*8‐12. Pilate becomes still more unwilling to interfere with Jesus, and again examines Him, and makes known his intention of releasing Him.* 13‐16. *Then the Jews charge him with disloyalty to the Roman Emperor, and at length Pilate gives way and delivers Jesus to be crucified.* 17‐22. *Jesus is led to Calvary, and crucified between two robbers.* 23‐24. *The soldiers divide His other garments among four of them, but cast lots for His tunic.* 25‐27. *Jesus gives John to the Blessed Virgin as her son, and her in turn to him as his mother.* 28‐30. *Jesus, having partaken of the vinegar which was offered to Him in a soaked sponge, dies.* 31‐37. *The legs of the two robbers are broken, and the side of Jesus pierced with a lance.* 38‐42. *Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus embalm and bury the body of Jesus.* 1. Tunc ergo apprehendit 1. Then, therefore Pilate took Pilatus Iesum, et flagellavit. Jesus, and scourged him. 1. After he had released Barabbas, Pilate now thought of another but a cruel means of saving the life of Jesus. He had Him scourged, hoping thus to satisfy the fury of His enemies (Luke xxiii. 22). Then was fulfilled the prophecy of Isaias: “_I have given my body to the strikers_, and My cheeks to them that plucked them: I have not turned away my face from them that rebuked me, and spat upon me” (Isaias 1. 6). Had Christ been scourged by Jewish authority, according to the Jewish law He should not have received more than forty stripes. “According to the measure of the sin shall the measure also of the stripes be: Yet so that they exceed not the number of forty: lest thy brother depart shamefully torn before thy eyes” (Deut. xxv. 2, 3). By Jewish practice the number of stripes was restricted to thirty‐nine (See 2 Cor. xi. 24). But as the scourging was ordered by Pilate, it was, doubtless, inflicted according to the cruel Roman method, in which there was no limit to the number of stripes that might be inflicted. The word used by the Greek translator of St. Matthew and by St. Mark in reference to this scourging is φραγελλώσας, which, like that used by St. John (ἐμαστίγωσεν), signifies a scourging with whips or flagella(120) (not _rods_, which were sometimes used by the Romans; Acts xvi. 22. Comp. 2 Cor. xi. 25). The _flagellum_ was chiefly used in the punishment of slaves. It was made of cords or thongs of leather, knotted with bones or circles of bronze, or pieces of hard wood, and sometimes terminated by hooks in which latter case it was called a scorpion. No wonder that Horace (_Sat._ 1, 3, 119) speaks of it as “horribile flagellum.” It was with this brutal instrument of torture, then, that our Lord was mangled on this morning by the fierce Roman soldiers.