With chapters 14 and 15 we come directly to the passion story in Mark, although both Matthew and Luke record more parables first. This may be taken as showing that the teaching of Jesus in and around the temple was both more detailed and more extensive in those final days than we should gather from Mark alone. As usual, Mark uses ‘shorthand’, omitting what is not essential to his purpose. Also, as on other occasions (e.g. the cursing of the fig tree), he ‘sandwiches’ the story of the anointing at Bethany between his first mention of the plot against Jesus, and its carrying out (Anderson). This is not merely for dramatic suspense, although the love shown at Bethany will highlight the hatred at Jerusalem: the anointing at Bethany is, in a sense, an explanation of the death of Jesus.
Verse 1 introduces the most definite decision so far made by the religious leaders. Jesus must die, and as soon as possible; all that the chief priests now lack is an opportunity. Even their objection to this judicial murder at Passover time is not a moral hesitation because of its incompatibility with the nature of a religious ceremony, but purely prudential, lest a riot should break out among the excitable Passover crowds. The exact chronology of the crucifixion has long been in dispute, and the discussion has been revived in recent years. At least the crucifixion clearly took place in the general period of Passover, whether or no it corresponded in time to the actual moment when the Passover lamb was being killed.2
It has been seen in 11:11 that Jesus spent each night among unnamed friends in Bethany. John 12:1–8 makes it probable that this was the home of Eliezer (of which ‘Lazarus’ is the shortened Aramaic form), Miriam (‘Mary’) and Martha. But who then is Simon the leper, whose household it is, according to both Matthew and Mark? We may dismiss the suggestion that he was only a former owner of the house, giving his name to the building even when it passed to subsequent owners. Also it seems unlikely that Jesus was ‘eating out’ in another house that night. It may well be that the father of the house, though still alive, was a leper, and that control of his household had therefore passed, for all practical purposes, to his children. So Uzziah lived in splendid isolation in the basement of his palace, while his son Jotham ruled in his stead (2 Chr. 26:21).3
To equate this anointing at Bethany with that anointing which is described in Luke 7:36–50 raises at least as many problems as it solves: for one thing, the lesson drawn from the act is completely different, apart altogether from the timing. It is best, as in the case of several of the miracles of Jesus, to assume that we have separate accounts of different, though similar, incidents here. Schweizer points out how irregular the woman’s act was: but, if she was a member of the household, it was explicable. John is quite clear that the woman involved was Mary, although Mark may possibly have been ignorant of this. Mark very rarely records names in any case.
4–5. There were some: other evangelists (Matt. 26:8; John 12:4) are more specific than Mark is here, naming those who objected to the wastefulness of the woman’s act of devotion as being the disciples, among whom John mentions Judas specifically. That Mark cannot have been ignorant of this is shown by the fact that he moves straight from this incident to the offer by Judas to the temple authorities to betray his master (verses 10–11). Judas obviously thought that the attitude of Jesus to money was quite inconsistent and unrealistic. First had come the appraisal of the widow’s gift (12:43), and now came the acceptance of the sacrifice of the alabaster jar of ointment: it did not make sense.
Yet the attitude of Jesus both to this costly gift and to the widow’s slender gift was fundamentally the same. He regarded both gifts as priceless, but accepted such giving, whether directly to God or indirectly through him, as right and natural. This was a strange reversal of earthly values; and although Mark does not record either that Judas was the apostolic treasurer or that he was dishonest (John 12:6), it is understandable that on this basis, Judas felt misgivings. The world despised the widow’s mite as too small, while it criticized the anointing of Bethany as wasteful, exhibitionist and unrealistic. What the disciples said about the value of the ointment and the need of the poor was perfectly true, but Jesus looks for uncalculating devotion to himself rather than fine wisdom and balanced judgment in giving. The Lord, as Paul says, loves a cheerful giver, not a carefully calculating one (2 Cor. 9:7). A year’s wages were involved here (Anderson), however: it was no small sum to be written off. Perhaps the poverty of the disciples increased their indignation at what to them was a senseless waste of good money.
6. Their sharp criticism must have stung the woman like a whip-lash. Mark uses in verse 5 the verb enebrimōnto (they ‘reproached her’), which philologically means ‘snorted at her’, but in emotional content comes closer to modern English ‘glowered at her’. Jesus saw how troubled she was: she must have wondered whether after all, she had made a foolish mistake. Many of those similarly criticized for their own self-offering for Christ’s service know a similar qualm: and to them as well as to her comes the word of comfort. Ultimately Jesus looks, not at the human wisdom of our acts, but at the love to him which prompts them. Note that he does not commend her for practical wisdom, though he is quick in her defence against the taunts of the worldly-wise.
7. Here is the Christian scale of priorities, the ability to choose out of many pressing needs that which it is God’s will that we should seek to meet at one particular moment. We cannot in ourselves meet all the world’s needs, nor indeed is it God’s will that we personally should. This knowledge brings the tranquillity that characterized Jesus amid his manifold activity. Nervous strain is, after all, only a symptom of lack of faith in God, for it springs from the belief that nothing will be done by God unless we do it ourselves. The biblical picture is very different: one plants, another waters, but it is God who gives the increase (1 Cor. 3:6). The reference to the continual presence of the poor, in verse 7, is a quotation from Deuteronomy 15:11. It does not of course mean that we should accept poverty as an inevitable fact, and therefore do nothing to try to abolish it, for the whole Law is aimed at doing that. It is simply a practical recognition that, whatever we do, in this fallen world, there will always be some in need, whom we may and should help, as Deuteronomy also points out.
8–9. This does not necessarily mean that she had plumbed the whole secret of the coming death of Jesus, although already she may have heard some saying that had solemnized her. Jesus may have meant that, at his burial, loving hands would lavish costly spices on him, as Mary had done; and if it was not waste then, it was not waste now. Both at the beginning and end of the life of Jesus, costly treasures were lavished on him (Matt. 2:11): no doubt some thought that both gifts alike were wasted.
With that, Judas, or ‘Judah’ (we often forget the noble Old Testament associations of his name), went to the priests, determined to betray Jesus. The Bible has no hint of the view, popular in some quarters today, that Judas merely wanted to force the hand of Jesus, to make him exhibit his divine power, if he were unwilling to do it unprompted. The mention of a promised sum of money in verse 11 makes it clear that Judas was motivated by sheer love of money: he had apparently decided that there would soon be no more money to be gained by following Jesus, if Jesus continued to encourage ‘wastefulness’ like that of Mary’s. From that moment Judas, too, like the religious leaders, only sought an opportunity to betray him (cf. verse 1). The worldly-wise priests must have nodded their heads, confirmed in their beliefs; even among the disciples of this other-worldly Galilean, money talked loudly. If the name ‘Iscariot’ is indeed derived from the Aramaic sheqarya, ‘deceiver’ (see Anderson), it was peculiarly appropriate, as we think of this treachery. It is striking that Levi, the converted tax-collector, was not tempted by money, while Judas was: perhaps Levi had learned the emptiness of wealth long before, when he left it to follow Jesus.
The story of the finding of the upper room bears many resemblances to the finding of the donkey used at the triumphal entry. Jesus must have had many unknown disciples or friends, upon whom he could rely at such moments to render unquestioning service. This in itself should be an encouragement to those with small or prosaic gifts; the Lord has need of them, too (11:3). We have only one record in the whole gospel story of the use by Jesus of either donkey or room; but that one use was strategic, essential at the moment to God’s whole plan.
12. The plain reading of the text of Mark here would suggest that this was the very day on the evening of which the Passover was killed and eaten, but the question is a difficult one, especially in view of the Johannine evidence.4 In either case, both the last supper and the crucifixion were in the general context of Passover, and that is the only important point theologically, whether or not the last supper was a Passover meal.
13. Jesus here shows a combination of supernatural knowledge and practical preparation, as in the events surrounding the triumphal entry. In view of the fact that the upper room of verse 15 was ready for them, it suggests that Jesus had already made some prior arrangements to keep Passover at the home of this resident of Jerusalem. This was apparently a common practice of country pilgrims. But it needed supernatural foreknowledge, again of the kind manifested by Samuel and other prophets (1 Sam. 10:2–6), to tell his disciples of the signs that would lead them to the right house. Perhaps, even when Mark was writing, it was still unsafe or unwise to divulge the householder’s name; it must have surely been known to him, if the writer was indeed John Mark with his Jerusalem connections. It is over-exegesis to see, in the sign of a man doing what was normally a woman’s task (water-carrying), the mark of a disciple, or to see in the earthen ‘jar’ of water, rather than a ‘leather skin’, another ‘sign’ (Anderson). Jars were simply larger domestic containers than skins. In any case, the man was only a servant, the sign and the guide to the right home. It was with the householder that the disciples had to deal, and whether the servant was a disciple of Jesus or not, the master certainly must have been.
14–15. The very simplicity of the statement, the teacher says (Greek didaskalos, ‘teacher’, i.e. ‘rabbi’), shows that Jesus was too well known to the man to need further identification, and that his disciples were probably known by sight to him. It is just possible that this was in fact the home of John Mark in Jerusalem, for later Christian tradition held that the last supper took place there. That would then, by the usual rule of early anonymity, account for the namelessness of the householder in the Marcan account. See Acts 12:12 for later use of this house by the disciples as a place of meeting; but as the house is there named from Mary, we must then assume that John Mark’s father, presumably the householder, was dead by the date of Acts. The Passover, in origin a household festival (Exod. 12:1–12), at least since Josiah’s reign (2 Kgs 23:23), must be kept within Jerusalem itself, to allow for the slaughter of the Passover lamb within the temple precincts. By New Testament times it was held within strictly defined city limits; it could not be observed, for instance, in Bethany, which would otherwise have seemed an obvious choice, with its friendly household.
