Session 28: January 21, 2023
Scripture Reading: John 19:16b-30
So they took Jesus, 17 and carrying his own cross he went out to the place called “The Place of the Skull” (called in Aramaic Golgotha). 18 There they crucified him along with two others, one on each side, with Jesus in the middle. 19 Pilate also had a notice written and fastened to the cross, which read: “Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews.” 20 Thus many of the Jewish residents of Jerusalem read this notice because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the notice was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. 21 Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The king of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am king of the Jews.’” 22 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
23 Now when the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and made four shares, one for each soldier, and the tunic remained. (Now the tunic was seamless, woven from top to bottom as a single piece.) 24 So the soldiers said to one another, “Let’s not tear it, but throw dice to see who will get it.” This took place to fulfill the scripture that says, “They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they threw dice.” So the soldiers did these things.
25 Now standing beside Jesus’ cross were his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 So when Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing there, he said to his mother, “Woman, look, here is your son!” 27 He then said to his disciple, “Look, here is your mother!” From that very time the disciple took her into his own home.
28 After this Jesus, realizing that by this time everything was completed, said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty!” 29 A jar full of sour wine was there, so they put a sponge soaked in sour wine on a branch of hyssop and lifted it to his mouth. 30 When he had received the sour wine, Jesus said, “It is completed!” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Main Themes
[I am still working on the blog post.]
Historical Context: Roman Crucifixion
The latter half of chapter 19 describes the crucifixion of Christ, one of the most significant events in human history even without taking into account its religious implications. If its theology is true, then its significance is certainly without rival. Yet, I fear the story—gory and mystical as it is—barely fazes us. It is part of our cultural DNA. It’s too familiar, while yet remaining unexamined. In an attempt to bring some “newness” to the story, I will begin this session by reading an extended quotation from Tom Holland’s (the historian, not Spider-Man) Dominion. Tom Holland is not a Christian, yet he realized, to quote the books byline, “how the Christian revolution remade the world.” He has the best description of crucifixion and its first century cultural significance I have encountered. Without further ado, here is Tom Holland in the preface to Dominion:
No death was more excruciating, more contemptible, than crucifixion. To be hung naked, ‘long in agony, swelling with ugly weals on shoulders and chest’, helpless to beat away the clamorous birds: such a fate, Roman intellectuals agreed, was the worst imaginable. This in turn was what rendered it so suitable a punishment for slaves. Lacking such a sanction, the entire order of the city might fall apart. Luxury and splendour such as Rome could boast were dependent, in the final reckoning, on keeping those who sustained it in their place. ‘After all, we have slaves drawn from every corner of the world in our households, practicing strange customs, and foreign cults, or none—and it is only by means of terror that we can hope to coerce such scum.’
Nevertheless, while the salutary effect of crucifixion on those who might otherwise threaten the order of the state was taken for granted, Roman attitudes to the punishment were shot through with ambivalence. Naturally, if it were to serve as a deterrent it needed to be public. Nothing spoke more eloquently of a failed revolt than the sight of hundreds upon hundreds of corpse-hung crosses, whether lining a highway or else massed before a rebellious city, the hills all around it stripped bare of their trees. Even in peacetime, executioners would make a spectacle of their victims by suspending them in a variety of inventive ways: ‘one, perhaps, upside down, with his head towards the ground, another with a stake driven through his genitals, another attached by his arms to a yoke’. Yet in the exposure of the crucified to the public gaze there lurked a paradox. So foul was the carrion-reek of their disgrace that many felt tainted even by viewing a crucifixion. The Romans, for all that they had adopted the punishment as the ‘supreme penalty’, refused to countenance the possibility that it might have originated with them. Only a people famed for their barbarousness and cruelty could ever have devised such a torture: the Persians, perhaps, or the Assyrians, or the Gauls. Everything about the practice of nailing a man to a cross—a ‘crux’—was repellent. ‘Why, the very word is harsh on our ears.’ It was this disgust that crucifixion uniquely inspired which explained why, when slaves were condemned to death, they were executed in the meanest, wretchedest stretch of land beyond the city walls; and why, when Rome burst its ancient limits, only the planting of the world’s most exotic and aromatic plants could serve to mask the taint. It was also why, despite the ubiquity of crucifixion across the Roman world, few cared to think much about it. Order, the order loved by the gods and upheld by magistrates vested with the full authority of the greatest power on earth, was what counted—not the elimination of such vermin as presumed to challenge it. Criminals broken on implements of torture: who were such filth to concern men of breeding and civility? Some deaths were so vile, so squalid, that it was best to draw a veil across them entirely.
