*

around him in the palace court of Pilate, and there displayed their ingenuity in heaping ridicule on him as the Jewish king, and through him on the hated nation. Their first step was to decorate his head. It was usual to crown a monarch, especially on festive occasions, with a garland of roses; the soldiers feigned that this pretender's trial was a festive occasion, and that thorns would constitute an appropriate garland. "As the rose," says Muller, "is regarded the queen among flowers, so the thorn, being the armor of the rose, is regarded the most rigid and acute among briers." The crown was not composed of mere prickles collected together, but of a stalk or shrub, braided so as to fit the head and armed all over with sharp points. Hasselquist, speaking of the naba, or nabka of the Arabians, and stating its claims to be regarded as the substance of this crown, says, "it was very fit for the purpose, for it has many small and sharp spines which are well adapted to give pain. The crown might easily be made of these soft, round and pliable branches." The next movement of the jesting soldiers was, to strip the prisoner of his tunic and outer garment, for the purpose of arraying him in the mock habiliments of royalty. To be deprived of the outer garment, or cloak as it is called in Matt. v. 40, was deemed by the orientals a peculiar disgrace. A punishment equal to that of the foulest insult or injury is prescribed in the Talmud for any one who shall inflict this disgrace. When it had been inflicted on Christ, he was arrayed in the common scarlet or crimson military robe, made of woollen cloth, fastened about the breast and neck by loops, and extending down to the knees. This was his regal robe; an ordinary club or cane was substituted for the golden sceptre of monarchs, and he then received the fashionable salutation of subjects, "All hail to you," "Long life to you," "God bless you," "King of the Jews." Finding that they do not succeed in vexing him, they became themselves vexed, and suddenly change their play and derision into abuse and violence. They load him with those very insults which were deemed by the orientals the most

*

Matt. xxvii. 27, and Mark xv. 16 state, that "the whole band" assembled. The band contained according to Wahl, on an average, from 130 to 200 soldiers. It is not necessary, however, to interpret the word "whole," in its fullest extent, for we cannot suppose, that the fort of Antonia would be entirely deserted by its guard, particularly by a Roman guard. The style of the Evangelists allows us to restrict the meaning of the word, and to consider it as denoting "a great proportion," "a majority."

degrading. Compare Matt. xxvii. 26-30 and parallel passages, with the Jewish Talmud, as quoted by Gill on these passages.

Next to the mockery followed the castigation of the prisoner. This was an almost indispensable preparative for the agonies of his death. It was given at the outset, so that it should be felt through the whole succession of cruelties, as poison in the fountain tinctures the whole stream. The instrument employed was sometimes the rod, but more generally the scourge. Thus Livy, lib. xxxiii. 36, informs us of slaves, "who, after they had been whipped or scourged, were suspended on crosses;" and Philo (in Flac.) says, that "after the criminals were mangled and torn with scourges in the theatres, they were fastened to the wood." At the siege of Jerusalem "great numbers of the Jews were crucified," according to Jos. de Bel. Jud. lib. 5, c. 2, "after they had been abusively whipped and had suffered every wanton cruelty." The rods used in flagellation were made of iron or wood, and when of wood, were often covered with spines. The scourges were sometimes called "scorpions," by the Latins "horribilia." They were composed of thongs, with sharp pieces of iron or other metal "inserted and involved" in the braid. Eustathius and Apuleius specify the smallest bones of sheep and other animals, as supplying the place of metal, and " filling the whips" of the flagellants, and from other authority we learn, that the bones were often wrought into the shape of dice.* The backs of candidates for the cross were exposed naked to the striking of the scourge, and were sometimes penetrated by a single blow. In most instances, the candidates fainted, in many, died under the barbarous operation.

The Jewish law respecting the scourge, limited the number of lashes to forty, and the executioners dreading to exceed this limit, and choosing to be on the safe side, usually inflicted but thirty-nine. See Deut. xxv. 2, 3; 2 Cor. xi. 24. The Romans however were not thus restricted, and they often multiplied the blows to a most savage extent. was the scourge in distinction from the rod which the Roman governor applied to Jesus; and as he applied it for the purpose of drawing from the Jews commiseration toward their prisoner, so he had liberty to continue it until he should

* Tholuck Com. zum Evan, John, s. 326.

It

draw commiseration from the very stones of his tower. "He made the back of Jesus red," says Nonnus, "with the horrible whip." It should always be remembered that Christ endured the Roman scourging and not the Jewish. The former was not only more painful than the latter, but also more disgraceful. All classes of Jews, even priests, if malefactors, were liable to suffer their mode of scourging; but Roman citizens were always exempt from the Roman mode; even if criminal, they were too dignified to receive any flagellation save that with the rod. Saint Paul availed himself of his free citizenship, to avoid the scourge of the centurion, see Acts xxii. 25; and another freeman is represented by Cicero as crying rightfully, but in vain, to the flagellant Verres, "I am a Roman citizen, I have served under Lucius Pretius." Jesus "was born in Bethlehem;" he could therefore claim no legal exemption from the instrument which was appropriated exclusively to slaves and dependents. He not only took upon him the form of a servant, and died the death of a slave, but also endured the preparatory stripes of a slave. "The ploughers ploughed upon his back, they made long their furrows."

