John 18:32

That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(32) That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled.—Comp. Note on John 18:9.

Signifying what death he should die.—Better, signifying by what manner of death He should die. (Comp. Note on John 10:32.) For the prediction of the manner of death, comp. John 3:14; John 12:32; and Note on Matthew 20:19. If the Jews had possessed the power to put Him to death, they would have condemned Him on the technical charge of blasphemy, for which the punishment was stoning. (Comp. John 8:59; John 10:31; and Acts 7:51 et seq.) Crucifixion was not a Jewish punishment, and it was in the fact that He was executed, not by Jewish authority and on the charge of blasphemy, but by Roman authority and on a charge of Majestas (high treason), that His own prophecy of the manner of His death was fulfilled.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

18:28-32 It was unjust to put one to death who had done so much good, therefore the Jews were willing to save themselves from reproach. Many fear the scandal of an ill thing, more than the sin of it. Christ had said he should be delivered to the Gentiles, and they should put him to death; hereby that saying was fulfilled. He had said that he should be crucified, lifted up. If the Jews had judged him by their law, he had been stoned; crucifying never was used among the Jews. It is determined concerning us, though not discovered to us, what death we shall die: this should free us from disquiet about that matter. Lord, what, when, and how, thou hast appointed.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

That the saying of Jesus ... - To wit, that he would be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles and be crucified, Matthew 20:19. Neither of these things would have happened if he had been put to death in the way that the Jews first contemplated, Matthew 26:4. Though it should be admitted that they had the power, in religious cases, to do this, yet in such a case it would not have been done, as Jesus predicted, by the Gentiles; and even if it should be admitted that they had the right to take life, yet they had not the right to do it by crucifixion. This was particularly a Roman punishment. And thus it was ordered, in the providence of God, that the prediction of Jesus in both these respects was fulfilled.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

32. That the saying … might be fulfilled which he spake, signifying what death he should die—that is, by crucifixion (Joh 12:32, 33; Mt 20:19); which being a Roman mode of execution, could only be carried into effect by order of the governor. (The Jewish mode in such cases as this was by stoning).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Christ had before this time told his disciples that he should die, and that by the death of the cross, as we read, Matthew 20:19. God by his providence ordereth things accordingly, to let us know that the Scripture might be fulfilled to every tittle. Crucifying was no Jewish but a Roman death; had the Jews put him to death, they would have stoned him; but he must remove the curse from us, by being made a curse for us, being hanged on a tree, which was looked upon as an accursed death, Galatians 3:13. The Jews therefore knowing nothing of this counsel of God, yet execute it by refusing themselves to put him to death, and putting it off to Pilate, though possibly their design was but to avoid the odium of it. Thus God maketh the wrath of men to praise him.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled,.... That he should be delivered by the Jews to the Gentiles, to crucify him; and that he should be lifted up from the earth, and as the serpent upon the pole:

which he spake, signifying what death he should die; Matthew 20:19 and which was brought about this way, by the providence of God conducting this whole affair; and was cheerfully submitted to by Christ, in great love to his people, to redeem them from the curse of the law, being hereby made a curse for them.

Geneva Study Bible

That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, {c} signifying what death he should die.

(c) For Christ had foretold that he would be crucified.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

John 18:32. The aim ordained in the divine purpose, why the Jews, in consequence of having lost the right of life and death, were obliged to answer “ἡμῖν οὐκ ἔξεστιν, κ.τ.λ.” Otherwise, Jesus, as a false prophet and blasphemer of God, would have been stoned (like Stephen, and comp. John 8:59, John 10:31), but would not have been visited with the Roman punishment of crucifixion, namely, as one guilty of high treason, as He, with His pretensions as Messiah, could not but appear to be before the Roman courts; and the word of Jesus, John 12:32, would have remained unfulfilled.

