John 18:31

Take ye him, and judge him— By making this offer to them, the governor told them plainly, that, in his opinion, the crime which they laid to the prisoner's charge, was not of a capital nature; and that such punishments as they were permitted by Caesar to inflict, might be adequate to any misdemeanour with which Jesus was chargeable. One cannot suppose that Pilate could be ignorant of the case before him; for he began his government at Jerusalem before Jesus entered onhis public ministry; and besides many other extraordinary things which he must formerly have heard concerning him, he had, no doubt, received a full account of his public entrance into Jerusalem the beginning of the week; and also of his apprehension, in which the Jewish rulers were assisted by a Roman cohort, which could hardly be engaged in that service without the Governor's express permission. It seems Nicodemus, or Joseph of Arimathea, (who seems to have been personally acquainted with Pilate,—see Chap. John 19:38.) or some other friend, had told him fully of the affair, for he entertained a just notion of it. He knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy. It plainly appears, however, by his whole conduct, that he was very unwilling to engage in this cause. He seems cautious, therefore, not to enter into the full sense of what the Jewish rulers intended, when they called him a malefactor; but answers them in ambiguous language, which they might have interpreted as a warrant to execute Christ, if they found it necessary, and yet which would have left them liable to be questioned for doing it, and might have givenhim such an advantage against them, as a man of his character might have wished. Their reply shews that they were more aware of this artifice than has been generally imagined. It is not lawful for us to put any man to death. See the note on Mark 15:1. To what has been observed there, we add, that it appears both from this acknowledgment of the Jews, and from the writings of more modern rabbies (which assert, that forty years before the destruction of the temple, the power of judicature, in capital crimes, was taken away from them,) that Jewish magistrates under the Romans had not the power of inflicting capital punishments. This is manifest also from the nature and constitution of a Roman province; for, during the free state of the Romans, no freeman could be put to death at Rome, but by the suffrages of the body of the people, or by the senate, or by some superior magistrate appointed for that purpose. In the provinces, the power of capital punishments was granted to the governors by the especial commission called imperium. Upon the changeof the government, this power came into the hands of the emperors, and was by them intrusted with the praefectus urbis, the prefect of the city, at Rome; and in the provinces, with the respective governors, as before. This power could not be delegated by the governors to any other person, while they themselves were in the provinces; nor is there any instance whereby it appears, that anyother court had this power at the same time with the Roman governor, and in such places where he couldexercise it. There were indeed some free cities in the provinces dependent on the Romans, which had this power within themselves; but then the Roman governors had it not at the same time in those places;though if the inhabitants attempted any thing in a hostile manner against the Romans, the governors had it in their commission to check them, as well as any other enemies. The Roman provinces were not all settled upon the same footing; that is, the grants and privileges were not made alike to all. Civil causes and lesser crimes must necessarily either be left to the inhabitants or some inferior officers; for it was impossible that the governor himself should perform all this in person; and therefore each governor had usually several legates with him, besides his quaestor, who were capable of administering justice in different parts of the country, and seem to have had a larger power than the municipal magistrates, for they represented the governor himself: but no sufficient evidence is offered to prove, that any other court than his own had cognizance of capital crimes; nor does such a power appear at all agreeable to the scheme and maxims of the Roman government, which in this point seems to have continued uniform and consistent with itself, under the great alterations that it underwent in other respects; and, therefore, whatever other indulgences they might grant to the Jews, or other provincials, it does not thence follow that they allowed them this, or suffered their governors to sit still as idle spectators, while any other court assumed ajudicial power to take away the lives of any persons within their district, who were all equally under their protection. The case of Stephen has indeed been thought by some an instance in favour of the contrary opinion; but that this fact rather ought to be esteemed as the result of a hasty and intemperate zeal, and done in a tumultuous manner, than as the effect of a legal sentence consequent upon a judicial process, has been justly observed by Dr. Lardner, in his Credibil. Part 1: p. 112.