The Scourging and Crucifixion of Our Savior
By David N. Menton,
Ph.D.
In our day when many consider even the most painless and humane form
of capital punishment administered to our worst serial 
killers
to be “cruel and unusual,” it is difficult to comprehend the truly cruel and
unusual execution of our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus. The execution was
all the more cruel because it was administered illegally to a man who was
known to be innocent of all wrongdoing. Dreadful
as it was, there is value in reflecting on the pain and suffering of Jesus
because it is “by His stripes we are healed.”
After
a ‘trial’ that violated nearly every law and principle of both Jewish and
Roman justice, Jesus was delivered back to Pontius Pilate without a conviction
on the trumped-up charges that had been brought against Him. Still His accusers demanded that Jesus be executed
by one of the most dreadful means ever devised by man - crucifixion.
Pilate initially tried to avoid this gross miscarriage of justice and
hoped to appease the Jews by publicly “teaching Jesus a lesson,” and then
letting Him go.
In
the Roman form of scourging, the victim was stripped of his clothes and bent
forward across a low pillar, which exposed his flexed back to the blows. The hands and feet were tied to metal rings
at the base of the pillar. The whips
used by the Romans had short, stout handles from which hung several leather
cords. To each of the leather cords was
fastened an acorn-shaped piece of lead.
When applied with full force, these lead pieces would deeply lacerate
the skin and flesh down to the level of muscle and bone. Two strong men administered the whipping, one
on each side, who alternately struck the victim with all their might. This two-man-team form of whipping ensured
that the victim would have no rest between blows, and helped to sustain the
strength and zeal of the scourgers.
Following His public scourging Jesus was submitted to every manner
of abuse and indignity that Pilate’s ‘men of war’ could devise.
The soldiers took Jesus into the courtyard of the Praetorium
where, before Pilate and the assembled Jews, they stripped Him and threw a
tattered scarlet cloak over His shoulders.
They then plaited a crown of vines, bristling with sharp thorns, and
placed it on His head as a lampoon of the laurel wreaths worn by kings. To complete this crude king’s costume, they
gave Jesus a rough stick to hold for His scepter. After dressing Him as a mock king, the soldiers
bowed on their knees before Jesus in mock homage and jeered, “Hail, King of
the Jews!” Finally, they hit 
Him
with their fists, spit on Him, and snatched away His stick scepter, which
they used to beat Him on the head driving the thorns more deeply into His
flesh. These actions were meant to demonstrate for
all to see what a powerless and useless king Jesus was. Pilate hoped that this whole spectacle might
awaken a sense of compassion in the multitude, and that Jesus might be spared
from crucifixion. When he presented
the beaten and bloodstained Jesus to the crowd and said, “Behold the Man,”
they cried out, “crucify him, crucify him!” And so it was that Pilate delivered Jesus over
to the soldiers to be crucified.
Crucifixion
was an exceedingly barbaric and painful method of execution, used only on
slaves and the most hardened criminals from the provinces. Crucifixion was never used on a Roman
citizen, no matter how dreadful the crime.
The shame of crucifixion is evident in the custom of the victim carrying
his own cross to the place of execution.
This was a heavy burden because the cross was constructed of two heavy
beams of wood. As a result of His severe
beating, Jesus was unable to carry His cross all the way to the site of His
execution. Along the way, a man named
Simon was commandeered into helping Jesus carry His burden. The crucifixion took place on a hill called
Calvary, just outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem. The name Calvary suggests that the hill was
shaped like the dome of a human skull.
Even today, the scientific name for the vault of the skull is the Greek
word “calvaria.”
Crucifixion
was carried out by first laying the cross on the ground and then laying the
victim face up on top of it. The arms of
the victim were stretched out and his hands were nailed to the cross member. The body was then stretched and the feet
nailed to a step on the vertical member, about 2 or 3 feet from the
ground. The cross was then lifted into
position and dropped into a hole in the ground which held it upright. No doubt the jar of the cross falling into
the bottom of the hole added to the great pain of the nail punctures.
Some
have questioned whether the weight of the body can really be supported from
large nails driven through the hands, but there is no reason to doubt that the
body can indeed be supported in this manner.
Nails driven through approximately the center of the palm (between the
third and fourth metacarpal bones) pass through several layers of strong
connective tissue. In addition, the
joints at the base of the fingers are firmly bound together by strong
ligaments. While the weight of the body
was partially supported from the nails in the palms, the victim could also
support part of his weight (while he was still able) by standing upon the step
to which his feet were nailed. In fact,
as we shall see, this is an important part of the horribly slow and painful
death of crucifixion.
The cause of death by crucifixion certainly involved dehydration, fever,
and loss of blood but in most cases, death was finally the result of suffocation.