The surprise, then, is less that we should have so few detailed descriptions in ancient literature of what a crucifixion might actually involve, than that we should have any at all. The corpses of the crucified, once they had first provided pickings for hungry birds, tended to be flung into a common grave. In Italy, undertakers dressed in red, ringing bells as they went, would drag them there on hooks. Oblivion, like the loose earth scattered over their tortured bodies, would then entomb them. This was a part of their fate. Nevertheless, amid the general silence, there is one major exception which proves the rule. Four detailed accounts of the process by which a man might be sentenced to the cross, and then suffer his punishment, have survived from antiquity. Remarkably, they all describe the same execution: a crucifixion that took place some sixty or seventy years after the building of the first heated swimming pool in Rome. The location, though, was not the Esquiline, but another hill, outside the walls of Jerusalem: Golgotha, ‘which means the place of a skull’. The victim, a Jew by the name of Jesus, a wandering preacher from an obscure town named Nazareth, in a region north of Jerusalem named Galilee, had been convicted of a capital offence against Roman order. The four earliest accounts of his execution, written some decades after his death, specify what this meant in practice. The condemned man, after his sentencing, was handed over to soldiers to be flogged. Next, because he had claimed to be ‘the king of the Jews’, his guards mocked him, and spat on him, and set a crown of thorns on his head. Only then, bruised and bloodied, was he led out on his final journey. Hauling his cross as he went, he stumbled his way through Jerusalem, a spectacle and an admonition to all who saw him, and onwards, along the road to Golgotha. There, nails were driven into his hands and feet, and he was crucified. After his death, a spear was jabbed into his side. There is no reason to doubt the essentials of this narrative. Even the most sceptical historians have tended to accept them. ‘The death of Jesus of Nazareth on the cross is an established fact, arguably the only established fact about him.’ Certainly, his sufferings were nothing exceptional. Pain and humiliation, and the protracted horror of ‘the most wretched of deaths’: these, over the course of Roman history, were the common lot of multitudes.
Decidedly not the common lot of multitudes, however, was the fate of Jesus’ corpse. Lowered from the cross, it was spared a common grave. Claimed by a wealthy admirer, it was prepared reverently for burial, laid in a tomb and left behind a heavy boulder. Such, at any rate, is the report of all four of the earliest narratives of Jesus’ death—narratives that in Greek were called euangelia, ‘good news’, and would come to be known in English as gospels. The accounts are not implausible. Certainly, we know from archaeological evidence that the corpse of a crucified man might indeed, on occasion, be granted dignified burial in the ossuaries beyond the walls of Jerusalem. Altogether more startling, though—not to say unprecedented—were the stories of what happened next. That women, going to the tomb, had found the entrance stone rolled away. That Jesus, over the course of the next forty days, had appeared to his followers, not as a ghost or a reanimated corpse, but resurrected into a new and glorious form. That he had ascended into heaven and was destined to come again. Time would see him hailed, not just as a man, but as a god. By enduring the most agonising fate imaginable, he had conquered death itself. ‘Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth…’
The utter strangeness of all this, for the vast majority of people in the Roman world, did not lie in the notion that a mortal might become divine. The border between the heavenly and the earthly was widely held to be permeable. In Egypt, the oldest of monarchies, kings had been objects of worship for unfathomable aeons. In Greece, stories were told of a ‘hero god’ by the name of Heracles, a muscle-bound monster-slayer who, after a lifetime of spectacular feats, had been swept up from the flames of his own pyre to join the immortals. Among the Romans, a similar tale was told of Romulus, the founder of their city. In the decades before the crucifixion of Jesus, the pace of such promotions into the ranks of the gods had begun to quicken. So vast had the scope of Roman power become that any man who succeeded in making himself its master was liable to seem less human than divine. The ascent into heaven of one of those, a warlord by the name of Julius Caesar, had been heralded by the blaze across the skies of a fiery-tailed star; that of a second, Caesar’s adopted son, who had won for himself the name of Augustus, by a spirit seen rising—just as Heracles had done—from a funeral pyre. Even sceptics who scorned the possibility that a fellow mortal might truly become a god were happy to concede its civic value. ‘For the human spirit that believes itself to be of divine origin will thereby be emboldened in the undertaking of mighty deeds, more energetic in accomplishing them, and by its freedom from care rendered more successful in carrying them out.’
