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§46 Crucified, Dead, and Buried (John 19:16b–42)

The mention of the soldiers by the NIV in verse 16b makes the natural and probably correct assumption that it was the Roman soldiers of verse 23 who took charge of Jesus. Though the verb took charge is, strictly speaking, used impersonally (i.e., “they” took charge of Jesus, or Jesus “was taken into custody”; see the first note on 18:28), its close link with verse 16a suggests the continuing involvement of the chief priests (and their officials) in all that happened. Clearly, they are present, as is Pilate himself (vv. 19–22). The presence of Roman soldiers is not indicated until verse 23, where the reader finally learns that it was these soldiers who had actually nailed Jesus to the cross (in v. 18).

Verses 16b–22 are, in an important sense, an extension—the conclusion, in fact—of the running battle of wills between Pilate and the Jewish authorities from 18:28 to 19:16a. Yet one more time, thwarted in every effort to set Jesus free, Pilate makes his grim joke at the Jews’ expense—this time in writing. Ceremoniously, in three languages, for all the world to read, he places on the cross where Jesus is crucified the solemn inscription Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews (v. 19). He has lost the substantive point at issue, but he has won the war of nerves. When urged to modify the inscription so as to state only that kingship was Jesus’ claim, Pilate mocks the Jews’ traditional and well-known reverence for the written word with the terse reply: What I have written, I have written (v. 22). Jesus, “glorified” in the presentation as king at Gabbatha, the “Stone Pavement,” has now been “lifted up” as king—and so designated in writing—at the place of the Skull (… called Golgotha) (v. 17). The narrator’s careful concern about the time (v. 14) and the exact place (Gr.: topos, vv. 13, 17) of these great redemptive events may reflect the beginnings of Christian interest in holy places and in some kind of liturgical calendar.

Some details in vv. 16b–22 do not particularly accent themes from the preceding section but (like much of what follows in vv. 23–42) rest simply on the concern of Christian eyewitnesses (i.e., the beloved disciple and the women mentioned in v. 25) to preserve in the church’s memory impressions of things they had seen. As Jesus left the vicinity of the palace and the Stone Pavement, he was carrying his own cross (i.e., probably the crossbeam; in all likelihood, Golgotha was a customary place for crucifixions, where large vertical stakes were permanently in place). There is no interest in the Via Dolorosa as such, and therefore none in Simon of Cyrene, who, according to the Synoptics, was at some point conscripted to help Jesus carry the cross (Luke 23:26) or to carry it for him (Mark 15:21; Simon and his sons are evidently known to Mark’s readers). Instead, the action shifts immediately to the place of execution, where Jesus is crucified with two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle (v. 18). These men are not identified as “robbers” (Mark 15:27) or “criminals” (Luke 23:32), nor is any exchange recorded between them and Jesus. They are introduced solely to set the stage for the contrast between them and Jesus in verses 31–33: Their deaths are hastened by the breaking of their legs, but none of Jesus’ bones are broken (v. 36).

Aside from Pilate’s inscription naming Jesus King of the Jews, the narrator is less interested in the crucifixion procedure itself than in what happened during the time Jesus was on the cross, and even after his death, just before the removal of the victims’ bodies (vv. 23–30, 31–37). The story unfolds in a series of distinct scenes or vignettes, centering first on four Roman soldiers (vv. 23–24), then on Jesus and his closest loved ones (vv. 25–27), then on Jesus alone in his death (vv. 28–30), and finally on certain unique physical circumstances noted by an eyewitness in connection with his death (vv. 31–37). Three of these scenes (the first, third, and fourth) are explicitly understood by the narrator as fulfillments of Scripture (vv. 24, 28, 36–37).

Many commentators find symbolism in the reference to Jesus’ robe as seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom (v. 23). It is thought to represent either the unity of Christian believers (cf. 17:21, 23) or Jesus’ unique role as Christian high priest (cf. Josephus’ description of the Jewish high priest’s robe in Antiquities, 3.161). But the symbolism is doubtful. The narrator calls attention to the way the robe was woven only to explain why it was impossible to tear it without ruining the cloth. Because of this, the soldiers threw dice for it and so fulfilled Psalm 22:18 down to the smallest detail. The verse is poetry. Its two parts, “They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing” (Ps. 22:18, NIV, based on the Hebrew text), are an example of Hebrew parallelism; they say the same thing twice. But as the verse is quoted here, two distinct things are intended, and a distinct fulfillment is found for each:

They divided my garments among them … (fulfilled in v. 23a),

and cast lots for my clothing (fulfilled in vv. 23b–24).

Though the narrator understands perfectly well the nature of poetic parallelism, he takes the opportunity (as any rabbinic Jewish interpreter would do) to extract separate meaning from each part if it fits the historical information he is trying to explain. The same interpretive technique is found in Matthew 21:2–7, where Jesus used both a donkey and its colt in the triumphal entry, and in Acts 4:25–27, where David was understood to have spoken both of Israel and the Gentiles.