16. As in the case of the tethered donkey, one can almost hear the wonder of the disciples, in the wording of this verse; they found it as he had told them. But such divine provision did not absolve them from strictly practical duties such as preparing the lamb, the bitter herbs and the wine, that were needed for the meal, if it was Passover. There is no contradiction therefore between the first half and the second half of this verse: Jesus works in ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ ways alike, at his sovereign will.
All the gospels show the knowledge of Jesus that one of the twelve would betray him; the quotation in verse 18 of Psalm 41:9 makes plain some of the agony which this created in his heart. As so often, if we note the Old Testament Scriptures either quoted or paraphrased by Jesus, we can see by what biblical types and analogies he understood his own experience, and thus we, in our turn, can comprehend it more deeply.
18–20. One of you. Mark has already prepared us for the coming treachery of Judas (10), but the reference to the betrayer here is general, not specific (verse 18). Even if Jesus knew who his betrayer was, his disciples did not: it is interesting that they seem to have had no suspicion as yet that it was Judas, or they would not have asked the question in verse 19. In Mark’s account, Jesus does not further identify his betrayer: he merely reiterates the warning, making the deed more awful by emphasizing the closeness of the fellowship (verse 20). If this was indeed an actual Passover meal, the dipping bread in the same dish with me may even be a reference to the dipping of either bread or meat (so Lagrange) in the ‘bitter sauce’ that was a feature of the Passover meal. Does it refer to the ‘morsel’ of John 13:26?
21. The Son of man goes. Here again is a paradox. The Son of man will go, betrayed by a close friend, in fulfilment of prophetic Scripture; and yet his false follower is fully culpable for the act and cannot escape individual responsibility for what he does. Such an enigma cannot be resolved in human terms, but that does not mean that it cannot be solved at a higher level. But disciples are not necessarily called to the solution of this theological problem: instead they are called to the solemn heart searching of verse 19, ‘Is it I?’ (NIV ‘Surely not I?’) This is the ‘paraenetic’ or ‘pastoral’ approach so typical of Mark’s Gospel that it is hard to believe that it is not intentional: see Tannehill in IOM, approaching the question from the angle of literary criticism. Minear well points out that all of this incident is an illustration of Romans 5:8, ‘while we were still sinners, Christ died for us’, for it was for disciples as weak and sinful as this (18–21) that Jesus instituted that last supper.
Whether or no the Lord’s Supper was an actual Passover meal we cannot be sure; that depends on the exact time of the crucifixion. But even if the true Passover was taking place at the time when Jesus was hanging upon the cross, and the Lord’s Supper was therefore only a qiddūsh, a lengthened ‘grace’ before the ordinary meal of a religious fraternity, the thought of Passover would still have been prominent in the minds of the disciples.5 Verses 12 to 14, however, seem to make clear that in Mark’s mind this was an actual Passover meal.
22. This is my body. See Anderson for a reminder that Aramaic has no word for is: there is no thought therefore of material identity of body and bread.6 What then would the meaning of the words of institution have been for the disciples? Even if they failed to understand them at the time, they certainly remembered them and reproduced them later. If they pondered them at all, they must surely have seen a reference to the eating of ‘the Passover’, especially if the occasion was an actual Passover meal. If it was, it is interesting to note that Jesus did not use the flesh of the actual lamb or kid to symbolize his body, but only the broken bread. If it was not a Passover, then of course there would have been no lamb, but merely bread and wine throughout, and the question would not have risen. It is only in John’s Gospel that Jesus is described as ‘the Lamb of God’ (John 1:29), although ‘Christ our Passover’ is a fully Pauline phrase (1 Cor. 5:7), familiar to the church later (RSV, correctly, has paschal lamb).
In a sense, the taking, blessing and breaking of the bread is a deliberate recalling of the usual action of Jesus at the miracles of feeding (6:41; 8:6); but it is also a picture of his taking common human flesh, blessing it and allowing it to be ‘broken’ for mankind. To Belo, it is primarily a picture of Christ’s (and therefore the Christian’s) concern for the hungry of the world: but this, while true, by no means exhausts the meaning, missing, as it does, the deeper significance.
23. If this was a Passover meal, then the breaking of the unleavened biscuits (the māṣōt of Exodus 12:8) is an integral part of the Passover service, although the symbolism of the breaking is unexplained, in modern rites at least. The drinking of the wine is an equally integral part, although the two actions are not directly related, as they are here. Nowadays, four times during the service a cup of wine must be drunk, and three times bread must be broken, so it would be idle to try to equate the actions of Jesus with any particular one of these occasions. In view of the singing of the Hallēl immediately afterwards (verse 26), it would seem to have been an occasion towards the end of the meal, but we know too little of firstcentury Jewish liturgical practices to be dogmatic. The meaning of the action of Jesus would have been unaffected by its position in any case.
24. My blood. The wine stands for the shed blood of Jesus, which is described here as ‘covenant blood’, that is blood inaugurating a solemn agreement between God and people as that at Sinai did (Exod. 24:8). Whether or not new should be read here as an adjective qualifying ‘covenant’ is a question of little importance, for while this covenant is parallel to that inaugurated by Moses, it is obviously not the same covenant. Therefore, whether or not the word ‘new’ belongs here textually, it certainly belongs theologically. This ‘new covenant’ was a familiar prophetic concept in Old Testament times (Jer. 31:31; the ‘new heart’ and ‘spirit’ of Ezek. 37:26). ‘Covenant blood’ is already a slightly different concept from ‘passover blood’, so here again there is a creative fusion of ideas.
The wording for many is a direct link with the interpretation of the Messiah’s work and office in terms of Isaiah 53:12, in spite of Nineham’s view that this is only a Semitic commonplace. But Nineham is right in emphasizing that ‘many’ in Hebrew is ‘inclusive’, not ‘exclusive’ and therefore virtually equivalent to ‘all’ in English.
Christ’s death is here seen in terms of the Passover; it is seen as the inauguration of a new covenant; and it is seen as a sacrifice, presumably a sin offering (Isa. 53:10). All three are distinct, though all three are sealed by bloodshed; but, while it may be academically possible to isolate one concept from another for the purpose of study, yet to gain a clear picture of the work of Christ, we must combine all three into one.
25. This is the eschatological, the forward-looking, emphasis in the Lord’s Supper. There is no Lord’s Supper in heaven, for there it is ‘fulfilled’ in the marriage-feast of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9), the messianic banquet, to use Jewish terminology familiar from the parables (Matt. 22:2). In modern Judaism, even the Passover itself has been set in an eschatological context, though it has largely become a temporal and material eschatology. It is hard, however, to see how the physical history of the nation of Israel has any relevance here: the consummation of the kingdom of God lies in eternity, not in time.
At the end of the meal, the customary hymn, the Hallēl, or closing section of the Psalter, was sung, and the group went out, but this time not to Bethany. This was presumably because of the lateness of the hour, and because they wanted to remain near Jerusalem itself, over the actual festival season. Instead, they camped for the night among the trees of the Mount of Olives, as doubtless other pilgrims did also. Now the denial by Peter is prophesied, and the universal flight of the disciples, just as the betrayal had already been foretold: this conversation may well have taken place on the walk from the city to Gethsemane. This, says Schweizer, shows that God is still sovereign, even in this defection: all is foreknown, and in fulfilment of Scripture.
27–28. Jesus here used another quotation from Zechariah to illustrate the coming dispersal of his disciples, consequent on his death (Zech. 13:7), as well as their immediate flight from him in the garden. He saw this scattering, not as a result of persecution, but owing to a ‘stumbling’ on their part. Their faith will be staggered by all that happens to him, in spite of all his previous warnings. But this same chapter of Zechariah ends in a promise of mercy to the tested remnant; and so here, in verse 28, Jesus ends with yet another prediction of his resurrection, and a promise of a reunion in familiar Galilee. This promise in 16:7 will be taken up in the words of the angel to the women, after the resurrection.7
29. I will not. All the gospels show the same picture of impetuous Peter, full of false pride in his own fancied strength, and scorn for the weakness of the others; he had no difficulty in believing the words of Jesus to be true of his fellow disciples. But it is well to remember that all the other disciples protested their own strength too (31); they too were proud and self-confident. Peter may have distinguished himself from the others, but he has not succeeded in isolating himself.
30. As Peter had distinguished himself by boasting, so he was to distinguish himself by failure, so that others, as well as he, might learn distrust of natural strength. As often, Jesus adds a prophetic ‘sign’, for the cock crowing is more than a note of time, although it certainly includes that. This sign was doubtless given so that Peter might be reminded of the forewarning when the incident occurred (see verse 72). Only Mark records the second cock-crow (Schweizer). ‘Second cock-crow’ is a definite point of time in the early morning, very distinct from the sleepy first cock-crow at midnight; but whether Jesus meant this, or just two cock-crows in quick succession, it is idle to speculate. Cocks and hens were not supposed to be kept in Jerusalem, according to Schweizer: if so, the regulation was obviously in vain.
