Then it was, probably, that as St. Luke tells us: “They were more earnest, saying: He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee to this place” (Luke xxiii. 5). “Amid their confused and passionate exclamation, the practised ear of Pilate caught the name of ‘Galilee,’ and he understood that Galilee had been the chief scene of the ministry of Jesus. Eager for a chance of dismissing a business of which he was best pleased to be free, he proposed, by a master‐stroke of astute policy, to get rid of an embarrassing prisoner, to save himself from a disagreeable decision, and to do an unexpected complaisancy to the unfriendly Galilean tetrarch, who, as usual, had come to Jerusalem—nominally to keep the Passover, really to please his subjects, and to enjoy the sensations and festivities offered at that season by the densely‐crowded capital” (Farrar). 39. Est autem consuetudo 39. But you have a custom that vobis, ut unum dimittam vobis I should release one unto you in pascha: vultis ergo at the pasch: will you dimittam vobis regem therefore that I release unto Iudaeorum? you the king of the Jews? 40. Clamaverunt ergo rursum 40. Then cried they all again, omnes dicentes: Non hunc, sed saying: Not this man, but Barabbam. Erat autem Barabbas Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a latro. robber. 39. Then, after Herod had examined and mocked Christ, he sent Him back to Pilate (Luke xxiii. 8‐12); and now it was, after the return from Herod, that Pilate thought of releasing Jesus, in accordance with his custom of releasing a prisoner every year at the festival of the Pasch. *Will you, therefore, that I release unto you the king of the Jews?* or as St. Matt. has: “Whom will you that I release to you; Barabbas, or Jesus, that is called Christ?” (Matt. xxvii. 17). Barabbas, as we learn from the Synoptic Evangelists, was a “notorious prisoner,” “who was put in prison with some seditious men, who, in the sedition, had committed murder.” Pilate hoped, therefore, that the release of Jesus rather than of a notorious criminal like Barabbas would be called for. But the people, instigated by the chief‐priests and elders (Matt. xxvii. 20), blindly called for the release of Barabbas. *A robber.* (λῃιστής), one who appropriates the goods of another by open violence, as opposed to the thief (κλέπτης), who takes what is not his own, secretly and by fraud.