scourging

185:6.2Pi­late would make one last ap­peal to their pity. Be­ing afraid to defy the clamor of this mis­led mob who cried for the blood of Je­sus, he or­dered the Jew­ish guards and the Ro­man sol­diers to take Je­sus and scourge him. This was in it­self an un­just and il­le­gal pro­ce­dure since the Ro­man law pro­vided that only those con­demned to die by cru­ci­fix­ion should be thus sub­jected to scourg­ing. The guards took Je­sus into the open court­yard of the prae­to­rium for this or­deal. Though his en­e­mies did not wit­ness this scourg­ing, Pi­late did, and be­fore they had fin­ished this wicked abuse, he di­rected the scourg­ers to de­sist and in­di­cated that Je­sus should be brought to him. Be­fore the scourg­ers laid their knot­ted whips upon Je­sus as he was bound to the whip­ping post, they again put upon him the pur­ple robe, and plait­ing a crown of thorns, they placed it upon his brow. And when they had put a reed in his hand as a mock scepter, they knelt be­fore him and mocked him, say­ing, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they spit upon him and struck him in the face with their hands. And one of them, be­fore they re­turned him to Pi­late, took the reed from his hand and struck him upon the head.

185:7.2But Je­sus could hardly an­swer such ques­tions when asked by a man-fear­ing, weak, and vac­il­lat­ing judge who was so un­just as to sub­ject him to flog­ging even when he had de­clared him in­no­cent of all crime, and be­fore he had been duly sen­tenced to die. Je­sus looked Pi­late straight in the face, but he did not an­swer him. Then said Pi­late: “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not re­al­ize that I still have power to re­lease you or to cru­cify you?” Then said Je­sus: “You could have no power over me ex­cept it were per­mit­ted from above. You could ex­er­cise no au­thor­ity over the Son of Man un­less the Fa­ther in heaven al­lowed it. But you are not so guilty since you are ig­no­rant of the gospel. He who be­trayed me and he who de­liv­ered me to you, they have the greater sin.”

187:0.1Af­ter the two brig­ands had been made ready, the sol­diers, un­der the di­rec­tion of a cen­tu­rion, started for the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion. The cen­tu­rion in charge of these twelve sol­diers was the same cap­tain who had led forth the Ro­man sol­diers the pre­vi­ous night to ar­rest Je­sus in Geth­sem­ane. It was the Ro­man cus­tom to as­sign four sol­diers for each per­son to be cru­ci­fied. The two brig­ands were prop­erly scourged be­fore they were taken out to be cru­ci­fied, but Je­sus was given no fur­ther phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment; the cap­tain un­doubt­edly thought he had al­ready been suf­fi­ciently scourged, even be­fore his con­dem­na­tion.