31. Peter’s guilt is certainly not minimized here, but Mark makes plain that it was a guilt shared by all the apostolic band: they all said the same. Peter was here, as always, only the representative disciple, the mouthpiece of the apostolic band, possibly because of his very impulsiveness and outspokenness. So it had been at Caesarea Philippi (8:29), that day when the blinding discovery made him the ‘proto-Christian’, and, in a sense, a ‘representative’ of the whole body (Matthew 16:17–18). This verse is a reminder that he is a representative of them in all their weaknesses as well as in their spiritual strengths. The walk down from the Old City to the Garden of Gethsemane would take some twenty minutes, as those will know who have joined the procession in Jerusalem which still winds its way down through the darkened streets each Thursday night. It is during this time that we must imagine the above conversations taking place.
They now move on into the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus, as it were, surrounds himself with two rings of supporters, to stand with him in his hour of need. At the outside, near the garden entrance, were the eight, for Judas is no longer with them; further in, the chosen three remained closest to him. To the three Jesus revealed something of the inner struggle that was his (verse 33). This is one of the points of his life at which we can see how real must have been the temptation in the wilderness (1:12–13), and why he rebuked Peter so sternly at the suggested avoidance of the cross (8:33). In the next verse (34) Jesus shows how deep and real is his anguish at this time: he is not portrayed as a Stoic who cannot suffer (Schweizer). Pagan philosophers may mock at this: to the Christian, it is the glory of the cross. The suffering of Christ is not ‘docetic’ and make-believe: it is real and costly.
34. The quotation from Psalm 42:5 or 11 is doubly suitable. This Psalm not only expresses the soul’s deep longing for God, but also contains in the last clause of each of these two verses an affirmation of faith, and a promise of God’s deliverance. So at the very moment when Jesus seems most perplexed, he is yet most conscious by faith of God’s ultimate vindication.
Watch. The verb used here, grēgoreite, may have reminded his disciples of the parable of the doorkeeper, told them just before (13:34–37), for the task of the doorkeeper was to watch, and Jesus has rounded off the parable by giving this as a general injunction to all his disciples. Minear reminds us that the Passover was to be ‘a night of watching’ (Exod. 12:42): this cannot have been far from their thoughts at this season of the Jewish liturgical year.
35. Standing was the usual posture for prayer in ancient times, with the hands lifted heavenwards (11:25); prostration in prayer was indicative of extreme spiritual anguish (e.g. Num. 16:22). If it were possible: here again is a divine paradox, seen in the repetition of the adjective dynaton, possible, in the next verse. All things are by definition possible to divine omnipotence; but it was not possible for Jesus to be the Christ, and yet to avoid drinking the cup. To do this would have been only a verbal, not an actual, possibility, for it would have been a contradiction in terms. So, in 15:32 the priests will challenge Jesus to come down from the cross, if he is the Christ. But, if he had come down from the cross, he could not have been the Christ, for the Christ, by definition, must suffer.
36. Only Mark here has preserved the intimate Abba, Father,8 from the original Aramaic prayer. Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6 show the quasi-liturgical use of this linguistic survival in the early church. As in the saying to James and John (10:38), cup is here a symbol of suffering, not of joy, although the two meanings are blended in the words of institution at the Last Supper. But the thought may well go far deeper than a mere general symbolism of suffering, to the particular Old Testament concept of the cup of the wrath of God, designed for the foes of God (Ps. 75:8), which Jesus was to drink at Calvary. The last clause, not what I will, but what thou wilt, is a summary of the earthly life of obedience of the Christ; such obedience was only perfected when it was ‘unto death’ (Phil. 2:8). This is not a helpless victim of fate decreed, but One who struggles towards God’s will (Anderson).
But what caused him such anguish? To speak of a natural human shrinking from betrayal, mockery, scourging and death, all heightened by full foreknowledge, is too shallow an answer, while these no doubt were factors. All of these Jesus had not only foreseen, but also foretold to his disciples (e.g. in 10:32–34). During all of his earthly life he had been conscious of a steadily mounting pressure, from which he was not finally released until the cry of triumph from the cross (15:37–39). Jesus had already used the parallel pictures of baptism and the cup to describe this inner constraint (Luke 12:50), as he had done in the conversation with James and John (10:38). We must seek the reason for his anguish in 15:34 in the experience of separation from God which was to come. This was the ‘cup’, this was the ‘baptism’, which he would have avoided if it had been at all possible.
37–39. Jesus’ words of rebuke, though applicable to all, are addressed directly to Peter, using Simon, his old ‘natural’ name (1:16), not ‘Cephas’ (Peter), his name ‘in grace’ (3:16). But they are not merely a rebuke: they are also to prepare him for the coming test in the judgment hall. But Peter and his fellows were warned in vain, for they failed to take the only steps which could have saved them from falling into temptation: earnest prayer and continual watchfulness (verse 38). This again is not arbitrary; such prayer is, at one and the same time, a confession of the weakness of our flesh (38) and a showing forth of the readiness of our spirit (38), joined with a realization of the power of God to whom we pray. So prayer is one expression of Christian faith, as obedience is another. Peter’s rebuke from Jesus is that he had not the strength to ‘watch’ even for one hour. The Greek verb ouk ischusas, could not, is the same verb as that used in 9:18 to describe the powerlessness of the disciples to heal the boy at the foot of the mountain of transfiguration, again on that occasion, as Jesus said, a powerlessness brought about by prayerlessness (9:29).
40. The language is again reminiscent of that used to describe the three at the mountain of transfiguration (9:6), where even talkative Peter was finally lost for words. Here in the garden, the shamefaced disciples were utterly abashed, and could find no words to say.
41–42. The mention of a third return of Jesus to the disciples gives the idea of finality and completeness; so there is a fitting finality in the words of his disciples, Are you still sleeping?9 Their failure has been complete, the crisis is over, and the betrayer is near. In the words of Jesus here there is no hint of bitterness, but there is a world of sadness. By the hour has come, Jesus means, not only that God’s time has come, but that the matter over which he had prayed has been settled (Lane), and God’s sovereign will has been revealed.
43. Judas came. Judas has not been specifically mentioned since verse 10, but verse 20 shows that he had still been present at the supper. We must assume that he had slipped away from the supper earlier that evening, presumably as soon as he had found out what place in Jerusalem was to be the camping place for that night. He had then waited until the group of disciples might be safely assumed to be asleep; and the verses above show how right Judas was in this judgment. He was not lacking in worldly wisdom; it was indeed through worldly wisdom as well as avarice that Judas fell (11). So, too, he had brought a well-armed company of temple police and younger priests, with swords and clubs respectively (not, with Anderson, a city mob of ‘toughs’), prepared for resistance to the arrest. Judas knew his impetuous fellow disciples; and Peter’s violent reaction showed how wise Judas had been in this also (47), although Mark does not actually give Peter’s name as the attacker.
44–45. Judas had even made the identification of Jesus by the temple police certain amid the uncertainties and half light of the garden with its olive trees. Jesus was to be marked out to the authorities by the usual kiss of peace and the salutation of Master, ‘Rabbi’, both natural signs between disciple and master. Here is the proof of utter moral blindness. Judas did not see the condemnation that would be eternally his for using the very signs of affection as a means of betrayal. His sole concern was that the arrest should go smoothly; and again, his wisdom and efficiency were the snares that caught him. The miracle is that Judas could live so close to Jesus for three years, and yet could steel his heart against him like this.
46. Seized him. As usual, Mark merely reports the blunt facts. The other gospels give a fuller account of what happened in the garden. Cranfield is right in saying that the traitor’s kiss had so imprinted itself on their memory that even Mark recounts it in detail, in contrast with his ‘scrappy’ description of other events. But it is typical of Mark to give only the ‘bare bones’ in a narrative: he is moving forward to the cross as quickly as possible.
47. Drew his sword. The disciple involved is anonymous here. But which of the disciples carried the ‘two swords’ mentioned in Luke 22:38? Peter, the two ‘sons of thunder’, and Simon the Zealot, would seem to be likely candidates: the disciple must therefore be one of them. Only John 18:10 finds it safe to mention Peter’s name,10 writing possibly after Peter’s death (John 21:19); he also is the only evangelist to mention the name of the servant concerned (John 18:10). In a gospel as early as Mark, such a circumstantial detail might have been dangerous. Mark does not mention either the healing of the ear or the rebuke to Peter, though he records the rebuke of Jesus to the armed arrest (48). To meet force with force was not the way of Jesus, even if it seemed natural both to the high priests and to Peter.11
48–49. This deserved rebuke must have stung the priests. They had not arrested him by day in the temple; not for fear of his disciples, but for fear of the crowds, unblinded by the prejudice that theological learning had brought, who would have protested against such an outrage (12:12).
Such a violent arrest of the Messiah was a fulfilment of many prophetic scriptures (49). The passage especially in mind here may be that quoted in Luke 22:37, ‘and he was reckoned with the transgressors’; especially since it is also taken from Isaiah 53:12. Those who have seen secret police at work in any part of the world will understand this passage well. Arrests are usually made at night, for two reasons; the victims are liable to be confused and offer less resistance, and the neighbours are not likely to gather and protest. Life changes little over the millennia.
