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Luk_23:10-12. Εἱστήκεισαν ] they stood there. They had brought Him to Herod.
εὐτόνως ] with passionate energy. Comp. 2Ma_12:23; Act_18:28, often in the Greek writers.
Luk_23:11. Prudently enough Herod does not enter into the charges,—frivolously enough he thinks that justice will be done to the obstinate enthusiast as to a fool, not by means of investigation and punishment, but by contempt and mockery.
σὺν τοῖς στρατεύμασιν αὐτοῦ ] These troops are the body of satellites by whom He is surrounded.
ἐσθῆτα λαμπρ .] a gorgeous robe, which is not to be defined more strictly. A toga candida (Polyb. x. 4. 8, x. 5. 1), which Beza, Kuinoel, Lange, and others suppose, is less in accordance with the situation, in which Jesus was to be caricatured, not as a candidate, but as a king. As such He was to appear again before Pilate splendidly clothed (but whether actually in purple or not is not expressed in the word). Comp. Xen. Cyrop. ii. 4. 5. Bengel, moreover, aptly remarks: “Herodes videtur contemtim voluisse significare, se nil metuere ab hoc rege.”
Luk_23:12. ὄντες ] along with ὑπάρχειν , for the, sake of making the situation more strongly prominent. See Dissen, ad Dem. de Cor. p. 258 f.
πρὸς ἑαυτούς ] not ἀλλήλους this time, simply “ut varietur oratio,” Kühner, ad Xen. Mem. 2. 6. 20. The cause of the previous enmity is unknown; possibly, however, it had originated from disputes about jurisdiction, since that consideration of Herod’s jurisdiction (of the fori originis), even although Herod prudently made no further use of it, but sent back the accused, brought about the reconciliation. According to Justin, c. Tr. 103, Pilate sent Jesus to Herod to please him ( χαριζόμενος ).
REMARK.
The narrative of the sending to Herod (comp. Act_4:27) has the stamp of originality, and might as an interlude, having no bearing on the further course of the history, easily disappear from the connection of the tradition, so that its preservation is only due to Luke’s investigation; and even John, in his narrative of the trial before Pilate, leaves it entirely out of consideration. He leaps over it after the words: ἐγὼ οὐδεμίαν αἰτίαν εὑρίσκω ἐν αὐτῷ , Luk_18:38 (not after Luk_23:40, Tholuck, Olshausen), and hence makes Pilate immediately connect the words of Luk_23:39, which in the narrative of Luke correspond to the words of Luk_23:16. But not as though John had not known the intervening incident (de Wette; a conclusion in itself wholly improbable, and going much too far; such, for example, as might be applied equally to the Lord’s Supper, to the agony in the garden, etc.); but, on the contrary, in accordance with the freedom of his peculiar composition, since all the evangelists did their work eclectically. Lightly Strauss, II. p. 500, satisfied himself with the conjecture that the “anecdote” arose from the endeavour to place Jesus before all possible judgment-seats in Jerusalem. Baur, however (Evang. p. 489), derives the narrative from the endeavour to have the innocence of Jesus attested as conspicuously as possible in the anti-Judaic interest, to lay the guilt on Judaism, and to relieve Pilate as much as possible from the burden (so also Schenkel, p. 405); comp. Eichthal’s frivolous judgment, ii. p. 308.