John 19:1-39

¹After that, Pilate had Jesus scourged.

²The soldiers made a crown with some thorns and put it on his head and threw a purple robe around him.

³They kept coming up to him and saying, “Long live the king of the Jews!” and they gave him blow after blow with their hands.

⁴Pilate again came outside, and said to the people, “Look! I am bringing him out to you, so that you may know that I find nothing with which he can be charged.”

⁵Then Jesus came outside, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe; and Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”

⁶When the chief priests and the police officers saw him, they shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” “Take him yourselves and crucify him,” said Pilate. “For my part, I find nothing with which he can be charged.”

⁷“But we,” replied the crowd, “have a Law, under which he deserves death for making himself out to be the Son of God.”

⁸When Pilate heard what they said, he became still more alarmed;

⁹and, going into the Government house again, he said to Jesus, “Where do you come from?”

¹⁰But Jesus made no reply. So Pilate said to him, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Don't you know that I have power to release you, and have power to crucify you?”

¹¹“You would have no power over me at all,” answered Jesus, “if it had not been given you from above; and, therefore, the man who betrayed me to you is guilty of the greater sin.”

¹²This made Pilate anxious to release him; but the crowd shouted, “If you release that man, you are no friend of the Emperor! Anyone who makes himself out to be a king is setting himself against the Emperor!”

¹³On hearing what they said, Pilate brought Jesus out, and took his seat on the Bench at a place called ‘The Stone Pavement’ — in Hebrew ‘Gabbatha.’

¹⁴It was the Passover Preparation day, and about noon. Then he said to the crowd, “Here is your king!”

¹⁵At that the people shouted, “Kill him! Kill him! Crucify him!” “What! Should I crucify your king?” exclaimed Pilate. “We have no king but the Emperor,” replied the chief priests;

¹⁶so Pilate gave Jesus up to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus;

¹⁷and he went out, carrying his cross himself, to the place which is named from a scull, or, in Hebrew, Golgotha.

¹⁸There they crucified him, and two others with him — one on each side, and Jesus between them.

¹⁹Pilate also had these words written and put up over the cross — ‘JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.’

²⁰These words were read by many people, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and they were written in Hebrew, Latin and Greek.

²¹The chief priests said to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The king of the Jews’, but write what the man said — ‘I am the king of the Jews.’”

²²But Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

²³When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four shares — a share for each soldier — and they took the coat also. The coat had no seam, being woven in one piece from top to bottom.

²⁴So they said to one another, “Do not let us tear it, but let us cast lots for it, to see who will have it.” This was in fulfillment of the words of scripture — ‘They shared my clothes among them, And over my clothing they cast lots.’ That was what the soldiers did.

²⁵Meanwhile near the cross of Jesus were standing his mother and his mother's sister, as well as Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary of Magdala.

²⁶When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved, standing near, he said to his mother, “There is your son.”

²⁷Then he said to that disciple, “There is your mother.” And from that very hour the disciple took her to live in his house.

²⁸Afterward, knowing that everything was now finished, Jesus said, in fulfillment of the words of scripture, “I am thirsty.”

²⁹There was a bowl standing there full of common wine; so they put a sponge soaked in the wine on the end of a hyssop-stalk, and held it up to his mouth.

³⁰When Jesus had received the wine, he exclaimed, “All is finished!” Then, bowing his head, he resigned his spirit to God.

³¹It was the Preparation day, and so, to prevent the bodies from remaining on the crosses during the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a great day), the Jews asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies removed.

³²Accordingly the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man, and then those of the other who had been crucified with Jesus;

³³but, on coming to him, when they saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.

³⁴One of the soldiers, however, pierced his side with a spear, and blood and water immediately flowed from it.

³⁵This is the statement of one who actually saw it — and his statement may be relied on, and he knows that he is speaking the truth — and it is given in order that you also may be convinced.

³⁶For all this happened in fulfillment of the words of scripture — ‘Not one of its bones will be broken.’

³⁷And there is another passage which says — ‘They will look on him whom they pierced.’

³⁸After this, Joseph of Ramah, a disciple of Jesus — but a secret one, owing to his fear of the religious authorities — begged Pilate's permission to remove the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him leave; so Joseph went and removed the body.

³⁹Nicodemus, too — the man who had formerly visited Jesus by night — came with a roll of myrrh and aloes, weighing nearly a hundred pounds.