50. Fled. So was fulfilled the prophecy of Jesus about their ‘stumbling’ (14:27, ‘fall away’). If they had accepted God’s way without stumbling, they might have grieved, but they would have stood faithfully by their Lord as he was arrested. But to do this is not ‘natural’, and that is why Christ’s way always makes natural humanity stumble (1 Cor. 2:14). Peter was probably representative of all the disciples, and the stumbling-block greater, in that he had always advocated the natural path for Christ (8:32). To be ‘offended in Christ’, to ‘stumble at him’, in biblical language, means to be utterly staggered by his ways, to lack the spiritual key that alone opens our understanding, something that God’s Spirit alone can bring (1 Cor. 2:10–16).
51–52. The Greek word neaniskos, young man, might denote one in late adolescence, in his teens. This man is often taken as being John Mark of Jerusalem, in whose family home the last supper may have taken place (as later tradition maintained), and where the later Christians certainly met for prayer and worship (Acts 12:12). This in itself is a reminder of the strong physical link and continuity between the world of the gospels and the world of Acts chapters 1–12, a factor which we often forget today. It is only after that date, with the great Gentile expansion of the church, that the break comes, a break which does not become final till the sack of Jerusalem in AD 70. Whoever it was, it was a lad, hurriedly aroused from sleep, with a sheet wrapped around him; presumably one of the frightened disciples had dashed back with the news to the house where the last supper had been held. Of course this detail may have simply been an irrelevant vivid memory, a trifling incident stamped upon the mind, not by its own importance, but by the importance of the events surrounding it. If the young man was indeed John Mark, his anonymity here is perfectly explicable. It might, it is true, be any other youth, and not Mark: but if so, it is hard to see either the reason for the mention, or who else it could have been. In any case, it must have been some young disciple, closely associated with Jesus, and probably also closely associated with the house of the last supper. It seems unnecessary and unfair to spiritualize an incident like this; it is stated as a plain fact, and as such it should be accepted, whatever spiritual lessons we may then draw from it.12 Some branches of Gnostics made great use of the incident, for their own heretical purposes, but we may safely reject their interpretation as utterly inconsistent with the gospel. The curious may consult IDBS on the matter. Any hint of homosexuality is impossible (Rom. 1:27).
53. In this account of Peter’s denial, the exact chronology of the trial is uncertain; it is even uncertain how many separate court hearings are recorded. As this does not affect the main issue, however, we may leave it for lengthier works to consider: at the very least, there is one appearance of Jesus before the high priest, and one before Pilate, recorded in Mark.
On the face of it, the time would still seem to be late at night. This impression is heightened by the mention of the fire in verse 54. Fires are for light as much as for heat in any simple society, even today. But Jerusalem lies nearly a thousand metres above sea-level, and spring mornings can be cold, so the fire in itself would not be conclusive evidence of time. True, Peter was warming himself at the fire (verse 54), but he seems to have been recognized by the fire-light (verse 67), so either explanation is possible. It is interesting to note (with Anderson) that Mark is once again ‘sandwiching’ the account of the fall of Peter between accounts of the trial of Jesus: the faithfulness of Jesus to death and the unfaithfulness of Peter are thereby contrasted vividly.
54. Followed him at a distance. Why? Was it out of mere curiosity (Matt. 26:58), or had Peter some wild idea of rescuing Jesus by force? His lies told to the girls in the courtyard need not have arisen altogether from cowardice; they might have been part of some perverted strategy, though Scripture admittedly gives no hint of this. But if this was so, he was still (as in 8:32) thinking human thoughts, and so still came under condemnation from Jesus (8:33). Nevertheless, this line of interpretation seems over-subtle, like the interpretation which would impute good, though warped, motives to Judas in his betrayal of Christ. Probably Peter had no plan at all, but was merely thunderstruck. From whatever motive he followed, he still stands condemned in Scripture as the one who denied Jesus after all his boastfulness. But he is also the one who will be singled out by the love of God to hear the good news of the resurrection (16:7). Even for Peter, there is to be a way back; for those later Christians who had denied their Lord in time of persecution, this would bring hope.
55. Sought testimony. This appears to have been a sort of preliminary fact-finding commission of the Sanhedrin.13 While they had long ago decided on the death of Jesus (3:6), they had still to formulate a legal charge, adequate to justify the death penalty; they had no desire simply to assassinate him, lest it provoke a bloody riot and consequent Roman action. A proof of their moral blindness was their failure to see that, in God’s eyes, there was no difference between the quick knife of the ‘sicarii’ or ‘dagger-men’, who abounded at festival time (see Acts 21:38), and such judicial murder as they contemplated. But even if the high priests could find some clear breach of the Torah, sufficient in Jewish eyes to warrant a death sentence, their task was still only half done. They also had to produce some political charge, adequate in Roman eyes to warrant the carrying out of the death sentence. Both Pilate (Mark 15:14) and Gallio (Acts 18:14–16) show Roman reluctance to condemn a provincial on purely religious grounds, especially when that religion was to them an offensive oriental cult, practised by an unpopular subject people. The Mishnah makes frequent bitter reference to the fact that the Romans had taken away the cherished power of capital punishment from the Jewish courts, even when dealing with their own people (cf. John 18:31, where this is made explicit).14 Especially in explosive Jerusalem at Passover time, with the city tense and full of milling throngs of nationalistic Jews, the Romans were on their guard. Such legal murder, especially if it provoked an uproar (14:2), might have dire consequences for the Jewish leaders, if not to the whole Jewish state (John 11:48), as they knew well.
56. For this whole section on the nature of the charges laid against Jesus, see the author’s The New Temple, where the question is discussed at some length. The trouble on this occasion was not lack of evidence, but too much; doubtless the money that bought Judas also bought these willing helpers, as can still be done outside the law courts of many another city. But, as usual, it was harder to agree on a consistent lie than to tell the simple truth. It is obvious that none of the early charges against Jesus about sabbath-breaking would hold water, or they would have been produced at once. Common Jewish equity would not allow someone to be put to death for healing a sick man on the sabbath day, any more than for watering his animals on the sabbath; and the Pharisees, grumble as they might, knew this too well to proceed with that charge.
57–59. Of all the synoptists, Mark contains the fullest version of the content of this charge.15 This accusation at least was a substantially true (if misunderstood) report of a saying not recorded in full by Mark, but preserved in John 2:19. Indeed, without the Johannine reference, we should be at a loss to explain the charge except as a pure fabrication. Mark does, however, contain a general prophecy by Jesus of the destruction of the temple (13:2), although not of its ‘rebuilding’ by him.
From John, we see that this saying, understood by the disciples only after the resurrection, was a reference to the dissolution and raising up again, three days later, of the Lord’s body; and from this springs the whole ‘New Temple’ concept. This metaphor was apparently freely used in Christian catechesis within the early church, of which space will not allow a full discussion here (e.g. Eph. 2:21). But if this charge against Jesus were taken literally, which is unlikely, it could be understood only as a claim to possess supernatural or even magical powers; and Jesus could not be condemned for that alone, for the source of his power might still be good or evil. The Talmud is full of stories of miracle-working rabbis. The bitter Pharisees might say that Jesus performed demon expulsions through Beelzebul (3:22), but the common people would scarcely believe that, let alone a charge that he was about to destroy and rebuild the temple by demonic powers. But such wild charges could not justify a legal death sentence, the more so if the same saying of Jesus contained a prophecy of rebuilding it.16 Also it is hard to see how anybody could have a taken such a saying literally. Herod had performed this vast task over a period of many years, demolishing Zerubbabel’s old temple down to ground level, and laboriously rebuilding, with great blocks of Herodian masonry, the temple which they saw now; could any Pharisee seriously believe that Jesus intended to repeat this process in three days?17
60. Even if the charges themselves could neither be agreed upon (59), nor substantiated, perhaps Jesus could be goaded by them into some utterance that would incriminate him. But he remained silent; there was no need for him to deny such flimsy charges. Even to the priestly court, they were worthless, except as make-weights. The silence of the Christ was in itself a prophetic sign (Isa. 53:7), as Peter saw later (1 Pet. 2:23).
61. The high priest must have known that Jesus had at least accepted the title of Christ (Messiah) from those around him (8:29), even if, by the ‘Messianic secret’, he had avoided making such a claim openly in presence of his enemies, until God’s time had come. Matthew 26:63 makes clear that this was no casual enquiry by the high priest, but a question put ‘under oath’, as it were, in the solemn name of God.
But would he deftly extricate himself from this ensnaring question, as he had from their well-planned trap about paying tribute to Caesar (12:14)? As with a modern Moslem, for Jesus to claim to be Messiah, the Anointed, God’s Prophet, would be no blasphemy, although it might be hotly contradicted and a sign would be demanded. But to claim to be the Son of the Blessed would be to them intolerable blasphemy, and, for such a blasphemy, he could be condemned to death by the Sanhedrin, as he indeed was, in spite of the doubts of Anderson as to whether this charge had sufficient weight (verse 64). The bitterness of their taunt at the cross (15:32) again shows that Messiahship was a well-known claim of Jesus, whether enunciated in these exact terms or not. At the cross, his Messiahship and kingship of Israel are mentioned by them, but not Sonship of God: that must wait for the declaration by the centurion (15:39), although Matthew 27:40 has it.
62. It may be significant that Jesus replies with the very Name of God, I am (Exod. 3:14), thus putting himself on an equality with God, which we know to have been a longstanding grievance on their part (2:7). In Luke, his answer is more ambiguous, though Jesus accepts the title ‘Son of God’ (Luke 22:70). But the phrase is reported only by Mark; even Matthew, with all his Jewish interests, does not record it.18 The form of the saying may therefore be more accidental than significant theologically, although John seems to develop the same point in his gospel on another occasion (John 18:6).