In the earlier ages, the criminal received his regular flagellation while on his way to the cross. Dionysius, and Plautus speak of malefactors, who were whipped and goaded with stings as they walked to the spot where death waited to ease them of their laceration. The executioners are said to have carried behind the prisoner, thongs, rods, or poles, either sharpened at the end, or headed with iron, and to have been incessantly puncturing him, harassed, as he must have been, with the most dismal forebodings.

In the later ages, the criminal received his preparatory scourging while bound to a pillar, either in his own house, or at the pretorium. Instances are recorded of persons who were doomed to a double flagellation; one at the whippingpost, another on their way to the cross. That Christ was scourged at the pretorium, either by the governor or under his inspection, there can be no doubt. See Matt. xxvii. 26. Nor need there be doubt, but that he was scourged in the customary attitude. "Our Lord," says Prudentius, his assertion however is not quoted as authority, "stood up with his hands bound, and being tied to the column gave his back, as a slave, to the scourges." Jerome pretends, that this pillar was preserved till his own day, and was used as a

prop to a Christian temple. The Jews themselves acknowledge, that Christ was bound to a pillar, though they ascribe the act of binding him to the wrong agents. "The elders of Jerusalem," says their Mishna Bava Kama, c. 8, s. 6, "took Jesus and brought him to the city, and bound him to a marble pillar in the city, and smote him with whips, and said unto him, where are all the miracles which thou hast done?" That Christ was scourged along the "dolorous way," is indeed not so evident as that he was scourged at the court, yet it is the unbroken voice of tradition, and as prisoners less obnoxious than he were doomed to such excess of maltreatment, there is no improbability that he, as in other things so in this, endured "affliction more than was meet." Very rarely was a prisoner led to the cross without suffering on his way the basest indignity. "He was pushed, thrown down, stimulated with goads, and impelled forwards by every act of insolence and inhumanity that could be inflicted."*

Among the marks of contempt shown to the expectant of death during this scene of the tragedy, was his being doomed to carry his own cross. The mode in which he carried it, was not uniform. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Antiq. 7, p. 453,) says, "the executioners led forward the slave to punishment, stretched out both his hands, and tied the cross to his wrists, shoulders, and breast, so that he may carry it firmly bound to him." Sometimes it was borne on the shoulder without the use of any ligament. Not unfrequently only the smaller, lighter part of it, the transverse beam was imposed upon him, and in some cases, he was exempted entirely from the cumbersome load. It must have been a peculiar task, for a man almost spent by fear, smarting from the lashes of the thong, fainting from the consequent loss of blood, and hauled about to the right hand and the left by an insulting rabble, to carry in such circumstances the instrument of his impending agonies. But the difficulty of it was not equal to the disgrace. No epithet was so reproachful as "furcifer," "the cross-bearer." Plutarch illustrates the miseries of sin, by showing that every species of it produces its own peculiar torments, just as the wretch driven on to crucifixion carries his own engine of wo. No wonder that the bearer so often fell down groaning under

the weight of his instrument, the pressure of his ignominy, distresses, and forebodings.

Our Saviour's cross was placed upon him when he started from the fort for Golgotha. The instruments of death were usually deposited in or near the fort. It appears from the history, that he was unable to carry the machine far, and was relieved from it, not partially, as several commentators say, but altogether. His distress for several days had been severe, see John xii. 27; during the last night it had operated so powerfully upon his animal system, as to cause a profuse perspiration, while he was standing without exercise in the cold open air; notwithstanding the feebleness which must have been induced by this unprecedented mental agony, he had been allowed no rest during the night; had been compelled with all his weariness, to stand up at least three hours in the uncomfortable court-room,* and to be there harassed by impertinent and impudent judges; had been, on the morning of Friday, driven handcuffed from palace to palace, from mountain to mountain, and subjected to the most mortifying insult and derision; had at last been scourged with Roman severity and to a degree which even a Roman governor hoped would excite the pity of enemies, of enemies among blood-thirsty Jews. No wonder then that he was exhausted, and, in view of what he was soon to encounter on the cross, was too faint to carry the onerous load.

As a title was affixed to the tree of the Saviour's cross, there was probably, notwithstanding the figments in the Talmud, no crier or herald accompanying him to the scene of death. Whenever the crier was employed, he sometimes proclaimed the crime of the prisoner, directly; thus, “ Polycarp has confessed that he is a Christian;" sometimes indirectly, by uttering a moral admonition, from which the multitude may easily infer the crime to be expiated; thus, "never swear rashly," an annunciation for a perjured man; "let no plebeian take rough hold of a Roman ambassador," for an assailant; "fumo punitur, qui fumum vendidit," for

*

Thursday night was cold, John xviii. 18; the court-room was the area of Caiaphas' palace, and doubtless was large; the fire vessel was in the lower part of the spacious room, or at least the middle of it, Mark xiv. 54, 66, Luke xxii. 55; while Jesus, according to the custom of the Sanhedrim, was with them in the upper part. See Jahn's Arch. on the construction of houses, also on the sessions of the Sanhedrim.