Beyond the interest in the fulfillment of Scripture, the significance of the first scene is that Jesus is shown having let go of his possessions, specifically his clothing. The second scene shows him letting go of his family, specifically his mother, whereas in the third scene he lets go of life itself. Exaggeration of the symbolic element is as much a danger in the second scene as in the first. The point is not that Jesus’ mother here becomes the spiritual mother of all Christians, or even that a true disciple of Jesus becomes his spiritual brother or sister (cf. Mark 3:33–35). The point is simply that Jesus, before he died, arranged for his mother and his closest disciple to care for each other and provide for one another’s needs. If there is symbolism here, it is a symbolism akin to that of the washing of the disciples’ feet (cf. 13:14, 34). Those whom Jesus has loved must fulfill that love by becoming servants to one another in mutual ministry—in this instance, the ministry of a mother and a son respectively.

In the third scene (vv. 28–30), Jesus voluntarily gives up life itself. The scene begins with the connective word “later” (Gr.: meta touto), suggesting that Jesus’ provision for the needs of his mother and his disciple was his final responsibility on earth. Jesus was said earlier to have “loved his own who were in the world” and to have “showed them the full extent of his love” (Gr.: eis telos, 13:1). His last expression of love now becomes the sign that all was now completed (or “finished”; Gr.: tetelestai, v. 28). Jesus therefore, knowing (Gr.: eidōs; cf. 13:1–3; 18:4) that the end had come, puts that knowledge into words: It is finished (Gr.: tetelestai, v. 30). Bereft of both possessions and loved ones, he is ready to let go of life itself.

Death’s certainty and immediacy are seen in close connection with Jesus’ experience of thirst (vv. 28–29). But was his thirst literal or metaphorical? Was he thirsting for water?

My strength is dried up like a potsherd,

and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;

you lay me in the dust of death.

(Ps. 22:15)

or for God?

O God, you are my God,

earnestly I seek you;

my soul thirsts for you,

my body longs for you,

in a dry and weary land,

where there is no water.

(Ps. 63:1)

First of all, there is surely an irony in the fact that he who claimed to satisfy all thirst (4:13–14) himself became thirsty for the sake of those in need (cf. 4:6–7). Yet however great Jesus’ physical experience of thirst may have been, his last, and deeper, personal need was the need to rejoin the Father (cf. 13:1, 3). It was his death, not merely his thirst, that would allow the Scripture to be fulfilled (v. 28), and it was not a particular passage of scripture that would come true, but the whole biblical testimony that “The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day” (Luke 24:46; cf. John 2:17, 22; 20:9).

Ironically, Jesus’ physical thirst was momentarily quenched by a sponge soaked in wine vinegar proffered to him by the Roman soldiers (v. 29), but no sooner was it quenched than he bowed his head and gave up his spirit (v. 30). In the end, every attempt of the religious authorities to kill him had failed. No one took his life, but of his own free will he gave it back to the Father who had sent him (10:18; cf. also Luke 23:46).

The clear reference to Jesus’ death in verse 30 means that, in one sense, all that is described in verses 31–33 is beside the point as far as Jesus is concerned. The purpose of breaking the victim’s legs was to hasten death so that the bodies could be removed before sunset (v. 31), but in Jesus’ case the procedure merely demonstrated to Jew and Roman alike that his death was outside their control.

The narrator, however, concludes once again that what he describes happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled. In this case, two specific passages are cited (vv. 36–37): Not one of his bones will be broken, probably a citation of Psalm 34:20, and they will look on the one they have pierced, a citation of Zechariah 12:10. The first summarizes verses 31–33, the second, verses 34–35. The purpose of verses 31–33 is to explain why none of Jesus’ bones were broken and why it is significant that they were not. The narrator had carefully prepared for this account by introducing as early as verse 18 the two others whose legs, in contrast, were broken in order to hasten their death. The purpose of verses 34–35 is to call attention to another remarkable occurrence after Jesus’ death that fulfilled scripture: the piercing of his body with a spear. When the soldiers discovered that he was dead, and as they were waiting for the two other victims to die, one of the soldiers idly plunged his spear into Jesus’ side to make absolutely sure of death in his case. The narrator states this brought a sudden flow of blood and water (v. 34b), and refers explicitly to the testimony of a particular eyewitness (v. 35). Who is this anonymous eyewitness, and why is the appeal to eyewitness testimony found in the Gospel only here? Certain similarities in language between this statement and summaries placed at the end of chapters 20 and 21, respectively, suggest that the eyewitness may be the narrator himself, for example:

The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true (19:35a).

He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe (19:35b).

This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true (21:24). But these are written that you may believe … (20:31).

The similarities are generally taken as evidence that the anonymous eyewitness of verse 35 is none other than the “beloved disciple” (21:20–23), himself the author and narrator of the whole Gospel. Yet the parallels prove little, for they rest simply on common characteristics of the author’s style. Jesus had spoken of John the Baptist, for example, in similar terms:

There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is valid … he has testified to the truth. Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved (5:32–34).

