Matthew 27: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chief priests and elders hand Jesus over to Pilate, the Roman governor; Judas returns the money, throws it down in the temple, and hangs himself, and the priests use it to buy the potter's field. Pilate questions Jesus, offers the crowd a choice between Barabbas and Jesus, washes his hands before them, and hands Jesus over to be nailed to a cross. Soldiers mock him, he is crucified at Golgotha between two robbers, darkness covers the land, and he dies; the temple curtain tears, the ground shakes, and tombs are opened. Joseph of Arimathea buries him in his own new tomb, and the priests ask Pilate to have it guarded.

Claim by Claim

1. 27:1
   • When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus.
   • Their counsel was aimed at putting Jesus to death.
2. 27:2
   • They bound Jesus.
   • They led Jesus away.
   • They delivered Jesus to Pilate the governor.
   • The King James names the governor Pontius Pilate.
3. 27:3
   • Judas had betrayed Jesus.
   • Judas saw that Jesus was condemned.
   • Judas was seized with remorse.
   • Judas brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders.
4. 27:4
   • Judas said he had sinned in betraying innocent blood.
   • They said, What is that to us?
   • They told Judas to see to it himself.
5. 27:5
   • Judas threw the pieces of silver into the temple.
   • Judas withdrew.
   • Judas went away and hanged himself.
6. 27:6
   • The chief priests took up the pieces of silver.
   • The chief priests said it was not lawful to put the money into the treasury.
   • They said this because the money was the price of blood.
7. 27:7
   • They took counsel together.
   • They bought the potter's field with the money.
   • The field was bought as a burial place for strangers.
8. 27:8
   • That field was called the Field of Blood.
   • The field is called that to this day.
9. 27:9
   • What was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was then fulfilled.
   • The saying was: they took the thirty pieces of silver.
   • The thirty pieces of silver were the price of him who was valued.
   • The children of Israel set that price on him.
10. 27:10
    • The saying continues: they gave the silver for the potter's field.
    • This was done as the Lord appointed the speaker.
11. 27:11
    • Jesus stood before the governor.
    • The governor asked Jesus whether he was the King of the Jews.
    • Jesus answered, You say so.
12. 27:12
    • Jesus was accused by the chief priests and elders.
    • Jesus answered nothing to the accusations.
13. 27:13
    • Pilate asked Jesus whether he did not hear how many things they testified against him.
14. 27:14
    • Jesus answered him not one word.
    • The governor marveled greatly at this.
15. 27:15
    • At the feast the governor was accustomed to release one prisoner to the crowd.
    • The prisoner released was the one the crowd wanted.
16. 27:16
    • At that time they had a notable prisoner.
    • That prisoner was called Barabbas.
17. 27:17
    • When they were gathered together, Pilate spoke to them.
    • Pilate asked whom they wanted him to release to them.
    • Pilate offered a choice between Barabbas and Jesus who is called Christ.
18. 27:18
    • Pilate knew they had delivered Jesus up out of envy.
19. 27:19
    • Pilate was sitting on the judgment seat.
    • Pilate's wife sent word to him.
    • She said he should have nothing to do with that righteous man.
    • She said she had suffered many things that day in a dream because of Jesus.
20. 27:20
    • The chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds.
    • They persuaded them to ask for Barabbas.
    • They persuaded them to have Jesus destroyed.
21. 27:21
    • The governor asked which of the two they wanted him to release to them.
    • They said, Barabbas.
22. 27:22
    • Pilate asked what he should do with Jesus who is called Christ.
    • They all said, Let him be crucified.
23. 27:23
    • The governor asked what evil Jesus had done.
    • They cried out all the more.
    • They kept saying, Let him be crucified.
24. 27:24
    • Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing.
    • Pilate saw that instead a tumult was arising.
    • Pilate took water and washed his hands before the crowd.
    • Pilate said he was innocent of this blood.
    • The King James has Pilate say he is innocent of the blood of this just person.
    • Pilate told them to see to it themselves.
25. 27:25
    • All the people answered.
    • They said his blood be on them and on their children.
26. 27:26
    • Pilate released Barabbas to them.
    • Pilate had Jesus scourged.
    • Pilate delivered Jesus to be crucified.
27. 27:27
    • The governor's soldiers took Jesus into the praetorium.
    • The King James calls the place the common hall.
    • They gathered the whole band of soldiers around him.
28. 27:28
    • They stripped Jesus.
    • They put a scarlet robe on him.
29. 27:29
    • They wove a crown of thorns.
    • They put the crown on his head.
    • They put a reed in his right hand.
    • They knelt before him.
    • They mocked him.
    • They said, Hail, King of the Jews.
30. 27:30
    • They spat on him.
    • They took the reed.
    • They struck him on the head with it.
31. 27:31
    • When they had finished mocking him, they took the robe off him.
    • They put his own clothes on him.
    • They led him away to crucify him.
32. 27:32
    • As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene.
    • The man's name was Simon.
    • They compelled Simon to carry the cross.
33. 27:33
    • They came to a place called Golgotha.
