What Does John 19:13 Mean?

(13) **When Pilate therefore heard that saying.**—Better . . . *these sayings*—*i.e.,* the two sayings of the previous verse. **He brought Jesus forth** ., .—Comp. John 19:9. He hesitates no longer about the course to be taken. His own position and life may be in danger, and he prepares, therefore, to pronounce the final sentence, which must necessarily be done from the public judgment seat outside the palace. (Comp. Matthew 27:19.) **The Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha.**—Both these words occur here only, and are instances of the writer’s minute knowledge of the localities in Jerusalem. It may have been better to have preserved the Greek name (*Lithostrōton*)*,* as well as that by which the place was known in the Hebrew (Syro-Chaldaic) of the time. The word literally means “stone-paved,” and was the Greek name for the tesselated “pavement” of marble and coloured stones with which from the time of Sylla the Romans delighted to adorn the Prætorium. The Chaldee word means “an elevated place,” so that the one name was given to it from its *form,* and the other from the material of which it was made. Suetonius (*Life,* chap. 46) tells us that Julius Cæsar carried about with him such pieces of marble and stone, but the mention of the *“*place” bears the impression that it was a fixture in front of the Prætorium at Jerusalem, in which the Bema was placed; or it may have been a portion of the northern court of the sanctuary to which Pilate came out, if we identify the Prætorium with the tower Antonia. (Comp. Note on Matthew 27:27.) Josephus mentions that the whole of the Temple mountain was paved with this kind of Mosaic work (*Ant* v. 5. 2. Caspari, *Chron. Geogr., Introd.,* Eng. Trans., p. 225).