The soldiers took Jesus to the palace of the high priest, the leader of the Jewish people. His house was near, or a part of, the temple. It was night, but there were priests, scribes and others waiting, as had been planned, to question and witness against Jesus. They wanted to hurry through a trial of Jesus when most of the people would not see or know what they did.
These men who gathered in the palace knew the laws given to Moses to direct them how to give any accused person a fair trial with witnesses. They would know the words by the prophet, “O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Mic. 6:8).
Injustice
They did not do justly or love mercy. They had before tried to puzzle Jesus with questions and have Him speak wrongly. Because He had told them God’s words and had shown their ways to be wrong, they were so angry that they determined to condemn Him to death, although He had done no wrong.
Their witnesses did not speak truthfully, and they did not agree in what they said. At last the high priest asked Jesus, “Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”
The Lord answered plainly, “I am,” and told them of His coming with power.
The high priest called His answer “blasphemy,” words against God. Then they all agreed Jesus deserved to die.
There were certain things people of those days did to show their feelings to others; they “rent,” or tore, their clothes to show great grief or shame. But the high priest was not to do so (Lev. 21:10), yet the high priest that night rent his clothes to show he thought the words of the Lord Jesus were shameful.
Some of the men spit in the face of Jesus to show their contempt of Him; others covered His eyes and then struck Him with their hands (called “buffeting”) and said for Him to name who struck Him.
Meekness
Yet Jesus did not answer or resist. He proved the words written long before of the Holy One to come: “I hid not My face from shame and spitting” (Isa. 50:6). It was also written of Him, “He was despised and rejected of men.” “He was taken from ... judgment [not given righteous judgment]” (Isa. 53:3, 8).
However, those men had no right to punish anyone by death; all they could do was to accuse and witness against Jesus and to send Him to the Roman ruler for another trial. They hurried to do this early in the morning.
Do you know what time of the year this was? It was the time of the Passover feast, also called the feast of unleavened bread, because they then ate only unleavened bread (without yeast) for seven days. This was in their month Abib, the same as late March or early April to us (See Exodus 13:3-4, 6; Luke 22:1).
Further Meditation
1. What produced the hatred these men had for the Lord Jesus?
2. What other scriptural principles were violated that day?