Then Pilate ordered Jesus to be brutally beaten with a whip of leather straps embedded with metal. And the soldiers also wove thorn-branches into a crown and set it on his head and placed a purple robe over his shoulders. Then, one by one, they came in front of him to mock him by saying, “Hail, to the king of the Jews!” And one after the other, they repeatedly punched him in the face.
Once more Pilate went out and said to the Jewish officials, “I will bring him out once more so that you know that I’ve found nothing wrong with him.” So when Jesus emerged, bleeding, wearing the purple robe and the crown of thorns on his head, Pilate said to them, “Look at him! Here is your man!”
No sooner did the high priests and the temple guards see Jesus that they all shouted in a frenzy, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
Pilate replied, “You take him then and nail him to a cross yourselves! I told you—he’s not guilty! I find no reason to condemn him.”
The Jewish leaders shouted back, “But we have the Law! And according to our Law, he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God!”
Then Pilate was greatly alarmed when he heard that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God! So he took Jesus back inside and said to him, “Where have you come from?” But once again, silence filled the room. Perplexed, Pilate said, “Are you going to play deaf? Don’t you know that I have the power to grant you your freedom or nail you to a tree?”
Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me at all, unless it was given to you from above. This is why the one who betrayed me is guilty of an even greater sin.”
From then on Pilate tried to find a way out of the situation and to set him free, but the Jewish authorities shouted him down: “If you let this man go, you’re no friend of Caesar! Anyone who declares himself a king is an enemy of the emperor!”
So when Pilate heard this threat, he relented and had Jesus, who was torn and bleeding, brought outside. Then he went up the elevated stone platform and took his seat on the judgment bench—which in Aramaic is called Gabbatha, or “The Bench.”
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