Divinity, then, was for the very greatest of the great: for victors, and heroes, and kings. Its measure was the power to torture one’s enemies, not to suffer it oneself: to nail them to the rocks of a mountain, or to turn them into spiders, or to blind and crucify them after conquering the world. That a man who had himself been crucified might be hailed as a god could not help but be seen by people everywhere across the Roman world as scandalous, obscene, grotesque. The ultimate offensiveness, though, was to one particular people: Jesus’ own. The Jews, unlike their rulers, did not believe that a man might become a god; they believed that there was only the one almighty, eternal deity. Creator of the heavens and the earth, he was worshipped by them as the Most High God, the Lord of Hosts, the Master of all the Earth. Empires were his to order; mountains to melt like wax. That such a god, of all gods, might have had a son, and that this son, suffering the fate of a slave, might have been tortured to death on a cross, were claims as stupefying as they were, to most Jews, repellent. No more shocking a reversal of their most devoutly held assumptions could possibly have been imagined. Not merely blasphemy, it was madness.
Even those who did come to acknowledge Jesus as ‘Christos’, the Anointed One of the Lord God, might flinch at staring the manner of his death full in the face. ‘Christians’, as they were called, were as wise to the connotations of crucifixion as anyone. ‘The mystery of the cross, which summons us to God, is something despised and dishonourable.’ So wrote Justin, the foremost Christian apologist of his generation, a century and a half after the birth of Jesus. The torture of the Son of the Most High God was a horror simply too shocking to be portrayed in visual form. Scribes copying the gospels might on occasion draw above the Greek word for ‘cross’ delicate pictograms that hinted at the crucified Christ, but otherwise it was left to sorcerers or satirists to illustrate his execution. Yet this, to many across the Roman world, was not as deep a paradox as perhaps it might have seemed. So profound were some mysteries that mortals had no choice but to keep them veiled. The naked radiance of the gods was far too dazzling for the human eye. No one, by contrast, had been blinded by the spectacle of the Son of the Most High God being tortured to death; but Christians, although accustomed to make the sign of the cross as a gesture of piety, and to contemplate with wide-eyed reverence the gospel accounts of their Saviour’s sufferings, seem to have shrunk from seeing them represented in physical form.
Only centuries after the death of Jesus—by which time, astonishingly, even the Caesars had been brought to acknowledge him as Christ—did his execution at last start to emerge as an acceptable theme for artists. By AD 400 the cross was ceasing to be viewed as something shameful. Banned as a punishment decades earlier by Constantine, the first Christian emperor, crucifixion had come to serve the Roman people as an emblem of triumph over sin and death. An artist, carving the scene out of ivory, might represent Jesus in the skimpy loincloth of an athlete, no less muscled than any of the ancient gods. Even as the western half of the empire began to slip away from the rule of the Caesars and fall to barbarian invaders, so in the eastern half, where Roman power endured, the Cross provided assurance to an embattled people that victory would ultimately be theirs. In Christ’s agonies had been the index of his defeat of evil. This was why, triumphant even on the implement of his torture, he was never shown as suffering pain. His expression was one of serenity. It proclaimed him Lord of the Universe.
Carrying His Cross to Golgotha
Jesus carries his cross out of Jerusalem to a place called Golgotha. Jews and Romans alike performed executions outside of a town. The Romans made a spectacle of it, in which soldiers would march the prisoner while crowds of spectators gathered to watch.
