Mark 15:15

And so Pilate One hope, however, the procurator still seems to have retained. Irresolution indeed had gone too far, and he could not retrace his steps. He thought he must content the people, and therefore released Barabbas unto them. But he imagined there was room for a compromise. Clamorous as was the crowd, perhaps they would be satisfied with a punishment only less terrible than the Cross, and so he gave the order that He, Whom he had pronounced perfectly innocent, should be scourged.

willing to content the people "willinge for to do ynowto þe peple," Wyclif. Here we have one of St Mark's Latinisms. The Greek expression answers exactly to the Latin satisfacere=to satisfy appease, content.

when he had scourged him Generally the scourging before crucifixion was inflicted by lictors (Livy, xxxiii. 36; Jos. Bell. Jud. ii. 14. 9; v. 11. 1). But Pilate, as sub-governor, had no lictors at his disposal, and therefore the punishment was inflicted by soldiers. Lange, iv. 356 n. The Roman scourging was horribly severe. Drops of lead and small sharp-pointed bones were often plaited into the scourges, and the sufferers not unfrequently died under the infliction. Compare the horribile flagellumof Hor. Sat. i. iii. 119; and "flagrum pecuinis ossibuscatenatum," Apul. Met. viii. That the soldiers could not have performed their duty with forbearance on this occasion, is plain from the wanton malice, with which they added mockery to the scourging.

to be crucified But the compromise did not content the excited multitude. The spectacle of so much suffering so meekly borne did not suffice. "If thou let this man go," they cried, "thou art not Cæsar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Cæsar" (John 19:12). This crafty well-chosen cry roused all Pilate's fears. He could only too well divine the consequences if they accused him of sparing a prisoner who had been accused of treason before the gloomy suspicious Tiberius ("atrocissimè exercebat leges majestatis," Suet. Vit. Tib. c. 58; Tac. Ann. iii. 38). His fears for his own personal safety turned the scale. After one more effort therefore (John 19:13-15), he gave the word, the irrevocable word, "Let Him be crucified" (John 19:16), and the long struggle was over. St John, it is to be observed, mentions the scourging as one of Pilate's final attempts to release Jesus. St Mark, like St Matthew, looks upon it as the first act in the awful tragedy of the Crucifixion. Both views are equally true. The scourging should have moved the people; it only led them to greater obduracy; it proved, as St Mark brings out, the opening scene in the Crucifixion.