Mark 15: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chief priests hand Jesus over to Pilate, who questions him, offers the crowd a choice between him and Barabbas, and then, to satisfy the crowd, releases Barabbas and hands Jesus over to be crucified. Soldiers mock him as a king, and he is crucified at Golgotha between two robbers, with the charge "THE KING OF THE JEWS" posted above him. Darkness covers the land from noon until mid-afternoon, Jesus cries out and dies, the temple curtain tears in two, and a centurion says that this man was the Son of God. Women who had followed him watch from a distance, and Joseph of Arimathea asks Pilate for the body and lays it in a rock tomb.

Claim by Claim

1. 15:1
   • Straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and the scribes and the whole council.
   • They bound Jesus.
   • They carried Jesus away.
   • They delivered Jesus to Pilate.
2. 15:2
   • Pilate asked Jesus whether he was the King of the Jews.
   • Jesus answered him, saying that Pilate said it.
3. 15:3
   • The chief priests accused Jesus of many things.
   • Jesus answered nothing.
4. 15:4
   • Pilate asked Jesus again.
   • Pilate asked whether Jesus would answer nothing.
   • Pilate told Jesus to observe how many things they testified against him.
5. 15:5
   • Jesus still answered nothing.
   • Pilate marvelled.
6. 15:6
   • At the feast Pilate released to them one prisoner.
   • The prisoner released was whichever one they asked for.
7. 15:7
   • There was a man named Barabbas.
   • Barabbas lay bound together with those who had made insurrection with him.
   • Those insurrectionists had committed murder in the insurrection.
8. 15:8
   • The multitude cried aloud.
   • The multitude began to ask Pilate to do for them as he had always done.
9. 15:9
   • Pilate answered them.
   • Pilate asked whether they wanted him to release to them the King of the Jews.
10. 15:10
    • Pilate knew that the chief priests had delivered Jesus up out of envy.
11. 15:11
    • The chief priests stirred up the people.
    • The chief priests wanted Pilate to release Barabbas to them instead.
12. 15:12
    • Pilate answered and spoke to them again.
    • Pilate asked what they wanted him to do with the one they called the King of the Jews.
13. 15:13
    • They cried out again.
    • They said to crucify him.
14. 15:14
    • Pilate said to them, asking what evil he had done.
    • They cried out even more exceedingly.
    • They said to crucify him.
15. 15:15
    • Pilate was willing to satisfy the people.
    • Pilate released Barabbas to them.
    • Pilate had Jesus scourged.
    • Pilate delivered Jesus to be crucified.
16. 15:16
    • The soldiers led Jesus away into the hall.
    • The hall is called the Praetorium.
    • They called together the whole band of soldiers.
17. 15:17
    • They clothed Jesus with purple.
    • They plaited a crown of thorns.
    • They put the crown of thorns on his head.
18. 15:18
    • They began to salute him.
    • They hailed him as King of the Jews.
19. 15:19
    • They struck him on the head with a reed.
    • They spat on him.
    • They bowed their knees and did homage to him.
20. 15:20
    • They mocked him.
    • They took the purple off him.
    • They put his own clothes on him.
    • They led him out to crucify him.
21. 15:21
    • They compelled a man named Simon, a Cyrenian, to bear his cross.
    • Simon was passing by.
    • Simon was coming out of the country.
    • Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus.
22. 15:22
    • They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha.
    • The name Golgotha means the place of a skull.
23. 15:23
    • They gave Jesus wine mingled with myrrh to drink.
    • Jesus did not take it.
24. 15:24
    • They crucified him.
    • They divided his garments among themselves.
    • They cast lots for the garments to decide what each man should take.
25. 15:25
    • It was the third hour.
    • They crucified him.
26. 15:26
    • The inscription of his accusation was written above him.
    • The inscription read: The King of the Jews.
27. 15:27
    • They crucified two robbers with him.
    • One robber was on his right hand.
    • The other robber was on his left.
28. 15:28
    • The scripture was fulfilled that says he was numbered with the transgressors.
29. 15:29
    • Those who passed by reviled him.
    • They wagged their heads.
    • They addressed him as the one who destroys the temple and builds it in three days.
30. 15:30
    • They told him to save himself.
    • They told him to come down from the cross.
31. 15:31
    • The chief priests likewise mocked him among themselves along with the scribes.
    • They said he saved others.
    • They said he cannot save himself.
32. 15:32
    • They said the Christ, the King of Israel, should come down now from the cross.
    • They said this was so that they might see and believe.
    • Those who were crucified with him reviled him.
33. 15:33
    • The sixth hour came.
    • There was darkness over the whole land.
    • The darkness lasted until the ninth hour.
34. 15:34
    • At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice.
    • Jesus cried out in Aramaic.
    • His cry means: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
35. 15:35
    • Some of those standing by heard it.
    • They said that he was calling Elijah.
36. 15:36
    • One man ran.
    • He filled a sponge full of sour wine.
    • He put the sponge on a reed.
    • He gave it to Jesus to drink.
    • He said to leave him alone.
    • He said they should see whether Elijah would come to take him down.
37. 15:37
    • Jesus cried out with a loud voice.
    • Jesus expired.
38. 15:38
    • The veil of the temple was torn in two.
    • The tearing went from the top to the bottom.
39. 15:39
    • The centurion was standing opposite him.
    • The centurion saw that Jesus cried out in that way and expired.
    • The centurion said that truly this man was the Son of God.
40. 15:40
    • There were also women looking on from a distance.
    • Mary Magdalene was among them.
    • Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses was among them.
    • Salome was among them.
41. 15:41
    • These women followed him when he was in Galilee.
    • These women ministered to him.
    • Many other women had come up with him to Jerusalem.
42. 15:42
    • Evening had now come.
    • It was the preparation.
    • The preparation is the day before the sabbath.
43. 15:43
    • Joseph of Arimathaea was an honourable counsellor.
    • Joseph was waiting for the kingdom of God.
    • Joseph came and went in boldly to Pilate.
    • Joseph asked for the body of Jesus.
44. 15:44
    • Pilate marvelled that Jesus was already dead.
    • Pilate summoned the centurion.
    • Pilate asked the centurion whether Jesus had been dead for some time.
45. 15:45
    • Pilate learned it from the centurion.
    • Pilate gave the body to Joseph.
46. 15:46
    • Joseph bought fine linen.
    • Joseph took him down.
    • Joseph wrapped him in the linen.
    • Joseph laid him in a tomb that had been hewn out of a rock.
    • Joseph rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.
47. 15:47
    • Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses watched.
    • They saw where he was laid.