    • Golgotha is a place of a skull.
34. 27:34
    • They gave him something to drink mixed with gall.
    • The Greek says the drink was wine; the King James says vinegar.
    • Jesus tasted it.
    • Jesus would not drink it.
35. 27:35
    • They crucified Jesus.
    • They divided his garments among them.
    • They cast lots for the garments.
    • The King James says this fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet.
    • The King James gives the saying: they parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast lots.
36. 27:36
    • They sat down.
    • They kept watch over him there.
37. 27:37
    • They set the written charge against him above his head.
    • The charge read: This is Jesus the King of the Jews.
38. 27:38
    • Two robbers were crucified with him.
    • One robber was on his right.
    • One robber was on his left.
39. 27:39
    • Those who passed by reviled him.
    • They wagged their heads.
40. 27:40
    • They called him the one who destroys the temple and builds it in three days.
    • They told him to save himself.
    • They said, If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.
41. 27:41
    • The chief priests likewise mocked him.
    • The scribes and elders mocked him with them.
    • They spoke.
42. 27:42
    • They said he saved others.
    • They said he cannot save himself.
    • They said he is the King of Israel.
    • The King James phrases it as a condition: if he is the King of Israel.
    • They said let him come down now from the cross.
    • They said if he did, they would believe in him.
43. 27:43
    • They said he trusted in God.
    • They said let God deliver him now if God wants him.
    • They said he had claimed to be the Son of God.
44. 27:44
    • The robbers crucified with him reproached him in the same way.
45. 27:45
    • From the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land.
    • The darkness lasted until the ninth hour.
46. 27:46
    • About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice.
    • Jesus cried, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.
    • That means, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
47. 27:47
    • Some of those standing there heard this.
    • They said this man is calling for Elijah.
48. 27:48
    • Immediately one of them ran.
    • He took a sponge.
    • He filled the sponge with sour wine.
    • He put the sponge on a reed.
    • He gave it to Jesus to drink.
49. 27:49
    • The rest said to leave him alone.
    • They said to see whether Elijah would come to save him.
50. 27:50
    • Jesus cried out again with a loud voice.
    • Jesus gave up his spirit.
51. 27:51
    • The veil of the temple was torn in two.
    • The tearing went from top to bottom.
    • The earth quaked.
    • The rocks were split.
52. 27:52
    • The tombs were opened.
    • Many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.
53. 27:53
    • They came out of the tombs after his resurrection.
    • They entered the holy city.
    • They appeared to many.
54. 27:54
    • The centurion and those with him were guarding Jesus.
    • They saw the earthquake and the things that happened.
    • They were greatly afraid.
    • They said, Truly this was the Son of God.
55. 27:55
    • Many women were there.
    • The women were watching from a distance.
    • The women had followed Jesus from Galilee.
    • The women had ministered to him.
56. 27:56
    • Mary Magdalene was among the women.
    • Mary the mother of James and Joseph was among them.
    • The King James names the second son Joses.
    • The mother of Zebedee's sons was among them.
57. 27:57
    • When evening had come, a rich man came from Arimathea.
    • The man's name was Joseph.
    • Joseph himself had become a disciple of Jesus.
58. 27:58
    • Joseph went to Pilate.
    • Joseph asked for the body of Jesus.
    • Pilate commanded that the body be given to him.
59. 27:59
    • Joseph took the body.
    • Joseph wrapped it in a clean linen cloth.
60. 27:60
    • Joseph laid the body in his own new tomb.
    • He had cut the tomb out of the rock.
    • He rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb.
    • He departed.
61. 27:61
    • Mary Magdalene was there.
    • The other Mary was there.
    • The two were sitting opposite the tomb.
62. 27:62
    • The next day was the day after the Preparation.
    • The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate.
63. 27:63
    • They addressed Pilate as Sir.
    • They said they remembered that the deceiver had spoken while he was still alive.
    • They said he had said, After three days I will rise.
64. 27:64
    • They asked Pilate to command that the tomb be made secure until the third day.
    • They said this was lest his disciples come and steal him.
    • The King James says lest the disciples come by night.
    • They said the disciples might tell the people he had risen from the dead.
    • They said the last deception would then be worse than the first.
65. 27:65
    • Pilate said to them, You have a guard.
    • Pilate told them to go and make it as secure as they knew how.
66. 27:66
    • They went.
    • They made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.
    • They secured it with the guard.

Words Worth Explaining

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

27:1

The chief priests and elders made up the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council in Jerusalem. Under Roman rule that council could hold hearings and judge religious cases, but it could not carry out a death sentence itself, which is why the plan "to put him to death" means getting a Roman official to give the order.

