Notes on John 19:31-42

John 19:31‑42  •  16 min. read  •  grade level: 9
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The reader will remark how perfectly the account of the Lord's death suits the general character and special design of John's Gospel and of no other. Here Jesus is the conscious Son, the divine person who made all things, but became flesh that He might not only give eternal life, but die as a propitiation for our sins. And here therefore, here only, He said, It is finished, and bowing His head delivered up the spirit. There are witnesses, as we shall see, but they are of God, not of man or the creature, and they intimately flow from His own person. No darkness is mentioned, no cry that His God had forsaken Him, no rending of the veil, no earthquake, no centurion's confession; all of which meet to proclaim the rejected Messiah. (Matt. 27) So substantially, save the earthquake, the Servant Son of God obedient to death in Mark 15 Luke 23 adds the testimony to His grace in the crucified robber, His first-fruits in paradise, and the centurion's witness to “Jesus Christ the righteous,” after He had committed His spirit into His Father's hands. It was reserved for John to set forth His death who was God not less surely than man, and as such. The Creator but man lifted up from the earth could say, in dying for sin to God's glory, It is finished. The work, the infinite work, was done for the putting away of sin by His sacrifice. Thereon hangs not only the blessing of every soul that is to be justified by faith, but of new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. “It is finished,” τετέλεσται, one word! yet what word ever contained so much
But no heathen were more blinded and obdurate than God's ancient people who take the lead against Jesus in an unbelieving religiousness without true fear of God, and who consequently saw not that they were but accomplishing His word in their guilty rejection of His and their Messiah.
“The Jews therefore since it was the preparation that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath (for the day of that sabbath1 was great), asked of Pilate that their legs might be broken and they be taken away. The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first and of the other that was crucified with him; but coming to Jesus, when they saw that he was already dead, they broke not his legs, but one of the soldiers with a spear thrust his side, and there came out immediately blood and water. And he that hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness is true, and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye also2 may believe. For these things came to pass that the scripture might be fulfilled, Not a bone of him shall be crushed; and again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced.” (Vers. 31-37.)
In the law, the psalms, and the prophets the Spirit of God had Christ before Him, and in the sufferings to come on Him, as well as in the glories that should follow. But the fleshly mind, as it shrinks from sufferings, is disposed to overlook and get rid of testimony; especially so if the sufferings be the effect and the proof of man's evil estate, for this is of all things most unpalatable. Thus was the Jew dull to see what condemned himself and leveled him morally to the condition of any other sinner; and rejecting the fullest evidences and His own presence in divine grace and truth and the gospel at last, he wits given over to judicial hardening when wrath came on them to the uttermost. Christ only gives the key to the paschal lamb, Christ is the main object in the Psalms. No reasoning of skeptics, even if theologians, can efface the truth, though it exposes their own unbelief; and assuredly if the heart were made right by grace, it would desire that to be true which is the truth, instead of stumbling at the word being disobedient, or neglecting it because of indifference. In vain then do the Rosenmullers and the like hesitate or avow their dislike of the type and the allusion. To faiths it is food and strength and joy; for if God's word is instinct with His delight in Christ giving Himself to die, He also expresses it in every sort of form beforehand that the cry facts of His atoning death, the great stumbling-block, might render the most irrefragable testimony to its truth and His glory when thus manifested in shame here below.
How marvelously meet in Christ's cross the proud enmity of the Jew, the lawless hand of the Gentiles, the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, and this in perfect grace to the guiltiest of Jews and Gentiles! For out of Christ's pierced side came out forthwith blood and water.3 And John was not so preoccupied with the Savior's dying charge concerning Mary as not to mark the sight. In the strongest form he lets us know that what he saw and testified was no mere transient fact, but before the mind as present, of permanent interest and importance. In his first epistle (ver. 6) he characterizes the Lord accordingly. “This is he that came by (sta) water and blood, Jesus Christ; not in (4) the power of water only, but in the power of water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.” Moral purification however needed and precious is not enough; there must be expiation of sins also; and both are found by faith in the death of Christ, not otherwise nor elsewhere. As a fact in the Gospel the order is blood and water; as applied to us in the Epistle it is the water and the blood, and the Spirit as One personally given follows. Nothing but death flows to man from Adam: Christ, the second Man who died for sin and sinners, is the source alike of purification and of atonement to the believer, who needs both and is dead before God without both. For though the Son of God with life in Himself, He stands alone till He dies; dying He bears much fruit. He quickens, purifies and expiates; and the Holy Ghost consequently given brings us into the import of His death as well as blessing resulting from it. For it is judgment pronounced and executed by God in His cross on the flesh, but in our favor because in Him who was a sin-offering.
No wonder then that John was inspired to record the fact, not more wondrous in itself than in its consequences now made known to the believer. The salvation must be suited to and worthy of the Savior, If He was eternal, it was everlasting; if divine judgment fell on such a Victim, it was that they believing in Him should not come into judgment but have life, being forgiven all their offenses and made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light. Such is the declared standing of every true Christian, but it is in virtue of Christ, who is all and in all. Creeds and theological systems enfeeble and hinder its enjoyment; but all this, and more than one could here develop, is clearly and plainly revealed to faith in scripture, as it is indeed due to Christ's glory.