Words Worth Explaining

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

15:1

The council is the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish court in Jerusalem. It was made up of the chief priests (the senior temple officials and former high priests), the elders (heads of leading families) and the scribes (trained specialists in the law). Pilate was the Roman prefect who governed Judea. Under Roman rule the council could try a case, but only the governor could order an execution, so a capital charge had to be taken to him and had to be put in terms Rome would act on.

15:2

"King of the Jews" is the charge in Roman terms: claiming to be a king meant rebellion against Caesar, which is why Pilate asks about that and nothing else. Jesus' reply, literally "You say so," neither denies the words nor simply agrees with them; it hands them back to the man who chose them.

15:6

The feast is Passover, when Jerusalem filled with pilgrims and the risk of unrest was highest. A regular Passover amnesty of this kind is not recorded outside the Gospels, though Roman officials elsewhere are known to have released prisoners to please a crowd.

15:7

The name Barabbas is Aramaic, bar-Abba, meaning "son of the father" or "son of Abba," Abba also being an ordinary personal name. The uprising referred to seems to have been an event Mark's first readers knew about; no other record of it survives.

15:13

Crucifixion was a Roman public execution used mainly on slaves, rebels and provincials without Roman citizenship. The victim was fastened to an upright beam by ropes or nails and left in the open, often for a day or more, until he suffocated or his heart failed. It was designed to be slow, visible and degrading, a deterrent as much as a punishment.

15:15

The whipping was the Roman flogging that normally preceded crucifixion: a short whip with weighted or bone-tipped thongs, laid on the bare back with no fixed number of strokes. It was severe enough that prisoners sometimes died under it.

15:16

The Praetorium was the governor's official residence and headquarters while he was in the city. The "whole band" of the King James is a cohort, a Roman unit of several hundred men; here it means the detachment on duty rather than a full complement.

15:17

Purple cloth was expensive and was associated with royalty and high office, so a purple robe was the obvious prop for a mock king. The crown of thorns imitates the spiked radiate crown shown on coins of Hellenistic and Roman rulers.

15:18

"Hail, King of the Jews" parodies the formal Roman greeting to the emperor, "Ave, Caesar."

15:19

In 1611 "worshipped" covered any act of homage to a superior, including kneeling before a king, and did not necessarily mean religious worship. The soldiers are miming court ceremony as a joke.

15:21

Roman soldiers had the legal right to press civilians into carrying loads or running errands for them, and refusal was not an option. Cyrene was a city in North Africa, in what is now Libya, with a large Jewish population. The condemned man normally carried only the crossbeam, not the whole cross. Mark names Alexander and Rufus as though his readers would recognize them.

15:22

Golgotha is the Aramaic word for skull, which is why Mark stops to translate it. The name probably describes the shape of the rise, not a heap of bones. The Latin form of the same word gives the traditional English name Calvary.

15:23

Myrrh is a fragrant gum resin from a desert shrub, bitter to the taste, used in perfume, incense and medicine. Wine drugged in this way was offered to dull the pain of execution.

15:24

The clothing of an executed man was the perquisite of the squad that killed him. Casting lots means drawing or throwing marked pieces, much like rolling dice, to decide who got what. The wording deliberately echoes Psalm 22:18, "They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture."

