For Teaching

John 19: What the Passage Says

142 claims across 42 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What John 19 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Pilate has Jesus flogged, and the soldiers mock him with a crown of thorns and a purple robe. Pilate says twice that he finds no charge against Jesus, but after the crowd warns that releasing him is disloyalty to Caesar, he hands Jesus over to be crucified. Jesus is crucified between two others under a sign in three languages, entrusts his mother to the disciple he loved, says "It is finished," and dies. Soldiers pierce his side instead of breaking his legs, and Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus bury him in a new tomb in a nearby garden.

Claim by Claim

19:1
- Pilate took Jesus.
- Pilate had Jesus scourged.
19:2
- The soldiers wove a crown out of thorns.
- The soldiers put the crown of thorns on Jesus' head.
- The soldiers clothed Jesus in a purple robe.
19:3
- The soldiers said to Jesus, Hail, King of the Jews.
- The soldiers struck Jesus with their hands.
19:4
- Pilate went out again.
- Pilate said to them, Behold, I bring him out to you.
- Pilate said he was bringing Jesus out so that they would know he found no fault in him.
- Pilate said he found no fault in Jesus.
19:5
- Jesus came out.
- Jesus was wearing the crown of thorns.
- Jesus was wearing the purple robe.
- Pilate said to them, Behold the man.
19:6
- The chief priests and the officers saw Jesus.
- They cried out, Crucify him, crucify him.
- Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves and crucify him.
- Pilate said he found no fault in Jesus.
19:7
- The Jews answered Pilate that they had a law.
- The Jews said that by their law Jesus ought to die.
- The Jews said the reason was that Jesus made himself the Son of God.
19:8
- Pilate heard that saying.
- Pilate was the more afraid when he heard it.
19:9
- Pilate went into the judgment hall again.
- Pilate asked Jesus where he was from.
- Jesus gave Pilate no answer.
19:10
- Pilate asked Jesus whether he would not speak to him.
- Pilate asked Jesus whether he did not know that Pilate had power to crucify him.
- Pilate said he had power to release Jesus.
19:11
- Jesus answered Pilate.
- Jesus said Pilate would have no power at all against him unless it had been given to him from above.
- Jesus said that for this reason the one who delivered him to Pilate had the greater sin.
19:12
- From then on Pilate sought to release Jesus.
- The Jews cried out against it.
- The Jews said that if Pilate released this man, Pilate was not Caesar's friend.
- The Jews said that whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar.
19:13
- Pilate heard that saying.
- Pilate brought Jesus outside.
- Pilate sat down on the judgment seat; the wording leaves open whether he sat or seated Jesus there.
- The place was called the Pavement.
- The place was called Gabbatha in Hebrew.
19:14
- It was the preparation of the passover.
- It was about the sixth hour.
- Pilate said to the Jews, Behold your King.
19:15
- They cried out, Away with him, away with him.
- They cried out, Crucify him.
- Pilate asked them whether he should crucify their King.
- The chief priests answered that they had no king but Caesar.
19:16
- Pilate then delivered Jesus to them to be crucified.
- They took Jesus.
- They led Jesus away.
19:17
- Jesus went out bearing his own cross.
- He went to a place called the place of a skull.
- That place is called Golgotha in Hebrew.
19:18
- There they crucified Jesus.
- They crucified two others with him.
- The two others were placed one on either side.
- Jesus was in the middle.
19:19
- Pilate wrote a title.
- Pilate put the title on the cross.
- The writing was: Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews.
19:20
- Many of the Jews read this title.
- The place where Jesus was crucified was near the city.
- The title was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.
19:21
- The chief priests of the Jews spoke to Pilate.
- They told Pilate not to write, The King of the Jews.
- They told Pilate to write instead that Jesus said, I am King of the Jews.
19:22
- Pilate answered, What I have written I have written.
19:23
- The soldiers crucified Jesus.
