Robertson Word Pictures - John 18:39 - 18:39

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Robertson Word Pictures - John 18:39 - 18:39


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

A custom (sunētheia). Old word for intimacy, intercourse, from sunēthēs (sun, ēthos), in N.T. only here, 1Co 8:7; 1Co 11:16. This custom, alluded to in Mar 15:6; Mat 27:15, is termed necessity (anagkē) in Luk 23:17 (late MSS., not in older MSS.). All the Gospels use the verb apoluō (release, set free). Then hina apolusō is a subject clause (hina and first aorist active subjunctive) in apposition with sunētheia.

Will ye therefore that I release? (boulesthe oun apolusō). Without the usual hina before apolusō, asyndeton, as in Mar 10:36, to be explained either as parataxis or two questions (Robertson, Grammar, p. 430) or as mere omission of hina (ibid., p. 994). There is contempt and irony in Pilate’s use of the phrase “the king of the Jews.”