glories of their nation, represent the effort to maintain it as one that loyalty ought to make. With what clearness does the Evangelist see these wretched ‘Jews,' in the very act of accomplishing their ends, plunging themselves into the greatest depths of ignominy and shame! The effect of the appeal is not lost upon Pilate.