- The soldiers took Jesus' garments.
- The soldiers made four parts of the garments.
- Each soldier received a part.
- They also took his coat.
- The coat was without seam.
- The coat was woven in one piece from the top throughout.
19:24
- They said to one another not to tear the coat.
- They said to cast lots for the coat to decide whose it would be.
- This happened so that the scripture might be fulfilled.
- The scripture says they parted my garments among them.
- The scripture says they cast lots for my clothing.
- The soldiers did these things.
19:25
- Jesus' mother stood by the cross of Jesus.
- His mother's sister stood by the cross.
- Mary the wife of Cleophas stood by the cross.
- Mary Magdalene stood by the cross.
- The wording leaves open whether his mother's sister is Mary the wife of Cleophas or a separate woman.
19:26
- Jesus saw his mother.
- Jesus saw the disciple whom he loved standing nearby.
- Jesus said to his mother, Woman, behold thy son.
19:27
- Jesus said to the disciple, Behold thy mother.
- From that hour the disciple took her to his own home.
19:28
- Jesus knew that all things were now accomplished.
- This was so that the scripture might be fulfilled.
- Jesus said, I thirst.
19:29
- A vessel full of vinegar was set there.
- They filled a sponge with the vinegar.
- They put the sponge on hyssop.
- They put the sponge to Jesus' mouth.
19:30
- Jesus received the vinegar.
- Jesus said, It is finished.
- Jesus bowed his head.
- Jesus gave up his spirit.
19:31
- It was the preparation day.
- That sabbath day was a high day.
- The Jews did not want the bodies to remain on the cross on the sabbath.
- The Jews asked Pilate that the legs of the crucified be broken.
- The Jews asked that the bodies be taken away.
19:32
- The soldiers came.
- The soldiers broke the legs of the first man.
- The soldiers broke the legs of the other man crucified with Jesus.
19:33
- The soldiers came to Jesus.
- They saw that Jesus was already dead.
- They did not break Jesus' legs.
19:34
- One of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear.
- Blood and water came out immediately.
19:35
- The one who saw it has borne witness.
- His witness is true.
- He knows that he tells the truth.
- His purpose is that you also might believe.
19:36
- These things were done so that the scripture should be fulfilled.
- The scripture says a bone of him shall not be broken.
19:37
- Another scripture says they shall look on him whom they pierced.
19:38
- After this Joseph of Arimathaea asked Pilate for permission.
- Joseph was a disciple of Jesus.
- Joseph was a disciple secretly, for fear of the Jews.
- Joseph asked that he might take away the body of Jesus.
- Pilate gave him permission.
- Joseph came and took the body of Jesus.
19:39
- Nicodemus also came.
- Nicodemus had at the first come to Jesus by night.
- Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes.
- The mixture weighed about a hundred pounds.
19:40
- They took the body of Jesus.
- They wound the body in linen cloths with the spices.
- This was according to the burial custom of the Jews.
19:41
- There was a garden in the place where Jesus was crucified.
- There was a new tomb in the garden.
- No one had ever been laid in that tomb.
19:42
- They laid Jesus there.
- The reason was the Jews' preparation day.
- The tomb was near at hand.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

19:1: Roman flogging was a legal procedure, not a beating in anger. The victim was stripped and struck with a whip of leather thongs, sometimes weighted with bits of bone or metal. It was often used on its own as a punishment meant to satisfy a crowd, which may be what Pilate intends here, and it also regularly preceded crucifixion.
19:2: Purple cloth was expensive and was associated with kings and high Roman officials, so the robe and the twisted wreath are a mock coronation. Roman victors and emperors wore wreaths on their heads; the soldiers are making one out of thorn branches.
19:3: "Hail" translates the standard shout of salute given to the emperor, so the mockery is that of greeting a head of state. The King James "smote him with their hands" means open handed blows to the face; the Greek verb is the one used for slapping.
