Discovery BoxJohn 19:2-3 
Context19:2 The soldiers 1 braided 2 a crown of thorns 3 and put it on his head, and they clothed him in a purple robe. 4 19:3 They 5 came up to him again and again 6 and said, “Hail, king of the Jews!” 7 And they struck him repeatedly 8 in the face.
John 19:14-15
Context19:14 (Now it was the day of preparation 9 for the Passover, about noon. 10 ) 11 Pilate 12 said to the Jewish leaders, 13 “Look, here is your king!”
19:15 Then they 14 shouted out, “Away with him! Away with him! 15 Crucify 16 him!” Pilate asked, 17 “Shall I crucify your king?” The high priests replied, “We have no king except Caesar!”
1 tn Grk “And the soldiers.” The conjunction καί (kai, “and”) has not been translated here in keeping with the tendency of contemporary English style to use shorter sentences.
2 tn Or “wove.”
3 sn The crown of thorns was a crown plaited of some thorny material, intended as a mockery of Jesus’ “kingship.” Traditionally it has been regarded as an additional instrument of torture, but it seems more probable the purpose of the thorns was not necessarily to inflict more physical suffering but to imitate the spikes of the “radiant corona,” a type of crown portrayed on ruler’s heads on many coins of the period; the spikes on this type of crown represented rays of light pointing outward (the best contemporary illustration is the crown on the head of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor).
4 sn The purple color of the robe indicated royal status. This was further mockery of Jesus, along with the crown of thorns.
5 tn Grk “And they.” The conjunction καί (kai, “and”) has not been translated here in keeping with the tendency of contemporary English style to use shorter sentences.
6 tn The words “again and again” are implied by the (iterative) imperfect verb ἤρχοντο (hrconto).
7 tn Or “Long live the King of the Jews!”
sn The greeting used by the soldiers, “Hail, King of the Jews!”, is a mockery based on the standard salutation for the Roman emperor, “Ave, Caesar!” (“Hail to Caesar!”).
8 tn The word “repeatedly” is implied by the (iterative) imperfect verb ἐδιδοσαν (edidosan).
9 sn The term day of preparation (παρασκευή, paraskeuh) appears in all the gospels as a description of the day on which Jesus died. It could refer to any Friday as the day of preparation for the Sabbath (Saturday), and this is the way the synoptic gospels use the term (Matt 27:62, Mark 15:42, and Luke 23:54). John, however, specifies in addition that this was not only the day of preparation of the Sabbath, but also the day of preparation of the Passover, so that the Sabbath on the following day was the Passover (cf. 19:31).
10 tn Grk “about the sixth hour.”
sn For John, the time was especially important. When the note concerning the hour, about noon, is connected with the day, the day of preparation for the Passover, it becomes apparent that Jesus was going to die on the cross at the very time that the Passover lambs were being slain in the temple courts. Exod 12:6 required that the Passover lamb be kept alive until the 14th Nisan, the eve of the Passover, and then slaughtered by the head of the household at twilight (Grk “between the two evenings”). By this time the slaughtering was no longer done by the heads of households, but by the priests in the temple courts. But so many lambs were needed for the tens of thousands of pilgrims who came to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast (some estimates run in excess of 100,000 pilgrims) that the slaughter could not be completed during the evening, and so the rabbis redefined “between the two evenings” as beginning at noon, when the sun began to decline toward the horizon. Thus the priests had the entire afternoon of 14th Nisan in which to complete the slaughter of the Passover lambs. According to the Fourth Gospel, this is the time Jesus was dying on the cross.
11 sn This is a parenthetical note by the author.
12 tn Grk “And he”; the referent (Pilate) has been specified in the translation for clarity, and the conjunction καί (kai, “and”) has not been translated here in keeping with the tendency of contemporary English style to use shorter sentences.
13 tn Or “the Jewish authorities”; Grk “the Jews.” Here the phrase refers to the Jewish leaders, especially members of the Sanhedrin, and their servants (mentioned specifically as “the chief priests and their servants” in John 19:6). See the note on the phrase “Jewish leaders” in v. 7.
14 tn Grk “Then these.”
15 tn The words “with him” (twice) are not in the Greek text. Direct objects were often omitted in Greek when clear from the context.
16 sn See the note on Crucify in 19:6.
17 tn Grk “Pilate said to them.” The words “to them” are not translated because it is clear in English who Pilate is addressing.
