Right at dawn the chief priests, with the elders, the scribes, and the whole council, made their plan. They tied Jesus up, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate.
2 Pilate questioned him: “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “You say so.”
3 And the chief priests kept accusing him of many things.
4 Pilate questioned him again: “You have nothing to say? Look how many charges they’re bringing against you.”
5 But Jesus gave no further answer at all, and Pilate was amazed.
6 Now at the feast Pilate used to release one prisoner for them — whoever they asked for.
7 There was a man called Barabbas, locked up with the rebels who had committed murder during the uprising.[1]
8 The crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do what he usually did for them.
9 Pilate answered them: “Do you want me to release the king of the Jews for you?”
10 He knew the chief priests had handed Jesus over out of envy.
11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas instead.
12 Pilate spoke to them again: “What do you want me to do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?”
13 They shouted back, “Crucify him!”
14 Pilate said to them, “Why? What crime has he committed?” But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
15 Pilate wanted to satisfy the crowd, so he released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, then handed him over to be crucified.[2]
16 The soldiers led Jesus inside the courtyard — that is, the governor’s headquarters — and called the whole company together.
17 They dressed him in purple, twisted together a crown of thorns, and put it on him.
18 Then they began to salute him: “Hail, king of the Jews!”
19 They kept hitting him on the head with a reed, spitting on him, and kneeling down as if worshiping him.
20 When they had finished mocking him, they stripped off the purple and put his own clothes back on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.
• • •
21 They forced a passerby to carry his cross — Simon from Cyrene, coming in from the countryside, the father of Alexander and Rufus.[3]
22 They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha, which means Skull Place.
23 They offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he wouldn’t take it.[4]
24 And they crucified him. They divided up his clothes by casting lots to see who would get what.
25 It was nine in the morning when they crucified him.[5]
26 The written notice of the charge against him read: “The King of the Jews.”
27 They crucified two bandits with him, one on his right and one on his left.
29 People passing by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “Ha! You who would tear down the temple and build it in three days — 30 save yourself! Come down from the cross!”
31 The chief priests and the scribes mocked him among themselves the same way. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself.
32 Let the Anointed One, the king of Israel, come down from the cross right now, so we can see it and believe.” Even those crucified with him taunted him.
33 At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.
34 At three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” — which means, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
35 Some of those standing nearby heard it and said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.”
36 Someone ran and soaked a sponge in sour wine, put it on a reed, and held it up for him to drink. “Wait,” he said, “let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down.”
37 But Jesus let out a loud cry and breathed his last.
38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
39 The officer standing there facing him saw how he breathed his last and said, “Truly this man was the Son of God.”
40 There were also women watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and Joses, and Salome — 41 women who had followed him and served him when he was in Galilee. And many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were there.
• • •
42 Evening had already come, and since it was Preparation Day — that is, the day before the Sabbath — 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected council member who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, gathered his courage and went to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus.
44 Pilate was surprised to hear that Jesus was already dead. He called the officer and asked whether Jesus had been dead for some time.
45 When the officer confirmed it, Pilate gave the body to Joseph.
46 Joseph bought a linen cloth, took Jesus down, wrapped him in the linen, and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.
47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.
Notes
Note 1. Pilate’s years as governor (roughly 26–36 CE) saw repeated flare-ups of unrest — over Roman military standards brought into Jerusalem, over Temple funds diverted to build an aqueduct, and other clashes that ended in bloodshed. Barabbas is described as jailed with men caught in one such “uprising,” the kind of brief, violent trouble that recurred under Roman rule. ↩
Note 2. Roman scourging was a standard preliminary to crucifixion, a legally routine step before execution rather than a separate punishment. This was distinct from Jewish flogging, which the law capped at forty strokes — in practice thirty-nine, to guard against an accidental miscount. ↩
Note 3. Cyrene was a major Greek-founded city in North Africa, in what is now Libya, and home to a large, well-established Jewish community that kept synagogues and traveled to Jerusalem for the festivals. Mark alone names Simon’s sons, Alexander and Rufus; neither is identified further. ↩
Note 4. Myrrh is a tree resin with mild pain-dulling properties, and mixed into wine it made a rough sedative. The Talmud records a comparable custom: a man being led out to execution was given “a grain of frankincense in a cup of wine in order to confuse his mind,” a drink the prominent women of Jerusalem donated. The spice named there is frankincense, not the myrrh Mark names. ↩
Note 5. The Greek reads “the third hour.” Jews of the period counted the daylight from sunrise to sunset as twelve hours, so the day began around 6 a.m. and the third hour fell at about 9 a.m. — hence our rendering. ↩