19:4: "I find no fault in him" is legal language, not a comment on his character. Pilate is announcing the result of a hearing: he finds no grounds for a charge that Rome would recognize.
19:5: "Behold the man" is Pilate presenting the prisoner to the crowd, roughly "Look at him." The Latin version of this line, ecce homo, became a standard title for paintings of the scene.
19:6: The "officers" are the temple guard, Jewish police under the authority of the chief priests, not Roman soldiers. Pilate's reply is sarcastic, since the Jewish authorities had no power to carry out a crucifixion.
19:7: The law referred to is the death penalty for blasphemy in Leviticus 24:16. Note also that when John writes "the Jews" in the trial scenes he generally means the ruling authorities in Jerusalem who are pressing the case, not the Jewish people as a whole; Jesus, his mother and his disciples are all Jews as well.
19:9: The "judgment hall" is the praetorium, the Roman governor's headquarters in Jerusalem. Pilate was prefect of Judea from about AD 26 to 36; his usual residence was at Caesarea on the coast, and he came up to Jerusalem with troops at festival time, when crowds made unrest likely.
19:10: The Greek word behind "power" in this verse and the next means authority, the legal right to act, rather than raw strength. Pilate is claiming jurisdiction over life and death.
19:11: "From above" is genuinely double edged in the Greek and the ambiguity is probably deliberate: the same word can mean from God, and can also simply mean from higher up, that is, from the authority that delegated Pilate his office.
19:12: "Friend of Caesar" was close to a formal title, used of men who stood in the emperor's favor and enjoyed his protection. The shout is therefore a veiled threat to report Pilate to Rome, a dangerous thing under Tiberius, who was then emperor.
19:13: The "judgment seat" is the bema, a raised platform from which a Roman official delivered a formal verdict; sitting on it marked the sentence as official. What John calls Hebrew is the everyday Semitic language of Judea, Aramaic. Gabbatha and "the Pavement" are not translations of each other: one describes a raised or open place, the other a stone paved area.
19:14: The day of preparation is the Friday before a Sabbath, when food was cooked and work finished before sundown, here also the preparation connected with Passover. The sixth hour is about noon, since hours were counted from roughly six in the morning. Mark 15:25 places the crucifixion at the third hour, about nine, and the difference between the two accounts has never been fully resolved.
19:15: Judea was under direct Roman rule, so the chief priests' words are literally true as a statement of political fact, and they are also a formal declaration of loyalty made in front of the governor.
19:16: "Unto them" is loose in the Greek as well as the King James: the nearest people named are the chief priests, but crucifixion was carried out by Roman soldiers, and verse 23 shows that soldiers did it.
19:17: A condemned man normally carried only the crossbeam, weighing perhaps eighty to a hundred pounds, out to the place of execution, where the upright post already stood. Golgotha is the Aramaic word for skull; the Latin translation of it gives us the familiar name Calvary. Executions were held outside the city walls.
19:18: Crucifixion was a Roman public execution reserved for slaves, rebels and the lowest criminals; Roman citizens were exempt from it except in extreme cases. The victim was fixed to the wood by nails or ropes and left exposed, and death came slowly, over hours or days, from exhaustion, blood loss and suffocation as the body sagged. Its purpose was deterrence as much as punishment.
19:19: Roman practice was to display a board, the titulus, stating the crime of the condemned man, either carried before him or fixed above him on the cross. Written as a charge, "King of the Jews" names the offense as claiming a throne, which was treason against Rome.
19:20: The three languages are the ones a crowd in Jerusalem would actually use: Aramaic or Hebrew locally, Greek as the common language of the eastern empire, and Latin as the official language of Roman government.
19:22: Pilate's reply is a flat refusal in the idiom of an official who has signed a document. In Greek the verb is in a tense that stresses a completed act with standing results: the wording is now on record and will not be altered.