27:2

Judea was under direct Roman rule, and the governor (Pilate held the post from about AD 26 to 36) kept the sole power to pass a death sentence. Whatever the Jewish council decided, an execution had to be obtained from him, which is why they hand Jesus over rather than act themselves.

27:3

Thirty silver coins, most likely Tyrian shekels, was the sum fixed in the law of Moses as compensation for a slave gored by an ox (Exodus 21:32), and roughly four months' pay for a laborer. The KJV "repented himself" here means he was seized with remorse and changed his mind; it does not carry the later religious sense of repentance.

27:4

"Innocent blood" is a set Hebrew legal phrase for the killing of someone who did not deserve to die, and the guilt that clings to those responsible. "See thou to that" means: that is your affair, you deal with it.

27:5

The word used for the place he threw the coins normally means the temple building itself, the sanctuary that only priests could enter, rather than the outer courts where ordinary people came. If that is the sense, Judas flings the money where only the priests can retrieve it.

27:6

The temple treasury held money dedicated to God. Money that had bought a man's death was regarded as tainted and could not be mixed with it, so the priests spend it on a public burial ground instead.

27:7

A potter's field was ground dug over for clay, left broken and useless for farming and therefore cheap. The "strangers" are foreigners or Jews from abroad who died in Jerusalem with no family plot of their own to be buried in.

27:8

"Unto this day" means at the time Matthew was writing, decades after the events, when the nickname was still attached to the place.

27:9

The quotation that follows matches Zechariah 11:12-13 most closely, with wording drawn from Jeremiah's visits to the potter and his purchase of a field (Jeremiah 18, 19 and 32). Ancient writers often named the more prominent prophet when combining passages, and some early copies of Matthew leave the name out.

27:11

"King of the Jews" is a political charge rather than a religious one. Claiming a throne in a Roman province meant rebellion, the one accusation a governor could not ignore. Jesus' reply, "You have said it," is deliberately slanted: it does not deny the word, but it puts the word in Pilate's mouth rather than his own.

27:12

"Thou sayest" is the King James for "You have said it." It is a way of agreeing without adding anything more.

27:14

"He answered him to never a word" is 1611 English for "he did not answer him a single word." Roman trials expected the accused to defend himself, and silence normally counted against you, which is why the governor "marvelled greatly" at it.

27:15

The feast is Passover, when Jerusalem filled with pilgrims and the risk of unrest was highest. A goodwill release of a prisoner at such a moment fits Roman practice of managing crowds, though no record of this particular custom survives outside the gospels.

27:16

The name Barabbas means "son of the father" in Aramaic. A number of early manuscripts call him "Jesus Barabbas," which would make Pilate's question a choice between two men named Jesus. Other gospels describe him as a rioter and killer, not a common criminal.

27:17

"Christ" is a title, not a surname. It is the Greek for the Hebrew "Messiah," meaning anointed one, the promised king descended from David.

27:19

The judge's seat was a raised platform set up in public. A Roman governor's ruling counted as official once he gave it from that seat, so the detail marks the trial as formally under way.

27:22

Crucifixion was a Roman punishment reserved for slaves, rebels and the lowest criminals, designed to be slow and public. Roman citizens were normally exempt from it. The crowd is calling for the death of a rebel against Rome, a sentence only Pilate could give.

27:24

Washing the hands in public was a recognized gesture of disclaiming responsibility for a death, set out in the law of Moses for a killing by an unknown hand (Deuteronomy 21:6-7). Pilate uses a Jewish sign to tell a Jewish crowd that the blood is not on him.

27:25

This is the form of words by which people accepted legal liability for a death: let the guilt for it fall on us. It echoes the language of Israelite law courts, where bloodguilt was said to rest on a household.

27:26

Roman flogging was carried out with a whip of leather thongs weighted with bone or metal, and regularly preceded crucifixion. It was severe enough to be a punishment in its own right, and some prisoners died under it.

27:27

The KJV's "common hall" is the praetorium, the governor's official residence and headquarters while he was in Jerusalem. The "band" is a cohort, on paper about six hundred men, though the word is often used loosely for whatever detachment was on duty.

27:28

The scarlet robe is most likely a soldier's cloak, pressed into service as a stand-in for the purple worn by kings and emperors. The whole scene that follows is a parody of a royal audience.

27:29

Each item mocks a mark of kingship: a wreath for the victor's crown, a reed for the scepter, a kneeling salute, and "Hail, King of the Jews" in place of the soldiers' "Hail, Caesar."

27:32

Cyrene was a city on the North African coast, in what is now Libya, with a large Jewish population; Simon was probably in Jerusalem for the feast. The word behind "compelled" is the technical term for official requisition, the legal right of Roman soldiers to force a civilian to carry a load for them.