And another Johannine writing, 3 John, written from “the elder” to “my dear friend Gaius,” draws to a close with a commendation of a certain Demetrius:

We also speak well of him, and you know that our testimony is true (3 John 12).

These wider parallels suggest that verse 35 reflects merely the author’s normal way of speaking about valid testimony. The anonymous witness remains anonymous. Verse 37, with its apparent identification of those who look on Jesus with those who pierced him, could suggest that the eyewitness was one of the Roman soldiers, perhaps the very one who plunged the spear into Jesus’ side (cf. the officer who in Mark 15:39 confessed that Jesus “was really the Son of God!”). But again, there is no conclusive proof.

The most that can be said is that, if the anonymous witness is not the narrator himself (i.e., the beloved disciple), he is at any rate someone close to the narrator and well known to him, for the narrator says of this witness without hesitation or qualification, he knows that he tells the truth (v. 35b). Like the anonymous disciple of 18:15–16, he is an important source for one small part of the story, and he may (as most commentators suppose) be the author of the whole story.

But what exactly did he see that was decisive? The entire crucifixion scene? The two fulfillments of scripture in verses 31–37? The spear thrust? Or the consequent flow of blood and water from the wound in Jesus’ side? The accent is clearly on the latter two (v. 34). It is likely that the rest of Jesus’ disciples first learned of the spear wound—a key to their identification of the risen Jesus in 20:20a, 25, 27—through the testimony of the eyewitness mentioned here. His “seeing” not only fulfills scripture (v. 37) but lays the basis for their testimony, “We have seen the Lord” (20:25; cf. 20b).

Also of significance is the blood and water he saw pouring from the wound (v. 34). Jesus’ blood has been mentioned before in this Gospel only in 6:53–56, but neither the metaphor of drinking blood nor the association found there between blood and flesh plays any part whatever in the present scene. The references to blood in First John provide much closer parallels. The basic early Christian conviction that “the blood of Jesus … purifies us from all sin” is stated almost at the outset (1 John 1:7), whereas near the end of the book, blood and water (along with the Spirit) are seen together: Jesus “did not come by water only, but by water and blood” (5:6); “There are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement” (5:7–8). The testimony they bear is summed up in the words “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (5:11). The notion of water as a metaphor for eternal life is well developed in John’s Gospel (e.g., 3:5; 4:10–14; 6:35; 7:37–39; 9:7), and the purpose of the eyewitness testimony to blood and water from Jesus’ side is simply to emphasize that this eternal life is only possible because of Jesus’ death. Just as he quenches thirst by becoming thirsty, so he provides “living water” (4:14; 7:38) in no other way than by shedding his blood.

The account of Jesus’ burial (vv. 38–42) is a natural continuation of the events associated with the removal of his body from the cross (vv. 31–37). As far as Pilate was concerned, the granting of permission to Joseph of Arimathea to take charge of Jesus’ body was simply an extension of the permission he had already given to the Jews to remove the three bodies from Golgotha (v. 31). Joseph of Arimathea is a new character in the story but is mentioned in every Gospel and identified in Mark and Luke as a member of the Jewish ruling Council. It is not surprising that he appears here in the company of Nicodemus (v. 39), introduced in chapter 3 as “a member of the Jewish ruling council” (3:1) and “Israel’s teacher” (3:10). The description of Joseph as a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews (v. 38) corresponds to what the Gospel’s fragmentary information about Nicodemus suggests was true of him as well (cf. 2:23–3:2; 7:50–52). The narrator’s reminder that Nicodemus earlier had visited Jesus at night (v. 39; cf. 3:1) seems intended to confirm this impression. At least two who had “loved praise from men rather than praise from God” (12:43) were now, at last, coming out of the darkness of fear into the light of open identification with Jesus and those who mourned him (cf. 3:21).

The embalming of Jesus’ body was extraordinary. Nicodemus brought seventy-five pounds (see note) of a mixture of myrrh and aloes (v. 39), and the two of them wrapped up the body, with the spices, in strips of linen. The procedure and the use of spices may have been in accordance with Jewish burial customs (v. 40), but the sheer quantity of spices was not. Such extravagance recalls the wedding at Cana, where Jesus changed well over a hundred gallons of water into wine (2:6), and especially the whole pint of “pure nard, an expensive perfume” that Mary poured on Jesus’ feet at Bethany (12:3), to prepare him, as he said, “for the day of my burial” (12:7). Mary’s symbolic “embalming” of Jesus in advance is here matched by Joseph and Nicodemus in their preparation of his body now that the actual time of burial has come. Whether the extravagance is intended as a final testimony to Jesus’ kingship or simply as the expression of a love comparable to Mary’s, its effect is to place Joseph and Nicodemus once and for all in the circle of Jesus’ true disciples. Because of them, Jesus’ body was not taken to a common grave for criminals but was given its own tomb, a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid (v. 41), close to the place of execution and easily identifiable (vv. 41–42). The stage was set for the decisive events of Sunday morning.