John tells us that Jesus “carr[ied] his own cross.” The Roman custom was to have the prisoners carry their own patibulum—the transverse beam of the cross. This beam was later affixed over the upright stake (the palus, stipes, or staticulum). So, Jesus probably did not carry the entire cross as we normally see it depicted in paintings or movies. The Romans would often continue to scourge the prisoner. Given that Jesus had already been severely scourged, this may not have happened. If the lashings had continued, Jesus could have died before ever reaching the cross.
The Synoptics tell us that someone else carried the cross:
As they led him away, they seized Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country. They placed the cross on his back and made him carry it behind Jesus. (Luke 23:26)
The texts can be easily harmonized. After the severe scourging Jesus received, he was probably unable to carry the cross the whole way to Golgotha. The Romans quickly conscripted Simon of Cyrene to finish the job. No point in ruining a perfectly sadistic execution. The inference that Jesus was extremely weak is not mere speculation. Crucifixions lasted days with the criminal hanging on the cross. All four Gospels attest to Jesus dying quickly after being lifted. This shows he was mortally wounded well before the actual crucifixion.
Golgotha is probably at or near where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is today. As Britannica explains:
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also called Holy Sepulchre, church built on the traditional site of Jesus’ Crucifixion and burial. According to the Bible (John 19:41–42), his tomb was close to the place of the Crucifixion, and so the church was planned to enclose the site of both the cross and the tomb.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre lies in the northwest quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.
This is not mere reliance on the tradition that accompanies that church, but on historical evidence. The same evidence weighs against the famous “Garden Tomb”—which some Protestants believe to be Jesus’ burial site—from being the correct location.
Golgotha was also called “The Place of the Skull.” This could be from the shape of the terrain or, more likely, from the executions carried out there. Why do we, in the English-speaking Christian tradition, call this place “calvary”? As study note 56 in the NET tells us,
The Latin word for the Greek κρανίον (kranion) is calvaria. Thus the English word “Calvary” is a transliteration of the Latin rather than a NT place name (cf. Luke 23:33 in the KJV).
They Crucified Him Along Two Others
What is central to the Christian faith? The crucifixion of Jesus. Christians put crosses on their churches, wear crosses on their necks, and sing hymns like “The Old Rugged Cross.” Yet, in how much detail does the Gospel of John describe the crucifixion? In one. short. sentence.
There they crucified him along with two others, one on each side, with Jesus in the middle. (John 19:18)
The other Gospels hardly add much detail. Why? Because crucifixion was an unspeakably well-known horror at the time. It was the kind of event with which everyone in John’s audience would have been familiar, and the kind of event no one wanted to think about—particularly in relation to someone beloved, much less their Lord!
As explained by Tom Holland, crucifixions were intentionally horrific. They sent a public message. Executioners were given free reign to improvise and improve upon them. Sometimes the victim might be tied to the cross, other times they might be nailed to it. When nails were used, they were 5 to 7 inches long. They penetrated the wrist and sunk deep into the wood. The criminal would hang for hours or days. He (or sometimes she) would be unable to swat the flies off his wounds. He could not contain his bodily wastes. All while hanging from a cross anywhere from 6 to 10 feet in height.
Jesus was crucified with two others. At first, this may seem surprising. They appear nowhere else in the story. However, this is not an unlikely situation. Crucifixions were a form of government propaganda. What better time to broadcast the message than during a popular festival drawing thousands of people from all over the empire.
Jesus, King of the Jews
Pilate had a tablet made that displayed the charge against Jesus—“king of the Jews.” This would have been somewhat customary. During an execution, one of the soldiers might carry a tabula (tablet) declaring the charge and cause of execution. There is dark humor embedded in this scene. Pilate included the charge provided to him by the Jews themselves. He writes it in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. Remember that during this festival Jews from all over the empire and some Gentiles would travel to Jerusalem. Many of them may have been more fluent in Latin or Greek. So, Pilate advertises to all there: this is the king of the Jews being crucified.
Think of how the situation would have been perceived by those not “in the know.” The king of the Jews is being crucified by the Romans during the most important Jewish festival of the year, while a crowd of Jews—particularly the Jewish religious elite—cheer on. This would be confusing at best and treacherous at worst. It would have looked like the Jewish religious elite were siding with the Romans against the Jewish claim of sovereignty.
