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22. τρίτον. We can only obtain from all the four Evangelists, and especially from St John, a full conception of the earnestness with which Pilate strove to escape from the necessity of what he felt to be a needless crime. If he was not, as Tertullian says, “jam pro conscientia sua Christianus,” he was evidently deeply impressed; and the impossibility of doing right must have come upon him as a terrible Nemesis for his past sins. It is very noteworthy that he took step after step to secure the acquittal of Jesus. 1. He emphatically and publicly announced His perfect innocence. 2. He sent Him to Herod. 3. He made an offer to release Him as a boon. 4. He tried to make scourging take the place of crucifixion. 5. He appealed to compassion. St John shews still more clearly how in successive stages of the trial he sets aside, i. the vague general charge of being “an evil-doer” (Luk 18:30); ii. of being in any seditious sense “a king” (Luk 18:39); iii. of any guilt in His religious claims (Luk 19:12). He only yields at last through fear (Luk 19:12), which makes him release a man guilty of the very crime for which he delivers Jesus to a slave’s death. The fact that Pilate’s patron Sejanus had probably by this time fallen, and that Tiberius was executing all connected with him, may have enhanced Pilate’s fears. He knew that an accusation of High Treason (under the Lex Majestatis) was generally fatal (Tac. Ann. III. 38; Suet. Tib. 58). All this, with other phases of these last scenes, will be found fully brought out in my Life of Christ, II. pp. 360–391.
τί γὰρ κακὸν ἐποίησεν; The “Why, what evil hath He done?” happily expresses the idiomatic γάρ. It was first introduced into the Rhemish version.