· 15:22 (crucifixion): “It was 9:00 when the melancholy procession reached Golgotha. Avowedly, the punishment was invented to make death as painful and as lingering as the power of human endurance. First the upright wood was planted in the ground … not high … the feet of the Sufferer were not above one or two feet from the ground … Next the transverse wood was placed on the ground, and the Sufferer laid on it … His arms were extended, drawn up, and bound to it. Then a strong sharp nail was driven, first into the right, then into the left hand. Next the Sufferer was drawn up by means of ropes, perhaps ladders; the transverse either bound or nailed to the upright, and a rest or support for the body fastened on it. Lastly, the feet were extended, and either one nail hammered into each, or a larger piece of iron through the two … And so might the crucified hang for hours, even days in the unutterable anguish of suffering, till consciousness at last failed.”
v35: crucified: The one to be crucified was stripped of his clothing, then laid with arms outstretched on the crossbeams. A spike was driven through the centerpart of the palms into the beam, then another through each foot (though sometimes one large spike was driven through both feet). A death by crucifixion seems to include all that pain and death can have of the horrible and ghastly—dizziness, cramp, thirst, starvation, sleeplessness, traumatic fever, tetanus, publicity of shame, long continuance of torment, horror of anticipation, mortification of untended wounds, all intensified just up to the point at which they can be endured at all, but all stopping just short of the point which would give to the sufferer the relief of unconsciousness. (Smith's Bible Dictionary)
CRUCIFIXION was in use among the Egyptians, Gen. 40:19, the Carthaginians, the Persians, Esther 7:10, the Assyrians, Scythians, Indians, Germans, and from the earliest times among the Greeks and Romans. Whether this mode of execution was known to the ancient Jews is a matter of dispute. … It was unanimously considered the most horrible form of death. Among the Romans the degradation was also a part of the infliction, and the punishment if applied to freemen was only used in the case of the vilest criminals. … The victim was in full reach of every hand that might choose to strike. … The unnatural position made every movement painful; the lacerated veins and crushed tendons throbbed with incessant anguish; the wounds, inflamed by exposure, gradually gangrened; the arteries, especially of the head and stomach, became swollen and oppressed with surcharged blood; and, while each variety of misery went on gradually increasing, there was added to them the intolerable pang of a burning and raging thirst.—Farrar’s “Life of Christ.”
And if I may add, the one “complaint” of the Lord Jesus was not the physical pain but the forsaking of His Father.
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