Hence the care with which the word of God is cited and shown to be punctually fulfilled. “For these things came to pass that the scripture might be fulfilled, Not a bone of him shall be crushed; and again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced."4 The natural circumstances of the crucifixion, more especially on a Friday, and that Friday the eve of sabbath in the paschal week, would have called for the breaking of the legs as a coup de grace. And in fact such was the portion of the two malefactors. But Jesus as He had proved Himself in the preceding chapter the willing Captive was now the willing Victim; and this was made manifest in His dying as and when He did die. For it surprised not only the Jews and the soldiers but Pilate, as we learn elsewhere; and it superseded all need of the crurifragium in His case. But it marked the separated Lamb of God, the Righteous One, all whose bones Jehovah keeps, not one of them broken.
Yet this very exemption led as a fact doubtless to the deed of the soldier, whose lance pierced not the malefactors but only the dead body of the Savior, wholly ignorant that so it must be, for God had said it by His prophet. All was ordered and measured; even these minute differences were revealed beforehand; yet were men and Satan indulging freely their enmity against the Son of God. And in the face of such love and light men combine their ignorance5 with their learning to escape from the truth into the dark once more. But we need not here dwell on such things. It is the same spirit that surrounded the cross:
“Thy love, by man so sorely tried,
Proved stronger than the grave;
The very spear that pierced Thy side
Drew forth the blood to save.”
“And after these things Joseph from Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate gave leave. He6 came therefore and took his body away. And there came also Nicodemus, that came at first to him7 by night, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes about a hundred pound [weight]. They took therefore the body of Jesus and bound it in linen swathes with the spices, as it is the Jews' custom to prepare for burial.8 Now there was in the place where he was crucified a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one was ever yet laid. There then on account of the preparation of the Jews, because the tomb was near, they put Jesus.” (Vers. 38-42.)
God uses a perilous time to call forth His own hidden ones. Joseph of Arimathea can be a secret disciple no longer. He was a rich man (Matt. 27) and an honorable counselor (Mark 15); but wealth and position make the confession of Christ only the harder. Fear of the Jews had hitherto prevailed. The death of Jesus, which caused others to fear, made Joseph bold. He had not consented indeed to the counsel and deed of the Jews. Now He goes to Pilate and besought the Lord's body. Nor was he alone: Nicodemus longer known, but with no happy reputation for moral-courage at the first, though afterward venturing a remonstrance to the haughty yet unjust Pharisees, joins in the last offices of love with an abundant offering of myrrh and aloes. The cross of Christ so stumbling to unbelief exercises and manifests his faith; and the twain waxed valiant by grace fulfill the lack of service of the twelve. They take the body of Jesus and bind it in linen swathes with the spices, in the manner of the Jews to prepare for burial. Egypt had its custom of embalming; so in a measure had the Jews in hope of the resurrection of the just. No prophecy is cited here; but who can forget Isaiah's words, He made His grave with the wicked [men] and with the rich [man] in His death? He was appointed His grave with the lawless and with the rich man, in His deaths, that is, after being slain: a strange combination, yet verified in Him, and who could wonder? seeing that He had done no violence and no deceit was in His mouth. And now we see in Joseph's garden, hard by the fatal scene, a new tomb which had never known an inmate: so had God provided in honor for the body of His Son, and in jealous wisdom for the truth, hewn out in the rock (as Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us): where the Lord was put Meanwhile in view of more formal burial when the sabbath should pass. So little did the disciples anticipate what the glory of the Father had at heart, though the Lord had so often plainly revealed it, till the resurrection was a fact in its own predicted time.
 
1. έκείνου Stephens à A B Dsupp L X Y, nine more uncials, the great bulk of cursives, &c.; ἐκείνη Elz. with a late uncial (H) and a few cursives, Vulg., &c.
2. The oldest read καί, which Text. Rec. omits, with seven uncials and most cursives.
3. Euthymius Zigabenus (Comm. in quat. Evv. III. 619, ed. C. F. Matthaei) thus writes: Ύπερφυὲς τὸ πρᾶγμα, καὶ τρανιῦ διδασκον ὅτι ὑπὲρ ἄυθρωπον ὑ νυγεὶς ἐκ νεκροῦ γὰρ ὰνθρώπου κἄν μυριάκις νύξη τίς, οὐκ ἐξελεύσεται αἶμα. “The fact was supernatural, and clearly teaches that He who was pierced was more than man. For from a dead man, if one should pierce him ten thousand times, no blood would come out.” What follows is a poor effort to connect with it Gen. 2, or even false doctrine when he speaks of two baptisms; one by blood, martyrdom; the other by water, regeneration, by whose stream the stream of sin is overwhelmed. How constant is one's disappointment in these Greek and Latin ecclesiastics! Like the Galatians, if they begin in the Spirit, how quickly they pass into an effort after perfection by the flesh Not one even of the ablest and most orthodox adheres simply and thoroughly to the delivering gospel of God's grace, though many of them loved the Lord and hated known error. But the full efficacy of redemption was unknown to any one, so far as I can speak.