Jesus, while accepting the title suggested by the high priest, defines it further in terms of Son of man, his special self-chosen title. This is explained by another ‘creative fusion’ of Psalm 110:1 with Daniel 7:13. But, if the high priest had ears to hear, there was a solemn warning in this choice of a title, for this is the Son of man vindicated and enthroned, and returning in judgment, as Stephen saw him before his death by stoning (Acts 7:56). The priesthood stood on trial that day, although the execution of sentence was yet to come, on the terrible day in AD 70 when the priests were cut down by the Roman soldiers at the altar, as they steadily continued with their sacrifices to the last.
63. Tore his garments. This was the true condemnation of the religious leaders of Israel themselves: the high priest had asked not for information, but only to trap Jesus, for he must have known the claims long before he asked. Of course, had not such a claim been true, it would have been either madness (3:21) or blasphemy. But the condemnation of the high priest is not simply that he did not believe the claim, but that he did not even ask himself whether it was true or false. He was wilfully and culpably blind, for he had closed his eyes in advance to the truth.
The symbolic tearing of garments, by now traditional on hearing blasphemy, was in origin a sign of grief, as is plain from the Old Testament (e.g. Lev. 10:6). Here it had become distorted into a sign of joy at a wicked purpose successfully accomplished. Joyfully, the worthless witnesses are now dismissed: the high priest hastily calls the bêth dîn, or court, to be themselves witnesses, and he formally asks for their opinion (64). Just as formally they give it: Jesus of Nazareth is liable to the death penalty for blasphemy. The agony is that, had his claim been false, it would indeed have been a blasphemy of such magnitude as to deserve the death sentence; but what if he were right?
65. With this condemnation, away went all restraint; no longer did the judges trouble to observe even the outward forms of legal impartiality. Peter at least never forgot the patient endurance of Jesus amid the taunts and blows (1 Pet. 2:21–23), a fulfilment of Isaiah 50:6. The derisive call, Prophesy, is a further gibe at his claim to Messiahship, which would at the least involve prophethood, and had been shown above to involve Sonship of God. But ‘prophet’ was in any case a popularly used title for Jesus (6:15), even when he was not recognized as Messiah.
66–71. The whole account of Peter’s fall leaves the reader helpless, powerless to intervene, as the story develops, stage by stage, until Peter has passed the point of no return. His rash self-confidence and scorn of others (29); his failure to discipline himself in the garden (37); his panic and flight (50); his following at a distance (54); his close association with the enemies of Jesus (54): all these in turn made the actual denial the logical and indeed almost inevitable result. No doubt Peter was sincere in his initial desires and protestations (31), but the battle against temptation in the high priest’s palace had been lost long before; the time for a Christian to fight temptation is before it is encountered (38).
This girl (66–67) may have seen Peter before, in the company of Jesus, and so recognized him as one of the disciples; the Jerusalem bystanders (70) concluded that he must be one because of his Galilean accent. There were many Galileans in the capital at Passover time, but not among the servants of the high priest. The tragedy is that each step downward might have been a step upward; on each occasion, Peter was being forced to declare himself openly. On the first occasion, as Anderson says, he could have said ‘yes’ to the girl without too great risk. But Peter chose, deliberately, three times to say ‘no’; and so these promptings of grace became occasions of condemnation, as they must always be if they are refused.
It is the fashion nowadays to make excuses for Peter, as some do for Judas; and in so far as it means that we see our own weakness in him, that may be good. But unless we see the seriousness of his sin, we cannot understand the bitterness of his remorse (verse 72), nor the depth of his repentance, nor the grace of his restoration. Our task is not to analyse by what easy steps Peter’s fall came, but to realize the terrible nature of it.
72. It has been suggested above (on verse 30) that ‘second cock-crow’ is a definite point of time, not merely a prophetic sign. It denotes true dawn, as against the midnight of first cock-crow; 15:1, ‘as soon as it was morning’, supports this. But be that as it may, it was as a fulfilled sign that ‘second cock-crow’ recalled to the mind of Peter the words of Jesus; and so his cup of remorse was full. Broke down, in Greek epibalōn (for which see BAGD), could also be trans- lated ‘on thinking it over’, or ‘he set to and thought’, or simply ‘he began to think’.19 Broke down and wept, however, is certainly the best ‘dynamic equivalent’ of the whole phrase. ‘Pulling his cloak over his head’ is also possible, but less likely.
This reads as if the previous night’s proceedings had been only an attempt by a ‘steering committee’ to clarify the charge with the legal experts. Now a plenary session of the Sanhedrin formally bound Jesus, and brought him before the Governor. So begins, not the trial before Pilate, but the trial of Pilate, for he stands self-revealed as he attempts in vain, first to avoid the issue, and then to escape responsibility for the decision. But as in the case of Peter, Pilate is pushed inexorably to a verdict, and his verdict is condemned every time that we repeat in the creed the clause ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate’. The decision of the Sanhedrin had already been made, but Pilate was no more compelled to carry it out than Judas was compelled to betray Jesus.
The trial proper begins (as we can see from other gospels) with a confused mass of general accusations (many things, or many charges, 3 and 4), designed to paint Jesus in a black light politically as a revolutionary, a trouble maker, one who forbade the payment of Caesar’s taxes and one who claimed to be an earthly ruler himself. At this period the word basileus, king, was used generally of tetrarchs, subject kings, and the emperor (1 Pet. 2:13), although the latter might also be called sebastos, corresponding in meaning to the Latin augustus. The crime in this court would have to be one of sedition against Rome, and so any and every flimsy charge was added as a make-weight; but at the mention of the claim to be another petty Jewish kinglet, Pilate jumped to action.21 That charge might well have some substance, and, if so, imperial Rome would take notice of it. No ‘client king’ must rule except with Rome’s consent. To Pilate’s abrupt question, Jesus gave a tranquil answer which was a full admission (2), not evasive, as some translations would suggest. In Mark’s Gospel, the nature of Christ’s kingship is not defined, as it is in John 18:36, but it is just as central an issue in the crucifixion story (9, 12, 18, 26).
3–5. Still the list of charges continued, and still the Lord did not answer them, to the marvel of Pilate. It is at this point that Luke inserts the story of the despatch of the prisoner to Herod, under whose immediate jurisdiction Galilee lay (Luke 23:6). This episode is omitted in Mark, as not affecting the main movement of the trial. In fact, the whole account in Mark is brief and ‘telescoped’; were it not for the other gospels, we might well miss some of the complexity of the sequence of events. But Mark, for all his brevity, covers all the main points; Pilate is still cynical, still knows that the Jews accuse Jesus only out of envy (10), still desires to please them (15). Turbulent Palestine was to be the grave of many an ambitious administrator’s career; high priests had influence at Rome. Finally, Pilate knowingly frees the guilty, and condemns the innocent (15): that is his own condemnation.
6. There was still one possibility of escaping the responsibility of a final decision, by the time-honoured custom of releasing a political prisoner amid a time of general rejoicing. Many of the new nations of today have similarly celebrated their post-war independence by some kind of general amnesty of political prisoners. Verse 6, he used to release, however, suggests that either the custom had already ceased at the date of writing, or, more likely, that it was unknown to Mark’s Gentile readers, and therefore needed explanation. It is most unlikely that it was simply a practice unique to Pilate, which lapsed on his recall.
7. There is some MS evidence for the possibility of the criminal’s full name being ‘Jesus bar-Abba’, or possibly ‘bar-Rabba’. Jesus, or Joshua, was a common first-century Jewish name, so the reading may be correct. If the name was equally borne by both,22 it would heighten the contrast between the two figures. Some exegetes have made further play with the possible meaning of ‘bar-Abba’, ‘son of the father’, as another parallel. But as the Gospel of the Hebrews (quoted by Jerome on Matt. 27:16, the synoptic parallel to this verse) has the spelling ‘bar-Rabba’, ‘son of the great one’, the point seems untenable linguistically, however helpful devotionally, unless of course the second element here stands for a divine name. At all events, the man seems to have been a Zealot, captured after some brush with the authorities in which there had been deaths (7), and whose doom was thus sealed, but whose popularity with the nationalists was also assured. The outcome of such a choice was obvious even from the start; but the high priests made it doubly certain, by their open canvassing for Barabbas at this point (11).
8. Pilate may possibly have thought that this request would give him a chance to escape from a difficult situation. But Mark prefaces the verse by verse 7 to show that this way was already blocked; the chief priests already have another candidate for amnesty in view.
9–12. Attention is often drawn to the fickleness of crowds by comparing the cheering crowd at the triumphant entry (11:9–10) with the hostile courtroom crowd here. But, although such rapid change is quite possible, yet, right up to the trial, the popularity of Jesus with the crowd was undoubted (12:37). Indeed, it was precisely because of this popularity that the religious leaders dared not arrest him openly (14:2). The simple answer is that these were two different crowds involved. The crowd at the triumphal entry was made up of pious pilgrims, no doubt many from Galilee, and an equally pious group from Jerusalem which met them (John 12:12ff). These last may themselves have been earlier arrivals among the pilgrims. But, as Luther found, when he made his famous pilgrimage to Rome, piety is apt to flourish more away from a Holy City than in it; and doubtless there were many residents of Jerusalem who were far from pious. We know from the other gospels that, even among the ordinary people of Jerusalem, there was much strife concerning Jesus (John 7:43). This crowd at the trial must have been composed, in part at least, of the followers and servants of the high priests, seeing that all had moved apparently together from the high-priestly hall to Pilate’s palace. So we are probably dealing here with a mere section of the Jerusalem mob, a section specifically stated in verse 11 to have been deliberately inflamed by the high priests. Pious pilgrims had more to do at Passover time than to gape at Roman trials; indeed, even the priests themselves had scruples about incurring ceremonial defilement at such a time (John 18:28). As Schweizer says, Mark places the blame on the authorities for the crucifixion of Jesus. This includes both the Roman and Jewish authorities equally.