The chief priests protest. The tablet must be rewritten, they request. “Do not write, ‘The king of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am king of the Jews.’” Pilate gets the last laugh. The Jewish leaders may have involved him in a situation with which he wanted no connection; they may have twisted his arm by threatening to accuse him of treason to Caesar; but they certainly cannot direct Pilate’s execution of Jesus. “What I have written, I have written” he responds, taking his small revenge on them.
There is a subtle theological point made by the message on the tablet. Remember Jesus’ words in chapter 12:
And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. (John 12:32)
The message, at least on its face, seems serious: “king of the Jews.” And it is written not only in Aramaic (the language of the Jews) but in the “universal” languages. Greek was still the lingua franca and Latin was a close second. They were the languages spoken all over the world, or that’s what anyone in John’s audience would have thought.
The point is that the message of Jesus’ kingship is displayed for all the world to see, not just the Jews. Of course, there are many more languages and the Gospel message is still making its way to the whole world today, but the symbolism is powerful. Jesus died so that “everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16, emphasis added)
They Took His Clothes—Psalm 22
The soldiers proceed to take whatever few possessions Jesus had upon his arrest. Confiscating the goods of an executed prisoner was standard practice. The removal of clothing upon execution was also standard. The Romans executed prisoners naked. In the ancient world just as today, nakedness in the wrong settings can be cause of shame. For the Jews particularly, public nakedness would have especially shameful. Given that Jesus was crucified in a Jewish setting and during a Jewish festival, the Romans could have agreed to keep loincloths on the criminals.
The Roman army’s basic unit was a contubernium, eight men who shared a tent. Dispatching half a unit, i.e., four men, would have been common for a task such as crucifixion. (This was called a quaternion, a squad of four soldiers.) Hence the need to divide the garments among several soldiers. The NET translation says they “threw dice.” This is possible (that they used actual dice), but as translator’s note 74 to the NET explains:
Grk “but choose by lot” (probably by using marked pebbles or broken pieces of pottery). A modern equivalent, “throw dice,” was chosen here because of its association with gambling.
What the text calls a tunic would be an unfamiliar garment to us. Translator’s note 71 in the NET explains:
Or “shirt” (a long garment worn under the cloak next to the skin). The name for this garment (χιτών, chitōn) presents some difficulty in translation. Most modern readers would not understand what a ‘tunic’ was any more than they would be familiar with a ‘chiton.’ On the other hand, attempts to find a modern equivalent are also a problem: “Shirt” conveys the idea of a much shorter garment that covers only the upper body, and “undergarment” (given the styles of modern underwear) is more misleading still. “Tunic” was therefore employed, but with a note to explain its nature.
The main point John is making by describing how soldiers divided Jesus’ clothes among them is a prophetic one. He reminds us how Psalm 22 is being fulfilled. I quote the entire psalm below (for the sake of legibility, I format it as if it were prose).
For the music director, according to the tune “Morning Doe”; a psalm of David.
My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? I groan in prayer, but help seems far away. 2 My God, I cry out during the day, but you do not answer, and during the night my prayers do not let up.
3 You are holy; you sit as king receiving the praises of Israel. 4 In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted in you and you rescued them. 5 To you they cried out, and they were saved; in you they trusted and they were not disappointed.
6 But I am a worm, not a man; people insult me and despise me. 7 All who see me taunt me; they mock me and shake their heads. 8 They say, “Commit yourself to the Lord! Let the Lord rescue him! Let the Lord deliver him, for he delights in him.”
9 Yes, you are the one who brought me out from the womb and made me feel secure on my mother’s breasts. 10 I have been dependent on you since birth; from the time I came out of my mother’s womb you have been my God.
11 Do not remain far away from me, for trouble is near and I have no one to help me. 12 Many bulls surround me; powerful bulls of Bashan hem me in. 13 They open their mouths to devour me like a roaring lion that rips its prey.
14 My strength drains away like water; all my bones are dislocated. My heart is like wax; it melts away inside me. 15 The roof of my mouth is as dry as a piece of pottery; my tongue sticks to my gums.
You set me in the dust of death. 16 Yes, wild dogs surround me—a gang of evil men crowd around me; like a lion they pin my hands and feet.
