Luke 23

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Jesus is brought before Pilate, who finds no fault in him and sends him to Herod, who also finds no cause for death. Despite Pilate’s attempts to release him, the multitude demands Barabbas and insists on Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus is crucified at Calvary, where he forgives his persecutors and promises paradise to a repentant malefactor. He dies after a period of darkness, and his body is laid in a new tomb by Joseph of Arimathaea.

Jesus Before Pilate 1–5

¶ And the whole multitude of them arose, and led him unto Pilate.

And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a King.

And Pilate asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And he answered him and said, Thou sayest it.

Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in this man.

And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.

Jesus Interrogated by Herod 6–12

When Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the man were a Galilaean.

And as soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem at that time.

And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad: for he was desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things of him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him.

Then he questioned with him in many words; but he answered him nothing.

And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him.

And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate.

And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together: for before they were at enmity between themselves.

Pilate Condemns Jesus 13–25

¶ 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.

(For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast.)

And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas:

(Who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison.)

Pilate therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them.

But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him.

And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him: I will therefore chastise him, and let him go.

And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed.

And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required.

And he released unto them him that for sedition and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to their will.

The Road to the Cross 26–31

¶ And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus.

And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him.

But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.

For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.

Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.

For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?

The Crucifixion 32–43

¶ And there were also two other, malefactors, led with him to be put to death.

And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.

And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved others; let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God.

And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar,

And saying, If thou be the king of the Jews, save thyself.

And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.

But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?

And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.

And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

Death of Jesus 44–49

¶ And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.

And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.

And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.

Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, Certainly this was a righteous man.

And all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned.

And all his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things.

The Burial 50–56

¶ And, behold, there was a man named Joseph, a counsellor; and he was a good man, and a just:

(The same had not consented to the counsel and deed of them;) he was of Arimathaea, a city of the Jews: who also himself waited for the kingdom of God.

This man went unto Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus.

And he took it down, and wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein never man before was laid.

And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath drew on.

And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid.

And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.

Bible text: King James Version (1769 Blayney text) · Public domain

Study Notes for Luke 23

Verse 1

led him unto Pilate — ‘The whole multitude of them’ are the elders, chief priests and scribes who had ‘led him into their council’ at daybreak (22:66). Pilate, named governor of Judaea in 3:1, is the one who could try the case. John adds that they would not enter his hall ‘lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover’ (John 18:28).

Verse 2

perverting the nation — Diastrepho, to twist or turn aside. Three charges are laid: perverting the nation, forbidding tribute to Caesar, and claiming to be ‘Christ a King’. The second is false, for he had said, ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s’ (20:25). Pilate repeats the first charge back to them in v.14.

Verse 3

Thou sayest it — Pilate’s question is the political form of the charge in v.2. The reply is the same form of assent given to the council: ‘Ye say that I am’ (22:70). John records the fuller answer, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ (John 18:36); Paul says Christ ‘before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession’ (1 Tim 6:13).

Verse 4

I find no fault — Aition, a ground of accusation. Pilate says it three times in Luke: here, ‘have found no fault in this man’ (v.14), and ‘I have found no cause of death in him’ (v.22), the same noun each time. The charge that Christ was a king stands on no proved act, and the verdict of innocence is spoken before the crowd.

Verse 7

Herod’s jurisdiction — Herod Antipas, ‘tetrarch of Galilee’ (3:1), the region where, according to the accusers, the teaching had begun (v.5). Exousia is authority, here the right to try a Galilean. Herod ‘was at Jerusalem at that time’, and this hearing is recorded only by Luke.

Verse 8

exceeding glad — Herod had ‘desired to see him’ since hearing of his works (9:9). Semeion, a sign, is what he ‘hoped to have seen’. What he wants is a spectacle. At the end Herod and his men ‘set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe’ (v.11).

Verse 9

answered him nothing — Luke alone records the hearing before Herod, and the silence matches that before the governor: ‘he answered him to never a word’ (Matt 27:14). It is the picture of Isa 53:7, ‘he opened not his mouth’, the verse the Ethiopian later reads in Acts 8:32.

Verse 12

made friends together — Philos against echthra, enmity: the two rulers who had been at enmity are reconciled the same day. The believers later pray over it with David’s words (Ps 2:1–2): that ‘both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together’ against the Lord’s anointed (Acts 4:25–27).

Verse 15

nothing worthy of death — Pilate points to a second finding: Herod, though he mocked him (v.11), sent him back without a sentence. Axios, worthy, with ‘death’ is Luke’s phrase for the verdict, and Paul repeats it in the synagogue: ‘though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain’ (Acts 13:28).

Verse 16

chastise him — Paideuo, to train or correct as one does a child; here it means scourging, as in Matt 27:26 and John 19:1. Pilate offers to scourge and release him, then offers the same again in v.22, ‘I will therefore chastise him, and let him go’. Declared guiltless in v.14, he is still to be beaten.

Verse 17

of necessity he must release one — Anagke, necessity: the release of one prisoner at the feast was a custom, ‘at that feast the governor was wont to release unto the people a prisoner, whom they would’ (Matt 27:15). Pilate himself says, ‘ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the passover’ (John 18:39).

Verse 19

sedition… murder — Stasis, a rising or insurrection, and phonos, murder: the words are those of Mark 15:7, where Barabbas ‘lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection’. Peter charges the people with it: ‘ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer’ (Acts 3:14).