To understand the mechanism of death by crucifixion, we need to consider
the biomechanics of breathing. Air
is taken into the lungs when the chest cavity, in which the lungs reside,
is enlarged in its height, breadth and depth during inhalation. The enlargement in height results from a forcible
flattening of the muscular diaphragm at the base of the lung, while the increase
in both the breadth and depth results from elevation of the ribs.
During inhalation, the ribs, which are hinged to the backbone (vertebrae),
are elevated in much the same way that the handle of a bucket may be lifted.
Consider what happens when a handle is lifted from its hanging position
on the side of a bucket -- it moves not only up, but also out and away from
the bucket. Each of the ribs are similar
in their motion so that, as they are elevated by muscles, they enlarge the
chest cavity by moving further away from the backbone. This expands the chest cavity and thus the lungs,
causing air to rush in just like opening a bellows. Air is exhaled from the lungs by the intrinsic
elastic recoil of lung tissue, like the contraction of a stretched rubber
band. Air can also be forcibly exhaled
from the lungs by contracting the abdominal muscles, which lifts the diaphragm.
The
elevation of the ribs during inhalation is caused by certain muscles that pull
up on the ribs from their muscular attachments to the chest bone, collarbones
and shoulder blades. When the body hangs
on the cross, all of these bones, which are attached to the uplifted arms by
way of the collarbones, are pulled upward expanding the chest cavity and
lungs. This makes breathing difficult
because it is hard to exhale. As long as
the victim is able to support at least part of his weight with his legs, he can
still breath with great effort, but eventually the
body fatigues from fever, blood loss, and lack of food and water. As this happens, the strength of the legs
fail and more of the weight hangs from the arms, making breathing more and more
difficult. One need only try the
exercise of repeatedly inhaling more deeply than exhaling to sense that this is
a slow and dreadful way to die.
It
is said that a strong man who had not suffered scourging and beating prior to
crucifixion could last for up to eight days on the cross. Even after death, the Romans typically left
the body on the cross to putrefy in the sun and be devoured by vultures. The Jews, however, following the letter of
their law, wanted the bodies of Jesus and the two malefactors to be removed
from their crosses before Friday evening lest the Sabbath Day be violated. At this time, the malefactors were not yet
dead, so their legs were broken. With
broken legs, they could no longer strive to keep their weight from being carried
entirely by their uplifted arms and thus death by suffocation followed
quickly. Jesus, however, was already
dead having given up His own spirit.
The Romans always made certain that crucifixion was fatal. Though commanded to do so, the soldiers did
not break Jesus’ legs, but rather thrust a spear deeply into His side (all
in fulfillment of prophesy). Such a
wound inflicted from the ground most likely passed upward through the abdomen
and diaphragm and into the heart, leaving no doubt of 
Christ’s
death. From the wound gushed blood and water. There is no medical or physiological explanation
for the presence of the water with the blood. This was clearly a miracle, and so it was perceived
by John who was an eyewitness to the event and recorded it in his gospel.
Today we see many paintings of our Savior hanging on the cross, but
the artists have used artistic license to remove much of the offense and horror
of crucifixion. Few renditions show
the jeering crowds around the cross, yet public display of this slow and painful
death was one of its main purposes. Most
artists show a rather bloodless crucifixion of our Lord, but this was hardly
the case given the scourging, nail wounds and the blood flowing into Jesus’
eyes from the wounds on his beaten and thorn pierced head. None shows the flies that surely must have covered
His body and blood drenched face -- flies that could not be brushed away by
hands nailed to the cross. Artists
fail in their effort to show the pain of His fever, His unquenchable thirst,
or the bones of His hands and arms being pulled out of joint as He hung on
the cross.
The
best picture of Jesus suffering on the cross comes from His own perspective in Psalm 22. Here we learn that of all the physical
suffering that Jesus endured for us, none compared with the fact that God the
Father turned His back on His own Son at the moment of His greatest need. Thus our Savior cried out “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” Jesus was utterly forsaken by God the Father
because He literally took upon Himself all the sins of the world. The very fact that Jesus should even be
capable of dying reveals that He truly became sin for us.
From
its very first chapter, the Bible
tells us that death only came into the world through sin and that sin and death
are inextricably related. Thus the very
death of our Savior shows that He did indeed carry our sins and paid the
terrible price that should have been paid by us.
We
could take little comfort from Jesus' death were it not for His glorious resurrection
on Easter morning. Just as Jesus rose
from the dead triumphant over sin, death and the power of the devil, so we
too on the last day will be raised up with glorified bodies. Then we will abide with Him and all the Saints
for eternity in a place where there will be no more sickness, sorrow or death
but rather eternal life and happiness. Truly
by His stripes we are healed.
Dr.
Menton received his Ph.D. in biology from
