The Governor’s Soldiers

The chief priests and the religious rulers were closer to their goal. Pilate had been reluctant at every step along the way to pass judgment on the matter at hand, but by now the governor had at least agreed that Jesus should be punished, and so he turned him over to his soldiers. Since the time of his appointment by Emperor Tiberius in AD 26, Pilate resided in the praetorium when he was in Jerusalem. This official residence may have been the old palace of Herod or possibly the fortress of Antonia that was just beyond the Jewish temple.¹ In any event, the whole company of Pilate’s soldiers, numbering anywhere from two hundred to six hundred men, gathered around Jesus in the yard of these quarters for they, no doubt, sensed that a spectacle was about to occur.

We should recall that the high priest and the Sanhedrin had already made sport of Jesus (see Matthew 26:67–68). Many of the religious leaders had assembled earlier for the special, quickly called interrogation of the suspect: “Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God” (v. 63b). After the questioning, and after Jesus had spoken the truth plainly about what was to come, clearly affirming a messianic role, they spat in his face and struck him as they mocked: “Prophesy to us, Messiah. Who hit you?” (v. 68).

As the Jewish legislative and judicial court in Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin naturally passed judgment on many matters relating to Jewish law. This body was made up of rabbis who had spent years in training reflecting on the things of God as well as on the traditions of the people. How is it, then, that this august, religious body, which would likely be made up of many pious and devout souls, would be reduced to the crudity and vulgarity of spitting? In other words, how did they so quickly make the transition from reciting the Word of God on their lips one day to using those very same lips to heave a wad of spittle in the face of Jesus on the next?

The governor’s soldiers, for their part, would be made up entirely of Gentiles since the Jews, among all the peoples the Romans had conquered by the first century, were excused from military service. These soldiers, then, would look down upon the Jews as a peculiar people, as the “other,” and yet, oddly enough, they shared something remarkably in common with them. Both groups, whether Jew or Gentile, whether religious or not, whether pious or profane, were united in their contempt for Jesus. In some respects, the religious leaders outdid their pagan counterparts, especially with their mouths. However, without any religious sensibility or pious desires holding them in check, the governor’s soldiers energetically derided Jesus by setting up a mock coronation, and they thereby exceeded the derision even of the religious leaders, at least for the time being.

If a king is to be enthroned, then he must have a suitable robe, a crown (as the symbol of authority), and a staff or scepter. The mockery that played out in the actions of the soldiers consisted chiefly in the deceit that was held in place by a bottomless insincerity. In this travesty, the soldiers pretended to honor Jesus with the giving of a robe, with placing a crown upon his head, and with putting a staff in his hand. But it’s all a sham. By these actions the soldiers intended exactly the opposite of what a coronation should entail; not honor but dishonor, not elevation but degradation, not celebration but scorn. The humiliation of the fake ceremony, supported by the legs of insincerity, was magnified in physical violence, in the brutality of repeated blows to the head. And after all the accoutrements of the feigned enthronement were in place, the soldiers then completed the charade, in this honor-and-shame culture, in a spasm of ridicule by kneeling in front of Jesus and shouting: “Hail, king of the Jews!” What a spectacle! What an exhibition! The hundreds of soldiers assembled were not disappointed.

One of the odd things about evil is its very instability as well as its contradictory nature, elements that together, at times, can lead to downright chaos or to very unexpected consequences. To illustrate, the soldiers obviously wanted to demean Jesus through hateful mockery and derision, but in their animated pronouncement, in their contemptuous accolade, they actually and unwittingly spoke the truth. Yes, Jesus is the king of the Jews, but he is a king in a way that the soldiers in their darkness and mockery could not understand. They ignorantly proclaimed a truth that they would likely never know, one that was well beyond them in their current hateful and wretched state. The cry of “Hail, king” would have likely called up visions of Caesar in his pomp and power, but Jesus as a king, standing before Pilate’s soldiers, was so unlike Caesar.

How do we imagine that Jesus felt as all of this was happening to him in the face of at least two hundred soldiers, likely more? Have we ever thought about that? Did he wonder why such bad things were happening to him? Did he think about the genuine shame, coming in the form of the very diminished views of him, now present among the soldiers—and earlier among the Jews? Shame in this context was something that was done to Jesus; he suffered it. It was nothing less than a social brickbat that had been hurled at him to do him enormous harm. Did that very palpable devaluation of his person and character through concrete actions cause Jesus psychological, emotional, social, and even spiritual pain?

We must recognize that shame and guilt are two very different things—the one necessarily has a social context; the other most often simply an internal, very personal one. Also be aware (and this will be difficult for some, given the usual definitions of shame) that one can be shamed publicly without any guilt at all simply because, as is the case here, the person involved is innocent. But innocence does not prevent real harm or considerable social damage. Again, observe that even though Jesus was without fault he was genuinely harmed, injured in the very diminished views of others bandied about and held in place by both Jews and Gentiles alike. So understood, on this level shame is a public, social product, the debasement of a person in the eyes of others, whether that person is innocent or not, whether that shame, in some fashion, is internalized or not.

Oddly enough, in some people’s minds, that is, among those who lack the ability to think critically or who fail to be ever oriented to truth, to be publicly shamed necessarily entails the fault of the object of such shame and censure. In their minds, at least, no individual could ever be right or just in the face of the group’s judgment. Swayed by powerful social pressures in the form of raw numbers, many will participate in the amassed powers of the group, finding it heady, and subsequently close their hearts and minds with respect to the victim. “He’s getting what he deserves,” comes the quick, almost unthinking, cry. “He’s a troublemaker.” “Crucify him!” This social dynamic, in which groups are transformed into tribes and, in the worse instances, into outright mobs, helps us to understand how both soldiers and rabbis—the latter steeped in the learning of the ancients—could yet find common cause. Together, they were both empowered and strongly motivated, feeling even entitled, to spit in the face of Jesus. For them, Jesus was and remained a stranger.

THE PRAYER