Expositor's Greek Testament

John 18:32. This, however, they decline to do, because it is the death penalty they desire, and this they have no right to inflict: ἡμῖν οὐκ ἔξεστιν ἀποκτεῖναι οὐδένα. In the Roman provinces the power of life and death, the jus gladii, was reserved to the governor. See Arnold’s Roman Prov. Administration, pp. 55, 57; and Josephus, Bell. Jud., ii. 8, 1, who states that when the territory of Archelaus passed to the provincial governor, Coponius, the power of inflicting capital punishment was given to him, μέχρι τοῦ κτείνειν λαβὼν παρὰ τοῦ Καίσαρος ἐξουσίαν. See also Stapfer’s Palestine, p. 100. By being thus handed over to the Roman magistrate it came about that Jesus was crucified, a form of capital punishment which the Jews never inflicted even when they had power; and thus the word of Jesus was fulfilled which He spake intimating that He would die by crucifixion, John 12:32-33.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

32. the saying] Or word, John 12:32; Matthew 20:19.

what death] Rather, by what manner of death, as in John 12:33 and John 21:19. So in John 10:32 the Greek means ‘for what kind of a work,’ not merely ‘for which work.’ Comp. Matthew 21:23; Matthew 22:36; Luke 6:32; Luke 24:19. Had the Sanhedrin executed Him as a blasphemer or a false prophet, He would have been stoned. The Jews had other forms of capital punishment, but crucifixion was not among them.

Bengel's Gnomen

John 18:32. Εἶπε, He spake) ch. John 12:32-33, “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me. This He said signifying what death He should die.”—ποίῳ, by what kind of) viz. such a death as the Romans were wont to inflict. The Jews would have stoned Him [that being the punishment of blasphemy among them].

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 32. - In order that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying by what manner of death he was about to die. Thus the very political order of the world, the whole process by which Judaea became a Roman province, was part of the wondrous plan by which Jew and Gentile should together offer up the awful sacrifice, and all the world be guilty of the death of its Lord. The manner of the death had been foretold by our Lord. In John 3:14 he spoke of being lifted up (ὑψωθήαι), in John 8:28 he charged the Jews with the intention of so lifting him up to die (ὅταν ὑψώσητε), implying a method of capital punishment which was contrary to their ordinary habits; and in John 12:32 he declared that this lifting up of the Son of man would create part of his sacred and Divine attraction to the human race. In the synoptists he is said to have repeatedly spoken of his σταυρός (Luke 14:27; Mark 8:34; Matthew 10:38; Matthew 16:24); but in Matthew 20:19 he had clearly predicted his crucifixion by the Gentiles (cf. Luke 9:22, 23). The manner or kind of death was full of significance; it provided opportunity for the royal demission of his own life; it gave conditions for much of the sublime self-manifestation of the closing hours; it has proved, notwithstanding all the shame and curse of the proceeding, eminently symbolic of the compassion with which he embraced the human race in all its defilement and all the variety of its need. We are not surprised to find that the evangelist saw, in the complicated relations of Jewish and Roman authority, a divinely ordered arrangement, and a clearly foreseen and predicted consummation. Luke 23:2 shows that the charge brought against Jesus was made to receive a coloring likely to prejudice the Roman governor against him: "We found this Man perverting our nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a King." The uproar and the false and malicious charge would be more likely than any other to move Pilate against him; and thus the synoptic narrative, being presupposed, gives an explanation of the first question which John, as well as the synoptists, represents Pilate as first of all pressing upon the Divine Sufferer. Without Luke's statement, Pilate's question is abrupt and in. explicable; but it must be admitted that there is in John's narrative no direct hint of Luke's addition; and Christ's counter-question to the inquiry of Pilate (which last is given in the same form by all four evangelists) implies that he had not overheard the false charge which the Jews had brought into the court. The Lord was within the Praetorium. Pilate and the Jews were on the open, external space, where the altercation proceeded. We may also, with Steinmeyer, observe that nothing could appear more anomalous to Pilate than that these bigoted and rebellious priests, who perpetually resisted the claims of Roman governors to enforce tribute, should now hypocritically pretend that a prophet-leader of their own had been guilty of such a charge. Instead of resisting, the Pharisees would have fostered a demagogue who had taken such a disloyal part. Pilate would at once have suspected that there was something ominous in the very charge itself, when tumultuously pressed by a party who were accustomed to regard such proceedings as patriotic; and he saw with shrewdness that the Jews had merely cloaked their real antagonism by presenting an incrimination which, under ordinary circumstances, they would have treated as a crowning virtue. John 18:32

Vincent's Word Studies

By what death (ποίῳ θανάτῳ)

More correctly, by what manner of death. So Rev. Compare John 12:32; Matthew 20:19. Crucifixion was not a Jewish punishment.