Verse 25

delivered Jesus to their will — Thelema, will: the same noun as in 22:42, ‘not my will, but thine, be done’. Paradidomi, deliver, is the verb of the predictions: ‘he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles’ (18:32). The one released is the man held for ‘sedition and murder’; the one given up is the man found without fault.

Verse 26

Simon, a Cyrenian — From Cyrene in Libya (Acts 2:10). Mark names him ‘the father of Alexander and Rufus’ (Mark 15:21). Epitithemi, to lay upon: the cross is laid on him ‘that he might bear it after Jesus’, the same picture as the saying ‘whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple’ (14:27).

Verse 28

Daughters of Jerusalem — The women who mourn are told to weep ‘for yourselves, and for your children’. The days he means are the ones he had already named over the city: ‘Jerusalem compassed with armies’ (21:20) and ‘thy children within thee’ (19:44). The cry of grief is turned toward what is coming on the city.

Verse 29

Blessed are the barren — The beatitude form is reversed. The ‘days… coming’ match the warning of 21:23, ‘woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days!’ In v.30 the people ‘begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us’, the words of Hos 10:8, taken up again in Rev 6:16.

Verse 31

a green tree… the dry — Hygros, moist and living, and xeros, dry and withered. If this is done to the one in whom no fault was found, what is reserved for the fruitless? Peter reasons the same way: ‘if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?’ (1 Pet 4:17–18).

Verse 33

Calvary — This is the only place the KJV prints the name ‘Calvary’; Matthew, Mark and John give the Hebrew name, Golgotha, ‘the place of a skull’ (John 19:17). Luke’s kranion is the Greek for skull. Kakourgos, ‘malefactor’, is Luke’s word for the two crucified on either side (vv.32, 33, 39), as Isa 53:12 foretold: ‘numbered with the transgressors’.

Verse 34

Father, forgive them — Aphiemi, to send away, to remit. The prayer fits Isa 53:12, ‘made intercession for the transgressors’, and is repeated by Stephen, ‘Lord, lay not this sin to their charge’ (Acts 7:60). Peter later says ‘through ignorance ye did it’ (Acts 3:17). The casting of lots for the raiment fulfils Ps 22:18.

Verse 38

in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew — Epigraphe, superscription, is the noun Christ used of the image on the penny: ‘Whose image and superscription hath it?’ (20:24). Pilate himself wrote this title, and would not alter it: ‘What I have written I have written’ (John 19:19–22). The accusation names a king, in three languages.

Verse 40

Dost not thou fear God — Luke alone records the thief’s rebuke; Matthew and Mark say both thieves reviled him (Matt 27:44). Krima, condemnation, is the sentence of crucifixion they share with Christ. His confession follows in v.41: ‘we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.’

Verse 43

in paradise — Paradeisos appears only three times in the New Testament: here, in 2 Cor 12:4 (‘caught up into paradise’) and in Rev 2:7 (‘the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God’). The promise is dated ‘To day’, and its company is ‘with me’.

Verse 44

a darkness over all the earth — The darkness lasts from the sixth hour to the ninth, noon to three in the afternoon, counted from sunrise. Ge may mean the earth or the land. Amos 8:9 foretells it: ‘I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.’ Matthew and Mark date it the same way (Matt 27:45).

Verse 45

the veil of the temple was rent — Katapetasma, the curtain ‘between the holy place and the most holy’ (Ex 26:33). Matthew adds ‘from the top to the bottom’ (Matt 27:51). Hebrews reads it as the way opened: ‘boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus… through the veil, that is to say, his flesh’ (Heb 10:19–20).

Verse 46

into thy hands I commend my spirit — Paratithemi, to lay down in someone’s keeping. The words are Ps 31:5, ‘Into thine hand I commit my spirit’. Peter uses the same verb: ‘commit the keeping of their souls to him’ (1 Pet 4:19). Stephen dies with the cry ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’ (Acts 7:59). ‘Gave up the ghost’ is ekpneo, to breathe out.

Verse 47

a righteous man — Dikaios, righteous or just. The centurion ‘glorified God’ and uses the word Peter later uses of Christ, ‘the Holy One and the Just’ (Acts 3:14). Mark gives his words as ‘Truly this man was the Son of God’ (Mark 15:39). It agrees with the thief’s confession in v.41, and with Pilate’s three findings.

Verse 48

smote their breasts — This is the gesture of the publican who ‘smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner’ (18:13). Theoria, ‘sight’, a spectacle, occurs only here in the New Testament. The crowd that had cried ‘Crucify him, crucify him’ (v.21) ‘returned’ after beholding what was done.

Verse 50

a counsellor; and he was a good man, and a just — Bouleutes, a member of the council, and ‘just’ is dikaios, the word the centurion used of Christ in v.47. Verse 51 adds that he ‘had not consented to the counsel and deed of them’, and that he ‘waited for the kingdom of God’. It is Joseph who asks Pilate for the body (v.52).

Verse 54

the preparation — Paraskeue, the day before the sabbath: ‘the preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath’ (Mark 15:42). ‘Drew on’ is epiphosko, to dawn, found elsewhere only at Matt 28:1, ‘as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week’. The burial was made in the closing hours of the day.

Verse 56

rested the sabbath day according to the commandment — The women return and ‘prepared spices and ointments’ (aroma, myron) before the sabbath, then rest. The commandment is Ex 20:10, ‘in it thou shalt not do any work’. On the first day they come to the sepulchre ‘bringing the spices which they had prepared’ (24:1).