The King crucified: Pilate, Golgotha, the cry from Psalm 22 and the sealed tomb

Matthew 27 narrates the trial before Pilate, the crucifixion and the burial. It continues the passion story begun in chapter 26 and is set on Friday morning to Saturday of Passover week in AD 30 or 33, the two dates most often argued by scholars. Pontius Pilate was prefect of Judea from about AD 26 to 36, and the Jewish council had no power to carry out a death sentence (John 18:31), so they hand Jesus to Rome. Crucifixion was a Roman punishment for slaves and rebels, designed to shame as well as kill. The remains of a crucified man found in a tomb north of Jerusalem in 1968 show a nail through the heel bone.

The Gospel is ascribed by tradition to the apostle Matthew, though many critical scholars think an unnamed Jewish Christian scribe wrote it, using Mark. Those who accept Marcan priority usually date it to AD 70 to 90, and others place it earlier. The readers were probably Jewish Christians.

All four Gospels tell the main events: the trial before Pilate, Barabbas, the mockery, Simon of Cyrene, Golgotha, the two robbers, the darkness, the death, Joseph of Arimathea and the women. Matthew follows Mark closely but adds material of his own: the death of Judas, the dream of Pilate's wife, the washing of Pilate's hands and the cry of the people, the opened tombs and the guard at the tomb. Luke adds the repentant robber and the prayer for forgiveness (23:34, absent from a few early manuscripts), and John alone has the saying 'It is finished' and the soldier's spear. Each Gospel records different sayings from the cross.

The chapter is historical narrative told with a restraint that makes its Scripture allusions more telling. The crucifixion itself is told in very few words. What Matthew expands is the mockery and the signs, because they carry the meaning. The mockers' words echo Psalm 22:7-8, and Matthew shows the psalms of the righteous sufferer being lived out.

Irony runs through the chapter. Soldiers dress Jesus as a king in mockery, and he is a king. The leaders taunt him that he cannot save himself, and he is saving others by not doing so. The chapter can be read as a series of true statements said in unbelief.

There are two points that call for care.

• The first is the citation of Jeremiah in 27:9-10. The quotation is drawn mainly from Zechariah 11:12-13, with echoes of Jeremiah 18:1-4 and 32:6-15, the potter and the purchase of a field.
• The second is the cry of the people in 27:25, which has been abused by later Christians as a justification for hatred of Jews. It is the cry of a particular crowd in a particular city on one morning, and nothing in the text suggests that guilt is hereditary or that it extends to all Jews. The Gospel itself presents Jesus' death as for the many (20:28; 26:28).

Verses 1–10

At dawn the chief priests and elders hold their consultation and hand Jesus to Pilate. Judas, seeing that Jesus is condemned, is filled with remorse, returns the thirty pieces of silver and says he has betrayed innocent blood. They tell him it is his affair. He throws the money into the temple and hangs himself. The priests cannot put blood money in the treasury, so they buy the potter's field to bury foreigners, and it is called the Field of Blood. Matthew says this fulfilled what was spoken through Jeremiah. The text combines Zechariah 11:12-13, in which the prophet takes thirty shekels and throws them to the potter in the house of the LORD, with Jeremiah's potter and field. Acts 1:18-19 gives a different account of Judas' death, which can be harmonised or read as a separate tradition.

Verses 11–26

Pilate asks if he is the King of the Jews, and Jesus answers, 'You have said so', and says nothing to the charges. Pilate is amazed. It was the custom at the feast to release a prisoner, and he offers the crowd a choice between Jesus and a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. (Some early manuscripts give his name as Jesus Barabbas, which would make the choice Jesus Barabbas or Jesus called Christ.) Pilate knows the leaders have acted from envy. His wife sends word to have nothing to do with that righteous man because of a dream, a detail found only in Matthew. The chief priests persuade the crowd to ask for Barabbas, and they demand crucifixion. Pilate washes his hands before them, a gesture from Deuteronomy 21:6-9 and Psalm 26:6, and says he is innocent of this man's blood. The people answer that his blood is on them and on their children. Pilate releases Barabbas and has Jesus flogged and handed over to be crucified. One who is guilty goes free while the innocent one is condemned in his place.