9–10. The perversity of human nature is clearly seen here. On the one hand, Pilate genuinely wishes to escape from a difficult position by releasing Jesus. On the other hand, he cannot resist ‘getting his own back’ on the Jewish leaders, who have placed him in such a difficult situation. His way of petty vengeance is to taunt them with the accusation of kingship admitted by Jesus (9 and 12), although he must have known how galling this would be to them (10). Yet this petty vengeance by Pilate only made it the more certain that what he most desired could not take place, for it only increased their bitterness against Jesus. We cannot say that such perversity is impossible, for it is a factor of daily experience; and the particle for in verse 10 makes nonsense unless we take some such common sense explanation. Pilate was no unnatural monster; he was a man in so many ways like all others. This is what makes his story such a warning, and also so credible.
13–14. Even allowing for a natural preference for the freeing of Barabbas, the ‘patriotic’ figure, it is hard to see why the crowd should then shout, demanding a Roman death for Jesus, unless the priests had deliberately inflamed them, perhaps by stories of his supposed blasphemies (cf. verse 11). Beheading was the Roman death for a citizen, as traditionally for Paul; crucifixion for a slave or foreigner, as traditionally for Peter (John 21:18); stoning was the normal form of Jewish death-sentence, from the earliest days (Josh. 7:25). After death by stoning, the criminal’s body might be displayed hanging upon a ‘tree’ until the evening (Josh. 10:26; Deut. 21:22–23). This to the Jew was a sign that the one who so died was under the wrath and curse of God (Deut. 21:23). So, in God’s providence, the cross, besides its Roman associations of shame and a slave’s death, had the deeper Hebrew meaning of God’s curse (Gal. 3:13), borne for us.
15. Nothing could be more cynical than the total disregard for truth and justice in this man who, knowing Jesus to be innocent (14), yet flogged and crucified the Son of God, simply through a desire to ingratiate himself with the Jews (15). As usual, Mark does not ‘highlight’ the picture, either by making excuses for Pilate, or by passing judgments on him. He simply states the facts; that is sufficient condemnation. No doubt Mark’s readers could think of parallels from their own experiences in time of persecution.
Now comes the callous mocking by the soldiers (see 14:65 for the mocking by the priests). We may note here, with many commentators, the extreme reserve and economy of language with which Mark describes the events of the crucifixion. There is neither description of, nor stress on, the physical sufferings of Jesus, great as they were: Mark knew that there was greater suffering at a deeper level to be endured on the cross.
16. The soldiers. Even we, who have grown used to atrocities in wars, may be surprised by the venom of Pilate’s men here, who may not have been full Roman citizens, but were certainly pro-Roman in sentiment. If the ‘Italian cohort’ (see Acts 10:1) was stationed in Judaea in those days, there must have been inhabitants of Italy among them, with the half-way gift of ‘Latin rights’. None of these long-service regulars would have been locally raised in Palestine. Many were doubtless wild auxiliaries drawn from other frontier provinces of the empire; the one common loyalty that bound them together was the Roman soldier’s oath to the Caesar and the Eagles. Towards the Jews, a despised subject people, they would have no sympathy.
The one charge that they understood (which was probably that under which in Roman eyes Jesus had been condemned) was that this prisoner claimed to be a king himself, and was therefore a potential rival to Caesar, despicable though he might seem to them. Hence the point of the rough mockery – the purple cloak, or scarlet cape of the Roman cavalryman, the crown, the sceptre, like those worn by the great commander-in-chief himself, to whom alone they bowed in homage (19). All condemned criminals were regarded as fair game for cruel mockery, but there was a special pent-up bitterness being released here. As Anderson sees, the parallels to this sort of mockery in secular literature do not disprove the historicity of the account here: rightly viewed, they only confirm it.
The Roman military exasperation against the ‘cloak and dagger’ patriots of first-century Judaism was growing, until it found terrible outlet in the massacres of AD 70, when easy-going Titus tried in vain to save prisoners from the wrath of the legionaries. Those who have seen ‘regular’ troops, long subject to such ‘pinpoint’ civilian guerrilla activities, will know the exasperation which it breeds in a regular army: hence the atrocities that so often occur.
Jewish nationalism led to the arrest of Jesus and Roman nationalism to his mockery and his cross: so deep in all things human is the ‘old nature’. Patriotism is not enough, as more than one patriot has found at the last; it is only too easy to give national or class struggles a quasi-Christian significance.
Simon of Cyrene might be taken figuratively as a picture of every disciple, bearing the Lord’s cross for him.23 His Greek name may mean ‘snub-nosed’ (the form simos certainly does), but as in the case of the apostle, it may represent the good Hebrew name ‘Simeon’ (cf. Acts 15:14 for the full form). If so, he was probably a Cyrenian Jew; they had their own shared synagogue in Jerusalem (Acts 6:9). He may have been a visitor to Jerusalem for the Passover, although his entry from the country at such an early hour might suggest that he was a resident of Jerusalem, as might the fact that his sons Alexander and Rufus seem to have been known personally to the early Christians (21), even if he himself was not. Certainly the indefinite Greek particle tina, ‘somebody called Simon’, does not suggest personal knowledge of Simon himself24 by the Christian community.
It is tempting, in view of the tradition that Mark’s Gospel originally took shape at Rome, to see a possible reference here to the Rufus of the Roman church mentioned in Romans 16:13, although there only the mother, not father, of Rufus is mentioned. Such an identification is too tenuous to press; and of Alexander we can say nothing, for none of the three New Testament candidates appears to be likely (Acts 4:6; 19:33; and 1 Tim. 1:20 with 2 Tim. 4:14). In any case, disciple himself or not, Simon was ‘conscripted’ (compelled) by the Roman government for this unpopular piece of state service, which acerbated feelings still further among the provincials.
Whatever the exact site of the crucifixion, the meaning of Golgotha is well translated by the Latin Calvarium, suggesting a smooth rounded hilltop devoid of vegetation, giving the appearance of a bald head, or skull. With deference to some topographers, who see plainly the two staring ‘eye sockets’ in ‘Gordon’s Calvary’ at Jerusalem as proof of identification, to Hebrew and Greek minds, the chief impression left by a ‘skull’ was its roundness and smoothness, to judge by etymology. In any case, the two ‘eye sockets’ of Gordon’s Calvary were probably only caused by later subsidence or collapse of the walls of water cisterns, cut into the rock on the site. The true site of the crucifixion is almost certainly that now occupied by Holy Sepulchre Church, although now altered beyond recognition: see Smith in IDB Sup.
23. The sour local wine which they gave him was ‘laced’ with myrrh; this would give it a bitter taste, but a soporific effect, and was an act of mercy. Jesus, however, would not take any such anaesthetic; all his faculties must be unclouded for what lay before him.26 Such drugged wine, tradition tells us, was provided by pious women of Jerusalem for condemned criminals, to dull the pains of execution: whether ‘incense’ (so the Talmud) or myrrh was used, makes little difference.
24. Although Mark makes no specific reference to the fulfilment of prophecy in this verse, yet his choice of wording shows that both he and the other evangelists see in this gambling by the soldiers for Christ’s clothing a fulfilment of Psalm 22:18. There was therefore a divine prophetic appropriateness, not only in the death of Jesus, but in its manner; and not merely in the manner of his death, but even in the incidents associated with it. This prophetic appropriateness the disciples apparently failed to see until after the resurrection; perhaps that is why Mark makes no reference to it here, although other evangelists will. It is nonsense to reject the story of the gambling, with some editors, on the grounds that we have no evidence for this method of disposing of the clothing of a condemned criminal, always by tradition the property of the executioners. How else would soldiers divide objects of unequal value, even today?
25. The exact time of the crucifixion is a problem; normally the third hour would be understood as nine o’clock in the morning. The three hours of darkness would then be from noon until three o’clock in the afternoon (33). If the day was reckoned as beginning at nine o’clock, then of course the darkness would have been from three o’clock to six o’clock: see commentators on John’s account for a full discussion of the point.
26. King of the Jews: this ironical and no doubt sarcastic wooden identification tag nailed to the cross was Pilate’s last revenge on those who had forced him into such a difficult position. To the disciples, it was no irony, but God’s own vindication of his Son, even in the hour of his death. Later, hymn writers delighted to use the concept of the King, crowned at last, reigning from the tree. For the apparent survival of fragments of an identification tag of this type, see under ‘Crucifixion’ in IDB Sup.: archaeological discovery of the skeleton of a crucified man has illustrated many points, including this.
27. This suggests that an execution had been impending in any case, and that Jesus was only taking the place of Barabbas, as the third victim. The just dies for the unjust, the innocent for the guilty (1 Pet. 3:18). Mark simply gives the general statement that even these two criminals heaped insults on Jesus (verse 32): for more detail, we must turn to other gospels.