15:25

Hours were counted from sunrise, so the third hour is around nine in the morning. These were not clock times: the daylight period was divided into twelve parts, so an "hour" was longer in summer and shorter in winter, and a stated hour usually means the general part of the day.

15:26

Roman practice was to display the charge on a board, either carried in front of the condemned man or fixed above him on the cross, so that onlookers knew what the execution was for.

15:27

The King James "thieves" translates a Greek word for armed bandits or brigands. It was also the term Romans used for insurgents, so these may have been men involved in the same kind of uprising as Barabbas rather than simple burglars.

15:28

This verse is missing from the oldest surviving manuscripts of Mark and appears to have been added later by a copyist drawing on Luke 22:37. The words quoted come from Isaiah 53:12. Many modern Bibles print the chapter without it, which is why verse numbers sometimes appear to skip.

15:29

Shaking or wagging the head was a recognized gesture of scorn, as in Psalm 22:7. The remark about the temple refers back to the accusation made at the trial in Mark 14:58.

15:31

The teachers of the law were men who studied God's rules and taught them.

15:32

"Christ" is not a name but the Greek word Christos, which translates the Hebrew Messiah, "anointed one." Kings were anointed with oil at their accession, so the title is a royal one, which is why it stands here next to "King of Israel."

15:33

The sixth hour is around midday and the ninth hour around three in the afternoon. The word behind "the whole land" can mean the region of Judea or the earth as a whole; Greek does not settle which is meant.

15:34

Mark gives the cry in Aramaic, the everyday language of Jesus and his hearers, and then translates it for his Greek readers. The words are the opening line of Psalm 22. Manuscripts differ slightly over the spelling, some reading Eloi and others Eli.

15:35

The mishearing works in the original: "Eloi" sounds like "Eliyya," the Aramaic form of Elijah. Elijah was the prophet who, according to 2 Kings 2, was taken up to heaven without dying, and popular expectation held that he would return and come to the aid of the righteous in distress.

15:36

The "vinegar" of the King James is posca, a cheap sour wine mixed with water that was the ordinary drink of soldiers and workmen. Offering it was a way of reviving the man and keeping him conscious longer, not simply an insult. "Let alone" renders a word that can mean either "stop" addressed to the man with the sponge, or "wait and see" addressed to the bystanders.

15:37

"Gave up the ghost" is 1611 English for breathed his last. "Ghost" there means breath or spirit and carries no suggestion of an apparition.

15:38

The temple had two great curtains: one at the entrance to the sanctuary, visible from the outer courts, and an inner one screening the Holy of Holies, the innermost room that only the high priest entered, once a year. Mark does not say which one he means. "Rent in twain" is simply torn in two.

15:39

A centurion commanded roughly eighty men and would have been the officer in charge of the execution detail. The Greek has no definite article here, so "a son of God" is as possible a translation as "the Son of God." In the mouth of a Roman soldier the phrase was one used of emperors and of heroic men, and the Greek leaves the force of it open.

15:40

Magdalene means "from Magdala," a town on the Sea of Galilee. Joses is a Greek form of the name Joseph. "The less" translates a word meaning small, which could refer to age, to height, or to standing; it is probably used to distinguish this James from better known men of the same name.

15:41

"Ministered unto him" means they provided for him and looked after his practical needs, which in the ancient world included paying the costs of a traveling group. Luke 8:3 names women who supported Jesus out of their own resources.

15:42

The Sabbath ran from sunset to sunset, so Friday afternoon was the last chance to work. Preparation Day is the name for that Friday, when everything needed for the Sabbath had to be got ready in advance. Jewish law also required that the body of an executed man be buried the same day (Deuteronomy 21:22-23), which is why the burial is so hurried.

15:43

"Counsellor" means a member of the council of verse 1, the Sanhedrin. "Craved" in the King James means asked for or requested, with no sense of longing or begging. The boldness lay in the request itself: Rome normally left crucified bodies unburied as a warning, and asking for the corpse of a man executed for claiming kingship exposed Joseph as a sympathizer.

15:44

Pilate's surprise is the point: crucifixion usually killed slowly, often over a day or two, so death within a few hours was unusual enough to need checking.

15:46

Linen was the customary wrapping for a corpse. A rock-cut tomb was a chamber quarried out of a limestone hillside, with a shelf or niche inside for the body, and was expensive enough to mark Joseph as a wealthy man. The entrance was low and was closed with a large stone, sometimes a disc rolled in a groove and sometimes a shaped block wedged into place.

15:47

Mark names the two women again to record who saw the precise location of the burial. In a world without written death certificates, named eyewitnesses were how a claim like this was made checkable.

Where the Manuscripts Differ

Worth knowing before you stand up: a listener following a modern translation may not have this verse in front of them.

15:28

Most modern translations leave this verse out. It is in the Greek text the King James translators worked from, but not in the older manuscripts found since, so scholars generally take it as a copyist’s addition rather than part of the original.