Chapter 19

¹Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. ²And the soldiers made a wreath out of thorns and put it on his head, and put a purple coat on him, and they marched up to him, ³saying,

“Long live the king of the Jews!” each one giving him a blow. ⁴And Pilate went outside again and said to the Jews,

“See! I will bring him out to you, to show you that I can find nothing to charge him with.”

⁵So Jesus came out, still wearing the wreath of thorns and the purple coat. And Pilate said to them,

“Here is the man!”

⁶When the high priests and their attendants saw him, they shouted,

“Have him crucified! Have him crucified!”

Pilate said to them,

“Take him yourselves and have him crucified, for I can find nothing to charge him with.”

⁷The Jews answered,

“We have a law, and by our law he deserves death, for declaring himself to be a son of God.”

⁸When Pilate heard that, he was more frightened than before ⁹and he went back into the governor’s house and said to Jesus,

“Where do you come from?”

But Jesus made no answer. ¹⁰Then Pilate said to him,

“Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that it is in my power to release you or to have you crucified?”

¹¹Jesus answered him,

“You would have no power at all over me, if it were not given to you from above. So you are less guilty than the man who betrayed me to you.”

¹²This made Pilate try to find a way to let him go, but the Jews shouted,

“If you let him go, you are no friend of the emperor’s! Anyone who calls himself a king utters treason against the emperor!”

¹³When Pilate heard that, he had Jesus brought out and had him sit in the judge’s seat in the place they call the Stone Platform, or in Hebrew, Gabbatha. ¹⁴It was the day of Preparation for the Passover, and it was about noon. And Pilate said to the Jews,

“There is your king!”

¹⁵At that they shouted,

“Kill him! Kill him! Have him crucified!”

Pilate said to them,

“Am I to crucify your king?”

The high priests answered,

“We have no king but the emperor!”

¹⁶Then Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.

So they took Jesus, ¹⁷and he went out carrying the cross by himself to a spot called the Place of the Skull, or in Hebrew, Golgotha. ¹⁸There they crucified him, with two others, one on each side and Jesus in the middle. ¹⁹Pilate had written a placard and had it put on the cross; it read “Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews.” ²⁰Many of the Jews read this placard, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. ²¹So the Jewish high priests said to Pilate,

“Do not write ‘The king of the Jews,’ but write ‘He said, I am the king of the Jews.’ ”

²²Pilate answered,

“What I have written, I have written!”

²³When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one for each soldier, besides his shirt. Now his shirt had no seam; it was woven in one piece from top to bottom. ²⁴So they said to one another,

“Let us not tear it, but let us draw for it, to see who gets it.” This was to fulfil what the Scripture says:

“They divided my garments among them,

And for my clothing they cast lots.”

This was what the soldiers did. ²⁵Near Jesus’ cross stood his mother and her sister Mary, the daughter of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. ²⁶So Jesus, seeing his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing near, said to his mother,

“There is your son!”

²⁷Then he said to his disciple,

“There is your mother!”

And from that time his disciple took her into his home.

²⁸After that, Jesus, knowing that everything was now finished, to fulfil the saying of Scripture, said,

“I am thirsty.”

²⁹A bowl of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge soaked in the wine on a pike and held it to his lips. ³⁰When Jesus had taken the wine, he said,

“It is finished!”

Then bowing his head he gave up his spirit.

³¹As it was the day of Preparation for the Passover, in order that the bodies might not be left on the crosses over the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was an especially important one, the Jews asked Pilate to have the men’s legs broken and the bodies removed. ³²So the soldiers went and broke the legs of the first man and then of the other who had been crucified with him. ³³But when they came to Jesus they saw that he was dead already, and they did not break his legs, ³⁴but one of the soldiers thrust a lance into his side, and blood and water immediately flowed out. ³⁵The man who saw it testifies to it—his testimony is true; he knows that he is telling the truth—to lead you also to believe. ³⁶For this happened to fulfil what the Scripture says:

“Not one of its bones will be broken.” ³⁷Moreover, it says in another place,

“They shall look at the man whom they pierced.”

³⁸After this, Joseph, of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one, because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him remove Jesus’ body, and Pilate gave him permission. So Joseph went and took the body down. ³⁹And Nicodemus also, who had first come to Jesus at night, went, taking a roll of myrrh and aloes weighing about a hundred pounds. ⁴⁰So they took Jesus’ body, and wrapped it with the spices in bandages, in the Jewish way of preparing bodies for burial. ⁴¹There was a garden at the place where Jesus had been crucified, and in the garden was a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. ⁴²So because it was the Jewish Preparation day, and the tomb was close by, they put Jesus there.