Verses 27–31

The soldiers gather the whole cohort, strip him, put a scarlet robe on him, press a crown of thorns on his head, and put a reed in his right hand as a sceptre. They kneel and say, 'Hail, King of the Jews!', spit on him and strike his head with the reed. It is a mock coronation. Then they put his own clothes back on him and lead him away.

Verses 32–44

They conscript Simon of Cyrene, a man from North Africa, to carry the cross. At Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, they offer him wine mixed with gall (compare Psalm 69:21), which he tastes and refuses. They crucify him and divide his garments by lot (Psalm 22:18) and sit to watch. Above his head they put the charge: This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Two robbers are crucified with him. Passers-by shake their heads and mock him: you who would destroy the temple, save yourself; if you are the Son of God, come down. The chief priests, scribes and elders say that he saved others but cannot save himself, and that if he is King of Israel he should come down and they will believe. These taunts come close to Psalm 22:7-8. Even the robbers join in.

Verses 45–56

From the sixth hour (noon) darkness comes over the land until the ninth hour (3 p.m.), a sign of judgment that recalls Amos 8:9 and the plague of darkness in Exodus 10. About the ninth hour Jesus cries in a loud voice, 'Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?', which is 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?' It is the opening line of Psalm 22. Some bystanders think he is calling Elijah, and one runs to soak a sponge in sour wine. Then Jesus cries out again and gives up his spirit. At once the curtain of the temple is torn in two from top to bottom, the earth shakes, rocks split and tombs open, and many holy ones who had died are raised and, after his resurrection, enter the holy city and appear to many. This last scene, found only in Matthew, is difficult. It signals that his death breaks the power of death, but interpreters differ on whether it is literal or symbolic. The centurion and those with him, seeing the earthquake, are terrified and say that this was truly the Son of God. Many women who had followed him from Galilee watch from a distance, among them Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee's sons.

Verses 57–61

In the evening Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man and a disciple, asks Pilate for the body, wraps it in clean linen and lays it in his own new tomb cut in the rock, rolling a large stone across the entrance. Isaiah 53:9 had said that the Servant was with a rich man in his death.

Verses 62–66

On the next day, the Sabbath, the chief priests and Pharisees ask Pilate for a guard because Jesus said that after three days he would rise. Pilate tells them to make it as secure as they can, and they seal the stone and set the guard. The detail, found only in Matthew, prepares for 28:11-15.

The cross stands at the centre of the Bible's story, and Matthew's account presents several of its meanings. It is the death of the righteous sufferer of the Psalms, who is mocked and forsaken yet is God's chosen one (Psalm 22; 69). It is the death of the servant of Isaiah 53, who is numbered with transgressors and buried with the rich. It is the ransom he said he came to give (20:28) and the blood of the covenant poured out (26:28). It is the Passover sacrifice (1 Corinthians 5:7).

It is also the judgment of God. The darkness, which in the prophets accompanies the Day of the LORD (Amos 8:9), falls on the land, and Paul reads the death as bearing the curse that the Law reserves for the one hanged on a tree (Deuteronomy 21:23; Galatians 3:13). The torn veil indicates that the way to God has been opened. Hebrews 10:19-20 says that Christians enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, through the curtain, that is, his flesh.

Finally the cross is the beginning of the new age. The earthquake and the raised saints belong to the language of resurrection and the end (Ezekiel 37; Daniel 12:2). The centurion's confession, the first by a Gentile in the Gospel's passion story, anticipates the commission to the nations in 28:19.

This chapter presents Jesus as the crucified King. Each mockery states the truth. He is King of the Jews, as the sign above him says, and the Son of God. The mockers' challenge, to save himself, is answered by his staying: he does not save himself because he is saving others. The silence before his accusers echoes the Servant of Isaiah 53:7, who like a lamb before its shearers did not open his mouth, though Matthew does not quote the line.

The cry of Psalm 22:1 is the Gospel's central expression of his suffering. Psalm 22 begins in abandonment and ends in the praise of God before the nations, and Jesus speaks its first line in the hearing of all. Whether he meant only the first line, the whole psalm, or both is debated, and it is not necessary to choose. The words show that he enters fully into the experience of forsakenness that the Psalms voice.

The torn veil works as a type of what his death does: the curtain between God's presence and the people is split from top to bottom, from God's side. And the sealed tomb with its guard becomes a witness that the body was truly dead.