John 19:13 - Exposition

When Pilate therefore heard these words, or, sayings £ his fear of Tiberius became greater than his fear of Christ; his anxiety for himself predominated over his desire for justice and fair play. He found he had gone too far. Some commentators and harmonists here introduce the "hand-washing" (see above, John 18:40 ); but such a proceeding at this moment, when he was straightening up his back for the last act of injustice, would have roused fresh and dangerous charges against his personal honor. He brought Jesus out from the Praetorium to a place in view of the peoples and sat down (not, as some say, caused Jesus, in mockery, to take his place upon the judgment-seat ( κάθιζω has the transitive sense in 1 Corinthians 6:4 and Ephesians 1:20 , but not in Jn; and undoubtedly it has the intransitive sense, not only in John, but in Acts 25:6 , Acts 25:17 . Moreover, the mockery was the act of the soldiery and of Herod's men of war, not of Pilate). It is remarkable, as Dr. James Drummond points out, that Justin Martyr ('Apol.,' 1:35) apparently refers to this supposed transitive usage of κάθιζω in this very connection by John, by the words, διασύροντες αὐτὸν ἐκάθισον ἐπὶ βήματος καὶ εἶπον κρῖνον ἡμῖν . It is reasonable inference that Justin read John's Gospel, and supposed him to give transitive force to the verb. Upon the judgment-seat in a place called λιθόστρθτον , the tessellated Pavement —equivalent to "stone-joining"—in which Romans delighted from the days of Sulla; a decoration which Julius Caesar carried about with him (Suet., 'Vit.,' 46.) for purposes of judgment— but in the Hebrew, Oabbatha . This was probably an elevated and fixed platform overlooking the temple-courts, or joining the Castle of Antonia with the temple. Its etymology is אתָיבִ־בגַּ , the ridge of the house or temple. £ Ewald has endeavored to find in the word the root עבַּקָ , Aramaic for "insert," modified into עָגָּ , and then to suppose that we have here an exact equivalent to λιθόστρωτον ; but where this word occurs in the LXX . it is the equivalent of the Hebrew פצַרָ , Song of Solomon 3:10 . The λιθόστρωτον was possibly some elevated seat reached by a flight of stairs, and in the open air, not the bema within the Praetorium, where the more private conversations took place.