"And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together: for before they were at enmity between themselves."[94] CHAPTER X JESUS AGAIN BEFORE PILATE The sending of Jesus to Herod had not ended the case; and Pilate was undoubtedly very bitterly disappointed. He had hoped that the Galilean Tetrarch would assume complete jurisdiction and dispose finally of the matter. On the contrary, Herod simply mocked and brutalized the prisoner and had him sent back to Pilate. The Roman construed the action of the Idumæan to mean an acquittal, and he so stated to the Jews. "And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, Said unto them, Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and, behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him: No, nor yet Herod: for I sent you to him; and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him. I will therefore chastise him, and release him."[95] The proposal to scourge the prisoner was the second of those criminal and cowardly subterfuges through which Pilate sought at once to satisfy his conscience and the demands of the mob. The chastisement was to be a sop to the rage of the rabble, a sort of salve to the wounded pride of the priests who were disappointed that no sentence of death had been imposed. The release was intended as a tribute to justice, as a soothing balm and an atoning sacrifice to his own outraged sense of justice. The injustice of this monstrous proposal was not merely contemptible, it was execrable. If Jesus was guilty, He should have been punished; if innocent, he should have been set free and protected from the assaults of the Jews. The offer of scourging first and then the release of the prisoner was indignantly rejected by the rabble. In his desperation, Pilate thought of another loophole of escape. The Evangelists tell us that it was a custom upon Passover day to release to the people any single prisoner that they desired. St. Luke asserts that the governor was under an obligation to do so.[96] Whether this custom was of Roman or Hebrew origin is not certainly known. Many New Testament interpreters have seen in the custom a symbol of the liberty and deliverance realized by Israel in its passage from Egypt at the time of the first great Passover. Others have traced this custom to the Roman practice of releasing a slave at the Lectisternia, or banquets to the gods.[97] Aside from its origin, it is interesting as an illustration of a universal principle in enlightened jurisprudence of lodging somewhere, usually with the chief executive of a race or nation, a power of pardon which serves as an extinction of the penal sanction. This merciful principle is a pathetic acknowledgment of the weakness and imperfection of all human schemes of justice.