17 I can count all my bones; my enemies are gloating over me in triumph. 18 They are dividing up my clothes among themselves; they are rolling dice [literally, “casting lots”] for my garments.
19 But you, O Lord, do not remain far away. You are my source of strength. Hurry and help me! 20 Deliver me from the sword. Save my life from the claws of the wild dogs. 21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lion and from the horns of the wild oxen.
You have answered me. 22 I will declare your name to my countrymen. In the middle of the assembly I will praise you. 23 You loyal followers of the Lord, praise him.
All you descendants of Jacob, honor him. All you descendants of Israel, stand in awe of him. 24 For he did not despise or detest the suffering of the oppressed. He did not ignore him; when he cried out to him, he responded.
25 You are the reason I offer praise in the great assembly; I will fulfill my promises before the Lord’s loyal followers. 26 Let the oppressed eat and be filled. Let those who seek his help praise the Lord. May you live forever!
27 Let all the people of the earth acknowledge the Lord and turn to him. Let all the nations worship you. 28 For the Lord is king and rules over the nations.
29 All the thriving people of the earth will join the celebration and worship; all those who are descending into the grave will bow before him, including those who cannot preserve their lives.
30 A whole generation will serve him; they will tell the next generation about the Lord. 31 They will come and tell about his saving deeds; they will tell a future generation what he has accomplished.
Look, Here is Your Mother
Who is standing near Jesus as he is crucified? All the disciples except the “beloved disciple” have deserted him. The women are the ones who remain with him. This is not entirely surprising from a historical standpoint. Roman soldiers would probably have permitted women followers to remain with the convicted criminal. There would have been many bystanders anyways, and women—even if followers of the criminal—may not have been viewed as active revolutionaries. In the Ancient world, women were allowed more latitude in mourning, and women were executed far less often. (Less often—but not never. The female followers of Jesus were still putting themselves at risk by openly supporting a crucified revolutionary.)
Only the Gospel of John mentions the presence of a male disciple at the cross. We have discussed the identity of the “beloved disciple” before. Christian tradition is that the beloved disciple is John himself (the author of this gospel). The fact that only John mentions his presence at the cross makes sense. The other gospel authors focus on the crucifixion itself. John adds a short description of a touching moment he had with Jesus and Jesus’ mother.
Caution, a short rant is incoming: Nowadays, there are different proposals as to the identity of the beloved disciple. But, frankly, nowadays we can’t even agree on what is a woman, so scholarly disagreement on any given point is not as weighty as it once was. Moreover, biblical scholarship is staunchly opposed to tradition. Scholars seem to go out of their way to suggest non-traditional hypotheses, even if they are quite weak or nonsensical. At any rate, I will proceed as if the beloved disciple is John. I don’t think the other proposals are even worth discussing, but may this short rant serve as a disclaimer that you should look into those if you are interest. Ok, rant over. Back to the text.
Remember that Jesus began his ministry at the behest of his mother, although she did not understand what she was requesting.
When the wine ran out, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no wine left.” Jesus replied, “Woman, why are you saying this to me? My time has not yet come.” (John 2:3-4)
In chapter 19, Jesus’ mother is present at the end of his earthly ministry.
Recall that Jesus is Mary’s oldest son, or only son if you take the Catholic approach. Joseph is absent from the narrative, which means he is probably deceased. This further means that the responsibility of caring for Mary fell on Jesus’ shoulders. We may have a difficult time understanding the legal position of women in ancient Jewish society, but I will attempt to provide a short explanation. They were “connected” to society through the men in their lives: as the daughter of a man, as the wife of a man, or as the mother of a man. A woman left with no man in her life, either as a father, husband, or son, was a woman that belonged to no household. And a woman without a household had no support group. She was most often destitute. (A younger woman might be expected to remarry or return to her father’s household if he was still living. With Mary, those choices were clearly not available.)
Consequently, the duty of a son, particularly the eldest, was to care for her aging parents, especially his mother. Moreover, from what we understand of Jewish custom, a dying man was allowed and encouraged to settle the legal status of the women for which he was responsible. A crucified man could make his testament even from the cross.
