So Governor Pontius Pilate compromises the matter, and proposes that Christ be whipped instead of assassinated. So the prisoner is fastened to a low pillar, and on his bent and bared back come the thongs of leather, with pieces of lead and bone intertwisted, so that every stroke shall be the more awful.
Christ lifts Himself from the scourging with flushed cheek and torn and quivering and mangled flesh, presenting a spectacle of suffering in which Rubens, the painter, found the theme for his greatest masterpiece.
But the Sanhedrists are not yet satisfied. They have had some of the prisoner’s nerves lacerated; but they want them all lacerated. They have had some of his blood; now they want all of it, down to the last corpuscle.
So Governor Pontius Pilate, after all this merciful hesitation, surrenders to the demoniacal cry:
“Crucify him! Crucify him!”
But the governor sends for something. He sends a slave out to get something. Although the constables are in haste to take the prisoner to execution, and the mob outside are impatient to glare upon their victim, a pause is necessitated.
Yonder it comes—a wash basin. Some pure, bright water is poured into it, and then Governor Pilate puts his white and delicate hands into the water and rubs them together, and then lifts them dripping, for the towel fastened at the slave’s girdle, while he practically says:
“I wash my hands of this whole homicidal transaction. I wash my hands of this entire responsibility. You will have to bear it.”
Behold in this that ceremony amounts to nothing, if there are not contained in it correspondences of heart and life.
It is a good thing to wash the hands. God created three-fourths of the world water, and in that act commanded cleanliness; and when the ancients did not take the hint, He plunged the whole world under water, and kept it there for some time.