Luke 23:33

‘And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the evildoers, one on the right hand and the other on the left.'

And finally they reached a place, aptly named The Skull, where the soldiers placed the crosspiece on the ground nailed Jesus to it by His hands and feet (John 20:25; Colossians 2:14, and see Luke 24:40) and then attached the crosspiece crosswise over a longer beam and nailed them together. After that they lifted up the whole and dropped it with a thud into a hole in the ground, regardless of the consequences for the victim, or for the effects on His hands and feet. The same process would also be carried out on behalf of the two insurrectionists. The description stresses His reckoning with the transgressors. Then they would be left to a slow, lingering death, a spectacle for all to see, bearing the shame of being accursed by hanging on a tree (Deuteronomy 21:22; Galatians 3:13). For the Jew it was the most dreadful of deaths both physically, and even moreso spiritually.

‘Called The Skull'. Matthew and Mark cite the Hebrew name, Golgotha. The Skull was probably the Greek name, possibly based on the shape of a hill or a mound in the vicinity. In a multi-lingual society different names would be given to places in a number of languages.

So Luke has traced the story of Jesus through from the moment of the announcing of the birth of John the Baptiser to the final crucifixion of Jesus, and it has now reached its lowest ebb. And in most life stories that would be the end. But for Jesus in His representative Manhood it was only the beginning. For Luke now closes off his Gospel with a message of hope, springing from the cross, expressed in the form of a final chiasmus, a chiasmus which leads from death to life, and which will result in the glorious triumphs of Acts. In the words of Jesus Himself, ‘Except a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides by itself alone, but if it die it brings forth much fruit' (John 12:24).