In the ancient world, both Jew and Roman, friendship could create a bond almost as meaningful as kinship. There are several ancient stories in which a dying man asks his friend to become like a son to the decedent’s mother. Consequently, the exchange between Jesus, Mary, and John would not have seem odd to an ancient audience.
Lastly, we need to understand that adoptive ties would have been taken seriously. A man adopting a woman as his mother is not mere poetry, but an honorable and serious commitment to care for her for the rest of her life.
It is with all that in mind that we need to read the conversation in verses 26 and 27. “’Woman, look, here is your son!’ He then said to his disciple, ‘Look, here is your mother!’” This was a serious command in which Jesus discharged his last duty—caring for his mother. There is a poetic beauty in that fact that as Jesus was crucified, he went to the grave with no earthly possessions. He had nothing to write a will about, except to settle the legal status of his mother. His mother is all he had and he gave her away as well.
One notable detail in this exchange is that Jesus entrusted his mother to his disciple, not to a sibling (whether full or half-sibling, if the Catholic approach is taken). At this point in the narrative, Jesus’ ministry has cost him his family. He is now closer to his faith family than he is to his “real family.” This would become a model for many Christians to this very day, when families would disown their own fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and children because they placed their faith in Jesus Christ.
I Am Thirsty
Even on the cross, Jesus is working. He is careful with his words in order to “fulfill the scripture.” He exclaims, “I am thirsty.” On its face, this statement is a visible symbol of Jesus’ mortality. The more biblically literate in John’s audience, however, would recognize a reference to either Psalm 69 or Psalm 22. Psalm 22 was quoted above. Here I quote Psalm 69 in its entirety, again in the form of prose for easier legibility:
For the music director, according to the tune of “Lilies”; by David.
Deliver me, O God, for the water has reached my neck. 2 I sink into the deep mire where there is no solid ground; I am in deep water, and the current overpowers me.
3 I am exhausted from shouting for help. My throat is sore; my eyes grow tired from looking for my God.
4 Those who hate me without cause are more numerous than the hairs of my head. Those who want to destroy me, my enemies for no reason, outnumber me.
They make me repay what I did not steal. 5 O God, you are aware of my foolish sins; my guilt is not hidden from you. 6 Let none who rely on you be disgraced because of me, O Sovereign Lord of Heaven’s Armies. Let none who seek you be ashamed because of me, O God of Israel.
7 For I suffer humiliation for your sake and am thoroughly disgraced. 8 My own brothers treat me like a stranger; they act as if I were a foreigner. 9 Certainly zeal for your house consumes me; I endure the insults of those who insult you.
10 I weep and refrain from eating food, which causes others to insult me. 11 I wear sackcloth and they ridicule me. 12 Those who sit at the city gate gossip about me; drunkards mock me in their songs.
13 O Lord, may you hear my prayer and be favorably disposed to me. O God, because of your great loyal love, answer me with your faithful deliverance. 14 Rescue me from the mud. Don’t let me sink.
Deliver me from those who hate me, from the deep water. 15 Don’t let the current overpower me. Don’t let the deep swallow me up. Don’t let the Pit devour me.
16 Answer me, O Lord, for your loyal love is good. Because of your great compassion, turn toward me. 17 Do not ignore your servant, for I am in trouble. Answer me right away.
18 Come near me and redeem me. Because of my enemies, rescue me. 19 You know how I am insulted, humiliated, and disgraced; you can see all my enemies. 20 Their insults are painful and make me lose heart; I look for sympathy, but receive none, for comforters, but find none.
21 They put bitter poison into my food, and to quench my thirst they give me vinegar to drink. 22 May their dining table become a trap before them. May it be a snare for that group of friends.
23 May their eyes be blinded. Make them shake violently. 24 Pour out your judgment on them. May your raging anger overtake them. 25 May their camp become desolate, their tents uninhabited. 26 For they harass the one whom you discipline; they spread the news about the suffering of those whom you punish.
27 Hold them accountable for all their sins. Do not vindicate them. 28 May their names be deleted from the scroll of the living. Do not let their names be listed with the godly.
29 I am oppressed and suffering. O God, deliver and protect me. 30 I will sing praises to God’s name. I will magnify him as I give him thanks. 31 That will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hooves.
