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Joh_18:31. Since they bring forward no definite charge, Pilate refers them to their own tribunal (the Sanhedrim). As he, without such an accusation, from which his competency to act must first arise, could take no other course than at once refer the matter to the regular Jewish authority, he also incurred no danger in taking that course; because if the κρίνειν , i.e. the judicial procedure against Jesus, should terminate in assigning the punishment of death, they must nevertheless come back to him, while it was at the same time a prudent course ( φθόνον ὀξὺ νοήσας , Nonnus); because if they did not wish to withdraw with their business unfinished, they would, it might be presumed, be under the necessity of laying aside their insolence, and of still coming out with an accusation. If κρίνειν , which, according to this view, is by no means of doubtful signification (Hengstenberg), be understood as meaning to condemn, or even to execute (Lücke, de Wette, who, as already Calvin and several others, finds therein a sneer), which, however, it does not in itself denote, and which sense it cannot acquire by means of the following ἀποκτεῖναι , something of a very anticipatory and relatively impertinent character is put in the procurator’s mouth.
ὑμεῖς ] With emphasis.
The answer of the Jews rests on the thought that this κρίνειν was, on their part, already an accomplished fact, and led up to the sentence for execution, which they, however, were not competent to carry out. They therefore understood the κρίνειν not as equivalent to ἀποκτεῖναι , but regarded the latter as the established result of the former. Any limitation, however, of ἡμῖν οὐκ ἔξεστιν , κ . τ . λ . (to the punishment of the cross, as Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Calovius, and several others think; or to the feast day, as Semler and Kuinoel suppose; or to political crimes, so Krebs), is imported into the words; the Jews had, since the domination of the Romans (according to the Talmud, forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem; see Lightfoot, p. 455, 1133 ff.), lost the jus vitae et necis generally; they could, indeed, sentence to death, but the confirmation and execution belonged to the superior Roman authority. See generally Iken, Diss. II. p. 517 ff.; Friedlieb, Archäol. p. 96 f. The stoning of Stephen, as also at a later period that of James, the Lord’s brother (Josephus, Antt. xx. 9. 1), was a tumultuary act. Comp. also Keil, Archäol. II. p. 259.