By His Stripes
At this point in our story, Pilate had exhausted every option to set Jesus free without harm. He tried to dismiss the case outright. He tried to pass it off on King Herod. He tried forcing the mob to choose between Jesus and a hardened criminal. And yet, the crowd continued to insist that Jesus be crucified. No matter how ludicrous their "charges" were, they refused to drop the matter as long as this Man was still alive. And so, Pilate was now being forced into more extreme measures to save Jesus' life. In a last-ditch effort, he delivered Jesus over to his soldiers to be scourged... The Horrible Whip It's commonly believed that Jesus was whipped thirty-nine times during His scourging. But this was not necessarily the case. The "thirty-nine lash" rule was a Jewish custom, not a Roman one. The Jewish law allowed for forty blows to punish criminals. Their custom later became thirty-nine lashes as a maximum, just in case there was a miscount. The...