We have only a few glimpses of Caiaphas in the Gospels. He appears and speaks a few words and then passes from view. But his words are always very influential, and the glimpses we have of him allow us to look right into his life and see what manner of man he was.
1. From an early day, probably, his spies kept him informed concerning Christ; and it is quite certain that on the day after Jesus cleansed the Temple, every priest in Jerusalem knew everything there was to know about Him. From that time onward our Lord must have been classified by Caiaphas as a dangerous person; and the high priest no doubt made up his mind that He must be either silenced or slain. This resolve did not, however, mean that Caiaphas gave way to panic. He simply reckoned up our Lord from his own standpoint, he made up his mind as to his own policy, and he was content to wait until events justified both the declaration of that policy and the carrying out of it.
What Caiaphas must have anticipated at last came to pass. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Full of alarm, the Pharisees joined their old enemies the Sadducee “chief priests” in a council deliberation. They expressed their agitation in words which admitted the reality of the Wonder-worker's “signs,” while they dexterously brought out the one point of danger which they knew was sure to rouse the Sadducees. If the authorities of the Jewish Church continued to leave alone the man who ignored their right to license or to suppress Him, the whole people would flock to His standard. And then the dreaded Romans, so relentless to crush every kind of association among their subjects, lest haply its object might be political, would put out the iron hand of empire and destroy with one easy stroke their “place and nation.” Their holy and beautiful “place,” where their fathers worshipped God, and from which the Sadducees derived so comfortable an income-their “nation,” the chosen people of God, which formed so appreciative an audience for the display of Pharisee holiness-all would be swept away, and what were they to do?
But however they might agitate or hesitate, there was one man who knew his own mind-Caiaphas, the high priest. He had no doubt as to what was the right thing to do. He had the advantage of a perfectly clear and single purpose, and no sort of restraint of conscience or delicacy kept him from speaking it out. He was impatient at their vacillation, and he brushed it all aside with the brusque and contemptuous speech: “Ye know nothing at all! The one point of view for us to have is our own interests. Let us have that clearly understood: when we once ask what is expedient for us,' there will be no doubt about the answer. This man must die! Never mind about His miracles, or His teaching, or the beauty of His character. His life is a perpetual danger to our prerogatives. I vote for death!”
John regards this selfish, cruel advice as a prophecy. Caiaphas spoke wiser things than he knew. The Divine Spirit breathed in strange fashion through even such lips as his, and moulded his savage utterance into such a form that it became a fit expression for the very deepest thought about the nature and the power of Christ's death. He did indeed die for that people-thinks the Evangelist-even though they have rejected Him, and the dreaded Romans have come and taken away our place and nation; but His death had a wider purpose, and was not for that nation only, but also that “He should gather together in one the children of God that are scattered abroad.”
“It is expedient that one man should die.” We all acknowledge the truth of this prophecy, as the Evangelist acknowledged it. But what would Caiaphas himself have said if he had foreseen the result? I turn over the pages of history, and I find that a few years after these words were uttered, Caiaphas was deposed from the high priesthood by these very Romans whom he was so very eager to conciliate. I look further, and I read that some thirty years later still, while many present at this council of priests and Pharisees were yet living, the Romans did come and take away both their place and nation; and this, because in place of believing on the true Christ, whose Kingdom was not of this world, who commanded to give tribute to Cæsar, they chose as their leaders false Messiahs, political adventurers, whose schemes of earthly dominion were dangerous to the power and the majesty of Rome.1 [Note: J. B. Lightfoot, Sermons Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, 78.]
2. Once resolved on the removal of the dangerous Teacher, the high priests endeavoured to secure it as quickly and as quietly as possible. The Galilæan multitude must be avoided, for the arrest of “the Prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee,” would rouse all the smouldering antagonism between Galilæan and Judæan, and provoke a riot which would bring down the rough hand of Rome on both alike. But after the feast Jesus would presumably have retired to the north again. Their only chance, therefore, was to make Him somehow a Roman prisoner before His friends could effect a rescue. But that proved a difficult task. Surrounded throughout the week by loyal and admiring crowds, or attended constantly by the bodyguard of devoted disciples, He could not be taken without speedy alarm being given. The treachery of Judas at last helped them out of their difficulty; and when the opportunity came, though on the very day they most wished to avoid, they took a force large enough to overpower all opposition likely to be met at such an hour, and arrested Jesus in Gethsemane.