It is curious, by the way, that a modern work of reputation like Dr. Smith's “Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography” should continue to repeat that “the Greek original [of this work on the four gospels] has never been printed.” Vol. ii. 125, col. 1. Matthaei's work appeared at Leipzig in 1792, and is familiar to students.
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4. Dr. Thomas Randolph, in his little work on the Prophecies and other texts cited in the New Testament, and compared with the Hebrew Original and the Septuagint Version, 4to, Oxford, 1782, remarks, (p. 32) that “the evangelist here plainly reads åéìà instead of éìà in the Hebrew: but so also read forty Hebrew MSS. And that this is the true reading appears by what follows—' and they shall mourn for him.' The Syriac renders it, they shall look on me through him, whom they have pierced.' The Sept. I cannot make sense of.” Now these is really no serious doubt that the true reading is the latter (“to me"), not the former (“to him"), and that the best and most MSS and versions are justified. It was in fact originally nothing but a marginal correction, due to the desire partly of eliminating so strong a testimony to the deity or Jehovah title of the Lord Jesus, partly of easing the flow of the context from the concurrence of “me” and “him.” Even the Targum and the Talmud, like the more ancient MSS, and all the Greek early versions, refute the idea. So even most of the better Jewish expositors notwithstanding their controversy with Christians and in the course of it. De Rossi suggests that “to him” may have entered by accident through the scribe having Psa. 34:66This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. (Psalm 34:6) in mind. Much better and wiser therefore would it have been to have adhered to ancient and good authority, spite of seeming difficulty, than to have adopted this Jewish keri like Newcome and Boothroyd and so help on such a scoffer as Ewald. Even R. Isaac in his Chizzuk Emunah, when controverting those whom he calls the Nazarenes, admits the reading éÇìÅà, though he tries to weaken its force by interpreting øÆùÇàà úÅà as “because of him whom they pierced” and applying it to the war of Gog and Magog. Now it is true that øÆùàÇà úÅà may and does sometimes mean “because” (and so the LXX took the words, probably also confounding øÇ÷ÌÈø with øÇ÷Èø which might originate κατωρχήσαωτο); but the meaning cannot possibly be “because of him whom,” for this would leave the verb without an object contrary to invariable Hebrew idiom. Hence also Radak's (or R. D. Kimchi's) translation fails, “because they have pierced,” though less objectionable perhaps as not foisting is an expressly false object. But they both divert from the true object; and therefore Abarbanel, Aben Ezra, Alsheikh, &c. condemn it, and so far confirm our Authorized Version. Bashi (i. e. R. Solomon) is no bad proof of the perplexity the clause presents to the Jewish mind; for he inconsistently applies it to Messiah ben-Joseph in his comment on the Talmud, whereas in his Commentary on the Bible he gets rid of this, applying it to some of the Jews pierced and killed by the Gentiles. It is the more surprising in the face of all, that these exploded mistakes should be reproduced in modern Jewish versions; as when Dr. A. Benisch, like D. Kimchi, omits the object in his “School and Family Bible,” and Mr. J. Lesser in his “Holy Scriptures” supplies “every one,” to the manifest falsification of the sense like R. Isaac. There is really an emphatic object in the Hebrew text, which accounts for (if it does not require) the change of construction in the foregoing clause. The conclusion, then, is that the evangelist read no otherwise than we do in the ordinary Hebrew, and that the Holy Spirit in the Gospel and the Revelation does not cite but suppose that text which is distinctly applied to the fact carefully recorded in the history, and doctrinally employed in the first epistle.
5. It may be worth mentioning as a singular instance of the importance of knowing the original that Euthymius Zigabenus, in his comment on verse 37, speaks of the scripture as probably got rid of by the Jews since the Gospel. “For nowhere is it found now; or he means another scripture of the books called apocryphal.” (Vol. iii. 621.) This sounds strong with Zech. 12, 10 in view. How is it to be accounted for? This Greek monk read the prophet in the Septuagint, where the clause as to the piercing is miserably mistaken, ἀνθ’ ὧν κατωρχήσαντο,” because they insulted [me],” while the later Jewish rendering of Aquila evades the truth by giving σὑν ᾧ. Theodotion has rendered the passage rightly on the whole. Hence the Spirit of God (both in John's Gospel and in the Revelation) does not cite the Septuagint, but alludes to it in terms which accurately represent the clause.
6. The word is not θἀπτειν but ἐνταφιάζειν, which is used for embalming, or at least preparing for burial, as in the case before us.
7. See note above.
8. Tischendorf now gives the singular “he” with N, &c.; also αὐτὸν “him” instead of τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ, with àcorr. B L X Δ, ten cursives, &c., or τ. σ. τοῦ 'I. with a dozen uncials and most cursives, &c., as in Text. Rec. so in verse 39, the best give “to him,” the majority “to Jesus.”
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