The brief spring-day was verging towards the evening of the Sabbath.' In general, the Law ordered that the body of a criminal should not be left hanging unburied over night. [6174] Perhaps in ordinary circumstances the Jews might not have appealed so confidently to Pilate as actually to ask [6175] him to shorten the sufferings of those on the Cross, since the punishment of crucifixion often lasted not only for hours but days, ere death ensued. But here was a special occasion. The Sabbath about to open was a high-day' - it was both a Sabbath and the second Paschal Day, which was regarded as in every respect equally sacred with the first - nay, more so, since the so-called Wavesheaf was then offered to the Lord. And what the Jews now proposed to Pilate was, indeed, a shortening, but not in any sense a mitigation, of the punishment. Sometimes there was added to the punishment of crucifixion that of breaking the bones (crurifragium, skelokopa) by means of a club or hammer. This would not itself bring death, but the breaking of the bones was always followed by a coup de grâce, by sword, lance, or stroke (the perforatio or percussio sub alas), which immediately put an end to what remained of life. [6176] Thus the breaking of the bones' was a sort of increase of punishment, by way of compensation for its shortening by the final stroke that followed.
It were unjust to suppose, that in their anxiety to fulfil the letter of the Law as to burial on the eve of that high Sabbath, the Jews had sought to intensify the sufferings of Jesus. The text gives no indication of this; and they could not have asked for the final stroke to be inflicted without the breaking of the bones,' which always preceded it. The irony of this punctilious care for the letter of the Law about burial and high Sabbath by those who had betrayed and crucified their Messiah on the first Passover-day is sufficiently great, and, let us add, terrible, without importing ficticious elements. St. John, who, perhaps, immediately on the death of Christ, left the Cross, alone reports circumstance. Perhaps it was when he concerted with Joseph of Arimathæa, with Nicodemus, or the two Marys, measures for the burying of Christ, that he learned of the Jewish deputation to Pilate, followed it to Prætorium, and then watched how it was all carried out on Golgotha. He records, how Pilate acceded to the Jewish demand, and gave directions for the crurifragium, and premission for the after-removal of the dead bodies, which otherwise might have been left to hang, till putrescence or birds of prey had destroyed them. But St. John also tells us what he evidently regards as so great a prodigy that he specially vouches for it, pledging his own veracity, as an eyewitness, and grounding on it an appeal to the faith of those to whom his Gospel is addressed. It is, that certain things came to pass [not as in our A. V., were done'] that the Scripture should be fulfilled,' or, to put it otherwise, by which the Scripture was fulfilled. These things were two, to which a third phenomenon, not less remarkable, must be added. For, first, when, in the crurifragium, the soldiers had broken the bones of two malefactors, and then came to the Cross of Jesus, they found that He was dead already, and so a bone of Him' was not broken.' Had it been otherwise, the Scripture concerning the Paschal Lamb, [6177] as well that concerning the Righteous Suffering Servant of Jehovah, [6178] would have been broken. In Christ alone these two ideas of the Paschal Lamb and the Righteous Suffering Servant of Jehovah are combined into a unity and fulfilled in their highest meaning. And when, by a strange concurrence of circumstances, it came to pass' that, contrary to what might have been expected, a bone of Him' was not broken' this outward fact served as the finger to point to the predictions which were fulfilled of Him.