Bible Study on Matthew 27, verses 26 to 32, Hail, King of the Jews !

 

Matthew 27:26 ¶  Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. 27  Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers. 28  And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe. 29  And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! 30  And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head. 31  And after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him. 32  And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to bear his cross.

 

Barabbas, representative of us all, is released while Jesus receives the punishment Barabbas so richly deserved.

 

Scourging, if you didn’t already know, was a pretty brutal whipping. A scourge is said to have been composed of several lengths of leather and had bits of bone and metal balls and spikes intertwined.

 

Isaiah 52:14  As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men:

 

Physically mangled in this way Jesus is humiliatingly stripped in front of a band of soldiers and, mockingly, a scarlet robe symbolizing royalty and the sins of our blood is placed on Him along with a crown of what we are told by some commentators are particularly long and sharp thorns. Then they spat on Him.

 

Isaiah 50:6  I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.

 

Then they replaced His former clothing and took Him away to crucify Him. The cross bar which He would have carried, according to most commentators, would have been the bar parallel to the ground. Simon of Cyrene will go down in history as a man compelled to carry that cross beam. However, the text says that he carried Jesus’ cross. It doesn’t say cross beam. So, I would lean more to the depictions or Jesus, then Simon, dragging an actual cross.