Mark 14:65

Cover his face

(περικαλυπτειν αυτου το προσωπον). Put a veil around his face. Not in Matthew, but in Luke 22:64 where Revised Version translates περικαλυψαντες by "blind-folded." All three Gospels give the jeering demand of the Sanhedrin: "Prophesy" (προφητευσον), meaning, as Matthew and Luke add, thereby telling who struck him while he was blindfolded. Mark adds "the officers" (same as in verse Mark 14:54) of the Sanhedrin, Roman lictors or sergeants-at-arms who had arrested Jesus in Gethsemane and who still held Jesus (ο συνεχοντες αυτον, Luke 22:63). Matthew 26:67 alludes to their treatment of Jesus without clearly indicating who they were.With blows of their hands

(ραπισμασιν). The verb ραπιζω in Matthew 26:67 originally meant to smite with a rod. In late writers it comes to mean to slap the face with the palm of the hands. The same thing is true of the substantive ραπισμα used here. A papyrus of the sixth century A.D. uses it in the sense of a scar on the face as the result of a blow. It is in the instrumental case here. "They caught him with blows," Swete suggests for the unusual ελαβον in this sense. "With rods" is, of course, possible as the lictors carried rods. At any rate it was a gross indignity.