At last Jesus and Caiaphas were face to face; and the time for which the high priest had plotted had really commenced. Imagine the scene in that awful room in the high priest's house. Since the meeting was illegal, it will probably have been also more or less informal; but something like the ordinary procedure of the Sanhedrin must have been followed. At the central point of the inner circumference of a semicircle sat Caiaphas, the president of the court; and to the right and left of him were seated his colleagues. At each end was a clerk, the one to record votes for acquittal, the other those for condemnation.
The proceedings of the court were scandalous. Caiaphas had cynically avowed his intention of destroying the prisoner on political grounds, and stuck at nothing to carry out his purpose. In the first place, the trial was begun and finished in one night. This was illegal. The proper course was to put the prisoner in ward till the next day, as was done with Peter and John. Next, the private official interrogatories addressed by the magistrate to the prisoner, before hearing witnesses, were quite illegal by Jewish law, though they are permitted in France. When Jesus replied to them, “Why askest thou me? ask them that have heard me,” He was claiming His legal rights. Thirdly, the demand for confession, at the end of the questioning, was expressly forbidden by the Jewish doctors. Fourthly, the contradictory evidence of the “two false witnesses” was accepted as a charge of blasphemy, and the rest of the trial, which up till now had been quite vague, was a trial for blasphemy. But as even that court could not convict on such evidence, another attempt was made to cross-examine the Prisoner, again illegally. Jesus again asserted His legal rights and refused to answer. The concluding scene was held probably in the great hall called Gazith, and the court now consisted of the whole Sanhedrin, seventy-one in number, who sat in a semicircle with the presiding judge in the middle of the arc. The forms of a law-court were now forgotten in a wild scene of excitement. “Art thou the Christ? Tell us!” cried the judges. “If I tell you, ye will not believe,” said the Prisoner, breaking silence at last. Then the high priest saw his opportunity and rose. “I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.” The answer came: “I am.” At once Caiaphas rent his robe from the top to the bottom, as the law was when one heard the name of God blasphemed, and cried: “He hath spoken blasphemy: what need of witnesses? Ye heard him. What think ye?” They all answered, “He is Ish Maveth-a man of death.”
Caiaphas little thought that he was sealing the doom, not of his prisoner, but of himself, his office, and his nation. In the sight of God, and in the eye of history too, it was not Jesus, but the high priest and the high priesthood who were tried, found guilty, and condemned on that day.1 [Note: W. R. Inge. All Saints' Sermons, 33.]
The great importance of the trial for our purpose lies in the fact that the issue raised was Christ's claim to be the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel, and a King. He was tried unfairly and judged unjustly, but the true issue was raised. He died, then, because before the Jews He claimed to be the Son of God and the Messiah, and before Pilate to be Christ and King.
All generations since have felt that the judged was the Judge. The men were really standing before the bar of Christ, and all appear in terrible distinctness, revealed by the Light of the world.
Caiaphas, seeing his occasion in the terror of the nation that the Romans might efface them, and urging that this victim would appease the suspicion of their conquerors, and preserve the nation-a consideration so important as to make it of no consequence whether He was innocent or not-is a type of one who misinterprets the Divine covenant which he represented.
And Jesus, what shall we say of Him? The great characteristic of the history is missed in reading it, for the events pass quickly in the terse narrative. It is the almost utter silence before all the judges, and the complete passiveness in the hands of those who insulted-all this, accompanied, as has been truly imagined, by a look, not of fortitude and tension, but rather of recollection, as if there was nothing in all these insults and questions to which any answer or expostulation was appropriate, but rather a current of inevitable passions which must be, but the moving spring of which is beyond the reach of words. No morbid dejection, no personal resentment, but a complete detachment from all earthly passion, and at the same time a conscious drawing out of deep springs of strength and consolation, which no human malice could reach to choke-infinitely above them all, their Judge while they judged Him.1 [Note: W. R. Nicoll, The Incarnate Saviour, 249.]