As in the case of the ‘wise men’, the Old Latin text has preserved names for the criminals. Zoathan and Chammatha are one MS reading amid several; both names have a Semitic ring, so are possible. The Old Latin and the Old Syriac between them preserve several similar traditions which are undoubtedly early, but as to whose truth, there is no independent test. Nevertheless, there was no need to invent these names, any more than there was to invent names for the wise men (Matt. 2:1); so the survival of any name in a MS is an argument for its genuineness, even if the exact spelling is uncertain. Dysmas and Gestas are the names for the criminals preserved in the apocryphal gospels, but they, by definition, are less trustworthy.
28. The Scripture was fulfilled. This verse, with its quotation of Isaiah 53:12, is missing in many MSS. It is easy to see how it could have been added as an explanatory comment on the fact of the crucifixion of two criminals with Jesus, for besides being an undoubted truth, it takes up the reference made to Isaiah 53:12 by Jesus in the upper room, before the group left for Gethsemane (cf. for many, 14:24). Whether or not it should be read in the text here is not really important, for it corresponds to a deep theological insight to which allusion is also made in 14:48–49. Jesus was treated by the authorities as an evil-doer, true; but this was only an outward picture of the far deeper truth that he was treated as an evil-doer by God upon the cross for our sakes (2 Cor. 5:21). More, all of this was in God’s purpose: it was a ‘fulfilment’ of Scripture; as this verse says.
29–30. The shaking of heads in mockery, and the blasphemy, like the gambling for his clothing (24), are all described in the language of the Psalter. Again, it is the same Psalm as before which is used (Ps. 22:7), and by which the significance of these events is interpreted. The climax comes with the loud ‘cry of abandonment’ (34), which is again a direct quotation from Psalm 22:1. This further quotation of Psalm 22 shows that not only did the disciples use this particular Psalm as a means of understanding the suffering of their Lord; Jesus himself so used it, which is no doubt why the disciples extended its use. The mockery of the crowds, and especially of the priests, at the cross is the strongest possible psychological proof of the reality of the various claims of Jesus. They virtually prove the veracity of the saying about the destruction and rebuilding of the ‘temple’, for instance (29); that he spoke of saving others, that is, he used this particular word in connection with his work on their behalf (31); that he indeed claimed to be the Messiah, and Israel’s King (32). All these claims they undoubtedly disbelieved; but, if Jesus had never made them, then the taunt would have lost all its sting. Their basic error, as Schweizer sees, was that they assumed that the primary objective of Jesus would be to save his own life: they wanted some ‘superman’ exhibition of power, whereas to die upon the cross was his whole purpose.
31. There was prophetic truth in these bitter words. If Christ wanted to save others, then he could not come down from the cross; that temptation he had rejected first in the wilderness (1:13), then at Caesarea Philippi (8:33), and lastly in the garden of Gethsemane (14:36). To descend from the cross was not indeed a physical impossibility, but it was a moral and spiritual impossibility for the Messiah. If he did so, he would cease to be God’s Christ, treading God’s path of Messiahship; instead, he would become a mere human Christ, and such a Christ could never save the world. The only path by which to save others was to refuse to save himself: in a way totally unexpected by them, the priests were correct.
32. Their demand was impossible, for see and believe is not God’s order of working, but ours. It would be a reversal of the rule of faith, which is that ‘all things are possible to him who believes’ (9:23). It was impossible, too, because even if the miracle were to be granted to them, they still would not have believed. The resistance to God lay in their stubborn will, not in their intellect; they were determined not to believe, for their concern, like Pilate’s, was not with truth. Against such opposition, God’s judgment is clear (Rom. 1:18). Those who were crucified with him: Mark does not tell of the one terrorist who turned to God at the last, but he does tell of Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, who did believe (43).
As mentioned above (25), the usual interpretation of the indicated time would be that darkness – as in the plagues of Egypt, a sign of God’s curse (Exod. 10:22) – fell on the land from noon till three o’clock in the afternoon. Mark simply records darkness without specifying the cause: if there was a Passover full moon at the time, it could hardly have been a solar eclipse (see Morris, Luke). The exact cause used by God is of course immaterial: it is the symbolism which is important here. Darkness at noon, by its paradoxical nature, was a fitting sign for God the Creator to give to those who had rejected the light of the world. To Minear, the darkness signified the darkness of ‘the Day of the Lord’ (Am. 5:18): this is quite possible. Certainly, in Amos 8:9, there is a prophecy of the sun going down at noon, as a manifestation of God’s judgment. Was the darkness a sandstorm?
34–35. Linguistically, if sabachthani be read, with most MSS, this is not the Hebrew form found in the Old Testament, but the Aramaic form contained in the Targum, while the zaphthanei preserved by two MSS is the true Hebrew. Here we must tread reverently. As Anderson says, the gospel writers do not supply us with materials with which to study the psychology of Christ: but it seems probable that Jesus, in this hour, was staying himself upon the Scriptures, not in the sacred Hebrew, but rather in the colloquial paraphrase of his own Aramaic mother-tongue.27 This verse therefore belongs to those few where we have the very words of Jesus preserved; for, while he may well have conversed freely in colloquial Greek, yet with his disciples he presumably used Galilean Aramaic.28 There are similar linguistic variations on the form of the word used for God in the first part of the quotation, but unless the form Eli be read, not Eloi, it is hard to see how the crude pun upon the name Eliyahu (Elijah, 35) could be sustained. For the connection in scribal tradition between Elijah and the Messiah, see 9:11; the appearance of Elijah with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration (9:4) shows that this was no misconception.29
But what was the meaning of this cry? Had God indeed deserted him? No, clearly not, for this was God’s path, and not what the Son would have chosen for himself, if it had not been God’s will; this is the whole meaning of the agony in the Garden (14:36). More, it was God’s path as made plain to the Son from the commencement of his ministry, as the threefold prediction of his death to the disciples makes plain (see 8:31, 9:31, 10:33). It has been well said that the opening words of the cry, My God, are in fact in themselves an affirmation of faith.30 Since this same Psalm 22 from which they are quoted ends in a cry of triumph, it is reasonable to suppose that Jesus chose it with this in view also. Otherwise, there were many suitable passages (e.g. in Lamentations) which express the endurance of suffering without any final consciousness of victory, and any of these Jesus might well have used. So here we have the agony of one suffering the experience of abandonment by God, and yet certain by faith of ultimate vindication and triumph. But to what, and why, was he abandoned? To betrayal, mockery, scourging and death – yes: but to limit the explanation to these things would be superficial exegesis, for all of these he had faced and foretold for years. There was a far deeper spiritual agony which Jesus endured alone in the darkness, an agony which we can never plumb and which, thanks to his endurance of it on the cross, no created being need ever now experience. No explanation is adequate other than the traditional view that, in that dark hour, God’s wrath fell upon him. Because wrath is no abstract principle, but a personal manifestation, this means that his unclouded communion with the Father, enjoyed from all eternity, was temporarily broken. Some commentators have held that Christ suffered all the pangs of hell in that time; and if hell is at root a separation from God, then he certainly did. But on such mysteries Scripture is silent, and Mark tells us nothing here. If there was a barrier between the Father and the Son at that moment, it could only be because of sin; and the Son knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21), so it could only be our sin that cost him such agony. Here is the heart of the cross; here is the mystery which no painting or sculpture, with distorted face, can ever begin to show, because we fail to realize the true nature of the punishment for sin, as separation from God, and there-fore the true nature and depth of the agony borne by him. Both spiritual punishment and reward are ultimately to be seen in terms of God and our relationship to him, either utter severance from him or the closest communion with him; all else is consequent definition. This is not to minimize the seriousness of the concept of eternal punishment and reward; instead, it projects them on to a far wider screen, and gives them a moral depth unthinkable otherwise.
36. The vinegar (Greek oxos, Latin posca) was the sour wine not only of the soldier’s rations, but of everyday use.31 Those who travel or live in countries where such cheap wine is the common local drink, everywhere sold, will know it well. This is quite a different occasion from the offering of the drugged wine in verse 23 before the crucifixion. There may even have been a touch of rough kindness in the deed in spite of the coarse jest which accompanied it, especially if, as John 19:28 says, it was brought in response to a request from Jesus. The vinegar of this verse is taken from Psalm 69:21, another messianic Psalm which begins in sorrow and ends in triumph. This Psalm too must therefore have been in the mind of Jesus, and helps us to understand his thoughts at this time.
37. Loud cry. Whatever the motives of the bystander who gave the drink, Jesus certainly neither asked for it nor drank it through a mere desire to fulfil the wording of Scripture, but in order to gather his strength for the loud cry that followed, immediately before he died. Mark does not particularize the cry, other than noting how it rang out (37) and noting its effect on the Roman centurion on duty at the execution (39). Indeed, the only saying on the cross that Mark records in detail is the ‘cry of abandonment’ (34), in keeping with his usual clipped style. Schweizer points out how incomprehensible is this final cry if no explanation is given: but both the effect on the centurion and the evidence of the other gospels show that it was a victor’s cry of triumph. It would of course be most unusual for a dying man to shout with such strength, especially after an ordeal like crucifixion. For the wording of the cry, see the other evangelists.