27:33

Golgotha is the Aramaic word for skull, probably describing the shape of the outcrop. The familiar name Calvary comes from the Latin translation of the same word.

27:34

The drink is cheap sour wine. Gall is a bitter substance, and the mixture may have been offered to dull the pain. The wording also echoes Psalm 69:21, "they gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink."

27:35

The clothes of a condemned man were the customary perquisite of the soldiers who executed him. The quotation is from Psalm 22:18.

27:37

Roman executions carried a titulus, a board stating the crime, so that onlookers knew what the man was dying for. Here the charge is that he claimed a throne.

27:38

The KJV "thieves" translates a word meaning armed bandit or brigand, the same term used for insurgents who robbed on the roads and fought the authorities. It is not the word for a petty thief.

27:39

Shaking or wagging the head was a recognized gesture of scorn and gloating over someone's downfall. The picture comes from Psalm 22:7.

27:40

This refers back to the charge brought at Jesus' hearing before the council, that he had said he could destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days (Matthew 26:61).

27:43

The taunt closely follows the wording of Psalm 22:8, the same psalm Jesus quotes in verse 46.

27:44

"Cast the same in his teeth" is an old English idiom meaning to throw the same insults back at someone, to taunt him with the same words.

27:45

Hours were counted from sunrise, so the sixth hour is around noon and the ninth around three in the afternoon. The word translated "land" can mean the whole earth or one particular region, and the text leaves it open which is meant.

27:46

The words are Aramaic, the everyday language of Galilee and Judea, with the first two words in a form close to Hebrew. They are the opening line of Psalm 22, which begins, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

27:47

Elias is the KJV's spelling of Elijah, the prophet who was taken up to heaven without dying. "Eli" sounds close enough to the start of his name to be misheard, and many expected Elijah to return and come to the aid of the righteous in distress.

27:48

The sour wine is posca, a cheap vinegary drink carried by Roman soldiers and laborers. It is not an insult but the only drink at hand, and the sponge on a stick is how it could be reached up to a man on a cross.

27:49

"Let be" means "leave it alone, stop."

27:50

"Yielded up the ghost" is old English for gave up his spirit, that is, died. "Ghost" here means breath or spirit, not an apparition.

27:51

The temple had heavy curtains: one across the entrance to the sanctuary and one before the innermost room, the Most Holy Place, which only the high priest entered and only once a year. The text does not say which curtain is meant. "Rent in twain" means torn in two.

27:52

"Saints" translates a word meaning holy ones, used for God's people generally rather than a special class of them. "Slept" is the ordinary ancient idiom for died.

27:53

The holy city is Jerusalem.

27:54

Greek has no word for "a," and the phrase here lacks the definite article, so the soldier's words can be read either as "the Son of God" or as "a son of God," which in Roman ears would mean a divine or godlike man. The wording is genuinely open.

27:55

The word behind "ministering unto him" covers practical service and financial support. Luke 8:3 says such women paid for the group's needs out of their own money.

27:56

Magdalene means she came from Magdala, a town on the Sea of Galilee. Joses is a shortened form of the name Joseph. Zebedee's sons are James and John, two of the twelve.

27:57

Arimathea was a Judean town; its exact site is uncertain. Evening matters because the Jewish day ended at sunset, and this sunset began the Sabbath, when no burial work could be done. Everything had to be finished quickly.

27:58

"Begged" here simply means asked for, as a formal request. Bodies of the crucified were normally left hanging or thrown into a common pit, and handing one over for burial was a favor the governor could grant or refuse.

27:59

Jewish burial involved wrapping the body in linen, usually with spices laid in the folds. The cloth is described as clean, that is, fresh and unused.

27:60

Tombs cut into rock were expensive, and belonged to wealthy families. Inside was a chamber with a shelf or niche for the body. A large disc or block of stone was rolled or levered across the low entrance to keep out animals and robbers.

27:61

"Sitting over against the sepulchre" means sitting opposite the tomb, facing it. The detail matters because it makes them witnesses to exactly which tomb the body went into.

27:62

Preparation Day was Friday, the day for getting food and work finished before the Sabbath began at sunset. "The next day" is therefore the Sabbath itself, which makes this delegation's visit to Pilate unusual.

27:63

The KJV "deceiver" means one who leads people astray, a standard accusation against a false teacher. Days were counted inclusively, so "after three days" and "the third day" in the next verse mean the same stretch of time, not different ones.

27:65

Pilate's words can be read two ways, and the Greek allows both: "you have a guard at your disposal, take it" (a detachment of his own soldiers), or "you have your own temple guard, use it." The text does not settle which.

27:66

Sealing meant stretching a cord across the stone and fixing each end with clay or wax stamped with an official mark. It did not hold the stone in place; it made it impossible to move the stone without the tampering being visible.