19:23: The execution squad customarily took the condemned man's clothing as a perquisite. "Coat" in the King James means the tunic, the long undergarment worn next to the skin, not an outer coat. A tunic woven in one piece rather than sewn from panels was a better and more valuable garment, which is why cutting it up would waste it.
19:24: Casting lots was decided by throwing marked stones, sticks or knucklebones, the ancient equivalent of drawing straws or rolling dice. The quotation is Psalm 22:18; "raiment" and "vesture" are simply older words for clothing.
19:25: The list is ambiguous in the Greek and can be read as naming two, three or four women, depending on whether "his mother's sister" and "Mary the wife of Cleophas" are the same person. Cleophas here is usually spelled Clopas in modern versions. Mary Magdalene is named from Magdala, a town on the Sea of Galilee.
19:26: Addressing a woman as "Woman" was ordinary polite speech in Greek, closer to "madam" than to anything curt; it carries none of the coldness the English sounds like today. Jesus uses the same word to his mother at the wedding in Cana in John 2:4.
19:27: Taking a woman "unto his own" means into his household and under his support. A widow without a son to provide for her had no independent legal standing or income, so this is a practical arrangement for her keeping.
19:28: "I thirst" echoes the wording of Psalm 69:21, where the sufferer is given vinegar to drink.
19:29: The "vinegar" is posca, cheap sour wine mixed with water, the ordinary drink of soldiers and laborers; it was not given as a cruelty but as what was at hand. Hyssop is a small bushy plant whose stalks were used to sprinkle blood on the doorposts at the first Passover in Exodus 12:22. Its stems are short for reaching a crucified man, and a few ancient manuscripts read a word meaning javelin instead.
19:30: "It is finished" is one word in Greek, tetelestai, meaning brought to completion or carried through to its end. The same word turns up on ancient receipts and accounts in the sense of paid in full. "Gave up the ghost" is 1611 English for breathed his last; "ghost" then simply meant spirit.
19:31: Jewish law required a body hung on a tree to be taken down before nightfall (Deuteronomy 21:22 to 23), and the Sabbath began at sunset. Breaking the legs, a Roman practice called crurifragium, made it impossible for the victim to push himself up to breathe and so brought death on within minutes. "An high day" means this Sabbath coincided with the Passover festival, making it more solemn than an ordinary one. "Besought" means asked or petitioned.
19:34: A spear thrust to the chest was the standard Roman way of making certain a crucified man was dead. Ancient readers would have taken the flow of blood and clear fluid as proof that death had already occurred.
19:35: "Bare record" and "his record" are 1611 English for gave testimony and his testimony. The vocabulary is that of a witness giving evidence, not of keeping a written record.
19:36: The wording matches the rule for the Passover lamb, whose bones were not to be broken (Exodus 12:46, Numbers 9:12), and also Psalm 34:20 about the righteous man.
19:37: The quotation is from Zechariah 12:10.
19:38: The bodies of crucified men were normally left on the cross or thrown into a common pit, so releasing a body for private burial was a favor that only the governor could grant. Arimathea was a town in Judea; its exact site is uncertain.
19:39: Myrrh is a fragrant resin from a desert shrub, and the aloes here are the scented wood of an eastern tree, ground to powder; both were dry spices packed around a body to offset the smell of decay, not embalming fluids. The "hundred pound weight" is in Roman pounds of about twelve ounces each, so roughly seventy five pounds or thirty four kilograms. That is an enormous quantity, of the order used at a royal funeral.
19:40: Jewish burial did not involve embalming or removing the organs. The body was washed, packed with dry spices and wrapped in strips of linen, then laid in a tomb; a year or so later the bones were collected into a box.
19:41: A tomb of this kind was a chamber cut into soft rock, with a low entrance and shelves or niches inside for bodies, closed by a heavy stone. Tombs were normally family property used over generations, so an unused one was both costly and unusual.
19:42: Sundown was close, and once the Sabbath began no such work could be done, so the nearness of the tomb decided the matter.

Read John 19