38. This tearing in two of the great woven curtain of the temple, allowing anybody to look at will into the holiest place of all (the ‘Holy of holies’), is recorded in all three synoptic gospels. The symbolism of this is used later in the New Testament to illustrate the tearing down of the barrier between Jew and Gentile, in the broken body of Christ, by which all barriers between God and man were abolished (Heb. 10:20; Eph. 2:14). Both Jewish priesthood and Jewish temple had ceased to have any future religious significance, as shown by the tearing of this curtain, since now there was direct access for all to God through Christ. Jerome reports that the ‘Gospel of the Hebrews’ does not mention the torn curtain, but says that the great lintel of the temple cracked and fell.32 An earthquake could produce both results, and an earthquake is specifically mentioned by Matthew in this context (Matt. 27:51). Mark, as usual, simply mentions the fact of the torn curtain without any explanation, physical or theological.
39. For the puzzled Roman centurion, or non-commissioned officer, on duty with his squad at the cross, the evidence had been over-whelming. He must have watched and wondered until this point: now at last, he was convinced. What he, a pagan, really meant by the title the Son of God 33 has been much disputed. It may not have been by any means the unique position that such a title conveys to the Christian. But for Mark, writing for a Gentile public, this is one of the two high points of his whole gospel. As Jewish Peter had already recognized Jesus as Christ (8:29), so now a Gentile centurion had recognized him as Son of God: as Peter had denied him, so now the centurion would confess him.
Whatever of others, the later Christian church certainly saw in this utterance of the centurion a statement of faith, whether conscious or unconscious. Jesus demanded little knowledge and much faith as initial steps, in those who first came to him, so that the centurion may well have become a true believer later. So Christian tradition assumed; for, true or false, elaborate stories about this centurion circulated in later days. The tradition is not without suspicion, however, when we find him travelling overseas in company with Joseph of Arimathea, who also appears in this context (verse 43). That, however, does not affect the issue of the possible conversion of the centurion to Christianity.
40–41. Women looking on. Here Mark specifically mentions the group of women disciples, some of them wealthy, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, and had apparently supported the apostolic group from their worldly wealth (41). They were watching the cross from afar (40), as both safety and Jewish convention demanded. They seem to have corresponded roughly to the ‘inner circle’ of the twelve, as distinct from the larger number of ‘followers’ (men or women) in the metaphorical sense, who remained living at home. This same group of women was to share in the witness to the burial of Jesus (47), to bring loving gifts of spices to the tomb (16:1), and to hear the first news of the resurrection (16:5–6) and the command to witness (16:7). In the current debate within the church on the ministry of Christian women, it is interesting to see this group, roughly the counterpart of the twelve, already engaged in a distinct, but just as real, ministry. Mark, as often, does not theorize: he simply records the fact that two at least of these women were ‘witnesses’ of Christ’s death, his burial, and the empty tomb, even though official Judaism would not accept as legal the evidence of women (Lane). This cannot be accidental: God has accepted, indeed, chosen them as witnesses for the most important events of history.
The agony in Gethsemane is over, and the suffering on Golgotha past; now comes the burial in the tomb, described in these verses. True, the Easter story is not complete until that tomb is empty; but the great atoning sacrifice has already been made, and the dividing curtain has been torn apart. That was the meaning of the final cry of triumph from the cross (37). Now there is a lull after the storm: it is as though, after all the tenseness of the packed sequence from Gethsemane to Calvary, there was need for a pause in the narrative.
42. It was now the evening of Friday, as Mark carefully explains for the benefit of his Gentile audience. Quite irrespective of the question as to the relative timing of the Lord’s death and of the Passover, Jesus certainly died on the day before a Jewish sabbath (John 19:31). The time was now therefore just before sundown on Friday, when sabbath actually began for the Jew, since for them a day was reckoned from sunset to sunset. This accounts for the haste in removing the body of Jesus from the cross, lest the sabbath be profaned, if the body was left hanging there. A pious Jew would have removed a body at nightfall in any case (Deut. 21:23), especially in the case of one regarded by the public as a convicted criminal.
So, if the body of Jesus was hastily buried with temporary arrangements (verse 46), no proper burial would be possible until after sunset on the sabbath (Saturday night). In point of fact, no action was taken by the women until early morning on Sunday, for the various preparations would require both time and daylight to carry out. After sunset on Saturday, the spices and linen could be bought (16:1), for it is unlikely that costly spices were ready to hand in any but wealthy circles: but for the actual embalming, the women must wait for the dawn of Sunday (16:2).
While Mark does not record the ‘parable of Jonah’ (Matt. 12:40), he does record on three occasions the prophecy by Jesus that he would rise again ‘after three days’ (see the commentary on 8:31). To talk of ‘coincidence’ in timing, if one is already prepared to accept the far greater manifestation of divine power expressed in the actual resurrection, is ludicrous. There is no real difference between the ‘after three days’ of Mark (in the better text), and the ‘on the third day’ of the other evangelists: both can refer to the same period of time, by Semitic idiom.
But besides being a prophetic ‘necessity’ (for Hos. 6:2 was clearly seen by the early church as a prophecy of the resurrection), there were various other aspects making resurrection on the third day appropriate. The symbolism of the number three for completeness is clear, throughout the Bible. The ‘third day’ could thus be taken to denote perfection and culmination, almost inevitability in God’s working.
Any lingering suspicions, sometimes artificially revived by modern commentators, that Jesus had merely fainted, and was restored by the coolness of the tomb, would be banished by the length of such a period.
As to the reported Jewish belief that the soul lingered near the body for two days, but finally fled on or before the third day, it would only increase the evidential value of the resurrection as a miracle, by proving conclusively that this was indeed a true raising of the dead. The resurrection of Jesus was no mere reuniting of a hovering soul with a waiting body, but an act of mighty power (Rom. 1:4).
43. Joseph of Arimathea, mentioned in passing here, is often over-shadowed in our eyes by his fellow-councillor Nicodemus, who appears with him in the Johannine account (John 19:39). Nicodemus appears to be known only to John, however, while all the synoptists know of Joseph, the wealthy member of the Sanhedrin, although he appears only in the context of the burial of Jesus. The text, here, reading euschēmōn, respected, suggests an influential and highly honoured man: in popular parlance, it meant ‘well to do’ as well as influential.34 He was one yearning for, and looking for, the establishment of God’s reign upon earth, doubtless through the earthly Jesus of Nazareth. It showed real courage, for a man of his position to confess an association with a leader already fallen and thus apparently incapable of benefiting him further. But even Joseph’s loving care for the dead body of Jesus showed that he had no immediate expectation of a resurrection. The ‘linen shroud’ and the stone rolled against the door of the sepulchre are too final for that (verse 46). There may be, however, an implied contrast between the denial of Peter and the confession of Joseph.
Note the failure of the disciples to come forward even now, when all was over. The only exception is the group of women (47), who would prepare the spices for Christ’s burial, who were watching the entombment (47). Pilate would have almost certainly refused to grant the body to such humble disciples, for it was the property of the Roman government, as that of any other condemned and executed criminal was, while to a man of wealth and position like Joseph, he might well be prepared to hand it over as a favour. See Schweizer on the usual disposal of the bodies of those executed. Scientific investigation has now shown conclusively that the so-called ‘Turin Shroud’ cannot be the shroud mentioned here.
44. Pilate’s surprise at the news of the death was genuine; men might, and often did, linger for days under the torture of crucifixion, before dying of exposure and thirst under the pitiless sun, or of asphyxiation from the strained hanging position. In the granting of the request, is there perhaps some stirring of Pilate’s conscience? In the quick question as to whether the prisoner is already dead, is he trying to turn attention away from himself? Note the variant reading, whether he had been some time dead.
45. One wonders what answer the centurion gave to Pilate; but although it is tempting to speculate, it was probably only the bare military question and answer, certifying that death had actually taken place. A Roman sergeant had seen too many deaths to be in any uncertainty about such a fact. This, indeed, had been the very reason why a responsible officer had been posted with the squad on duty, in order to certify that the execution had been carried out as commanded. Common soldiers were not above the temptation to accept bribes on such occasions (Matt. 28:12–15).
46–47. Burial was necessary lest people said Christ’s was not a real death: hence the creed says with finality ‘dead, and buried’. Nevertheless, this burial was only temporary; Joseph must have hurriedly wound the linen shroud of fine gauze (Greek sindon), which he had just bought, around the body. He then laid the body in the tomb, hewn out of the rock near the site of the crucifixion, and rolled across the blocking stone that served as a door to secure it. After this, he must have departed in haste, for it cannot have been far from the legal commencement of the sabbath.
The kings of Judah had been buried in this way, in garden tombs and with spices (e.g. 2 Kgs 21:26), although the modern attributions to royalty of the old rock-hewn tombs of Jerusalem are by no means certain. Nevertheless, sufficient examples of such rock-hewn tombs remain from the turn of the first century to give a fair idea of the type that Mark is describing. The so-called ‘Garden Tomb’, near ‘Gordon’s Calvary’, while almost certainly not the tomb in question, reproduces very well the atmosphere and appearance, much more indeed than the traditional and probably correct site of ‘Holy Sepulchre’. Wherever the exact site of the tomb was, the two Marys saw where he was laid (47) and then returned home to prepare spices (16:1), ready to return after the sabbath and to complete the process of embalming the body; that was strictly a women’s task in Israel custom, not men’s, as in Egypt (as Herodotus records). It was very necessary that they should witness where Jesus had been buried, lest they be later accused of mistakenly coming to the wrong tomb on the morning of the resurrection, a charge made in ancient as in modern days by opponents. The witness of women might not be accepted in Jewish law, but it was essential to the plan of God: the disciples themselves could not act as witnesses, for they had all fled.35