John 19:17-27, The Passion of Christ (2)

·       15:20: “Once more was He unrobed and robed.  The purpose robe was torn from His wounded body, the crown of thorns from His bleeding brow.  Arrayed again in His own, now blood-stained garments, He was led forth to execution. … terrible preparations were soon made: the hammer, the nails, the cross, the very food for the soldiers who were to watch under each cross, the whole being under the command of a centurion.”

The procession now began to Golgotha.  At the head was someone carrying a board indicating the crime for which the criminal was to be crucified.  Then came the criminal carrying his cross.  There were three types of crosses: X T and †, probably the latter. 

·       15:21: (Simon) “Unrefreshed by food or sleep, after the terrible events of that night and morning, while His pallid face bore the blood-marks from the crown of thorns, His mangled body was unable to bear the weight of the cross … So Siman enlisted.  He seems to have been well known, at least afterwards in the Church – and his sons Alexander and Rufus even better than he.”

 

GALL. Mereerah, denoting “that which is bitter”; hence the term is ap-plied to the “bile” or “gall” (the fluid secreted by the liver), from its intense bitterness, Job 16:13; 20:25; it is also used of the “poi-son” of serpents, Job 20:14, which the ancients erroneously believed was their gall. 2. RoÆsh, generally translated “gall” in the English Bible, is in Hos. 10:4 rendered “hemlock”; in Deut. 32:33 and Job 20:16, roÆsh denotes the “poison” or “venom” of ser-pents. From Deut. 29:18 and Lam. 3:19, compared with Hos. 10:4, it is evident that the Hebrew term denotes some bitter and perhaps poisonous plant. Other writers have supposed, and with some reason, from Deut. 32:32, that some berry-bearing plant must be intended. Gesenius understands poppies; in which case the gall mingled with the wine offered to our Lord at his crucifixion, and refused by him, would be an anæsthetic, and tend to diminish the sense of suffering. Dr. Richardson, “Ten Lectures on Alcohol,” p. 23, thinks these drinks were given to the crucified to diminish the suffering through their intoxicating effects.

They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall, an allusion to Psalm 69:21. This was customarily given to condemned prisoners to serve as a kind of anesthetic or anodyne. It was literally a drugged “wine” (Gr oinon.) The statement that He would not drink indicates that our Lord refused any mitigation of His sufferings on our behalf.