32 The oppressed look on—let them rejoice. You who seek God, may you be encouraged. 33 For the Lord listens to the needy; he does not despise his captive people.
34 Let the heavens and the earth praise him, along with the seas and everything that swims in them. 35 For God will deliver Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah, and his people will again live in them and possess Zion. 36 The descendants of his servants will inherit it, and those who are loyal to him will live in it.
So is Jesus’ thirst and vinegar drink a reference to Psalm 22 or Psalm 69? The Gospel of Matthew seems to connect Jesus’ statement with Psalm 69. In the Greek, Matthew describes the drink as being mixed with cholēn, translated as gall or bile in English. This is the same Greek word used in the Septuagint translation of Psalm 69:21. Notice that Matthew probably based his gospel on the Gospel of Mark, which uses the word esmyrnismenon (myrrh), so using the word cholēn seems like a deliberate interpretation by Matthew. On the other hand, the Gospel of John (and the Gospel of Mark in verse 15:34) makes a reference to Psalm 22 just a few verses before. Interpreting the reference as connected to Psalm 22 shows more literary consistency with the rest of chapter 19. Of course, as your resident fence-sitter, I must also suggest that the reference could be to both psalms. Jewish understanding of prophecy fulfillment was much more fluid than our modern sensibilities would like.
Most importantly, both Psalms place us in the context of the suffering servant, persecuted for his service to God. One psalm ends in hope for the oppressed. The other in judgment for the oppressors.
Gave Up His Spirit
After fulfilling scripture, Jesus exclaims “It is completed!” and gives up his spirit. Allow me to begin the discussion of verse 30 with its latter half.
John has emphasized time and time again that Jesus is in control, not the Jews, not Pilate, not anyone else but himself. He goes to the cross willingly and deliberately. The second half of verse 30 is the culmination of that theme. Jesus does not simply die. He gives up his spirit. Even at the moment of death, he is in control. Jesus, being God himself, sacrifices himself willingly.
The verb used by John to refer to Jesus’ giving up of his spirit is paredōken. This is the same verb (although different voice) as the verb used twice in Isaiah 53:12 (paredothē). In Isaiah, the verb is used passively (he is “given up”), while in John the suffering servant is active (he “gives up” his spirit). Nonetheless, the reference is fairly clear, particularly when we consider than John has referenced Isaiah 53 before (John 12:38).
Isaiah 53 is a key passage to understanding the death of Jesus. As I did before with Psalm 22 and Psalm 69, I quote Isaiah 53 here as if it were prose:
Who would have believed what we just heard? When was the Lord’s power revealed through him?
2 He sprouted up like a twig before God, like a root out of parched soil; he had no stately form or majesty that might catch our attention, no special appearance that we should want to follow him. 3 He was despised and rejected by people, one who experienced pain and was acquainted with illness; people hid their faces from him; he was despised, and we considered him insignificant.
4 But he lifted up our illnesses, he carried our pain; even though we thought he was being punished, attacked by God, and afflicted for something he had done. 5 He was wounded because of our rebellious deeds, crushed because of our sins; he endured punishment that made us well; because of his wounds we have been healed.
6 All of us had wandered off like sheep; each of us had strayed off on his own path, but the Lord caused the sin of all of us to attack him.
7 He was treated harshly and afflicted, but he did not even open his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughtering block, like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not even open his mouth.
8 He was led away after an unjust trial—but who even cared?
Indeed, he was cut off from the land of the living; because of the rebellion of his own people he was wounded. 9 They intended to bury him with criminals, but he ended up in a rich man’s tomb because he had committed no violent deeds, nor had he spoken deceitfully.
10 Though the Lord desired to crush him and make him ill, once restitution is made, he will see descendants and enjoy long life, and the Lord’s purpose will be accomplished through him.
11 Having suffered, he will reflect on his work, he will be satisfied when he understands what he has done. “My servant will acquit many, for he carried their sins. 12 So I will assign him a portion with the multitudes, he will divide the spoils of victory with the powerful, because he willingly submitted to death and was numbered with the rebels, when he lifted up the sin of many and intervened on behalf of the rebels.”