Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of John 19:36
For these things were done, that the Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.
36. were done ] Better, came to pass. Note that S. John uses the aorist ( ), where S. Matthew, writing nearer to the events, uses the perfect ( ). ‘Hath come to pass’ implies that the event is not very remote: Mat 1:22; Mat 21:4; Mat 26:56. The ‘for’ depends upon ‘believe.’ Belief has the support of Scripture; for the two surprising events, Christ’s escaping the crurifragium and yet having His side pierced, were evidently preordained in the Divine counsels.
shall not be broken ] Exo 12:46. Thus he who at the opening of this Gospel was proclaimed as the Lamb of God (Joh 1:29; Joh 1:36), at the close of it is declared to be the true Paschal Lamb. Once more we have evidence that S. John’s consistent and precise view is, that the death of Christ coincided with the killing of the Paschal Lamb. And this seems also to have been S. Paul’s view (see on 1Co 5:7).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
That the scripture should be fulfilled – See Exo 12:46. John here regards the paschal lamb as an emblem of Christ; and as in the law it was commanded that a bone of that lamb should not be broken, so, in the providence of God, it was ordered that a bone of the Saviour should not be broken. The Scripture thus received a complete fulfillment respecting both the type and the antitype. Some have supposed, however, that John referred to Psa 34:20.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Joh 19:36
A bone of Him shall not be broken
The inviolate body of Christ
Why not?
1. His enemies might tear His flesh, &c., take away His life, heap upon Him every dishonour, but they could not break a bone of the body of Jesus. An attempt was made. Pilate commanded the soldiers to break the legs of the crucified. This was done to the two malefactors, but when they came to Jesus they could not break His legs. Roman soldiers were not accustomed to break the commands of their governors; but there stood what was mightier than the governor, mightier than Caesar: a text of Scripture.
2. From the manner in which the Evangelist speaks, it is evident that there is some important lesson to learn (Joh 19:35). The evangelists generally are content with a simple statement, and leave it to produce upon the reader its own impression; but here, as if there were important things that must be believed, he stays, contrary to his usual manner, to asseverate. Now, what are the lessons?
I. THAT CHRIST, OUR PASSOVER, IS SACRIFICED FOR US. Notice
1. A peculiarity of John. He appears as if he had gone back to the days of his youth, and the events were all passing before him. Matthew, Mark, and Luke wrote as historians, but John as a witness. He saw and felt it all again. He says: Then came the soldiers,–and what did they do? They brake the legs of the two malefactors? That would have been Matthews way of putting it. But John says, and brake the legs of the first. That is done; and of the other that was crucified with him. That is done. But when they came to Jesus,–he watches them coming–and saw–He observed their looks–that He was dead already; there was the certain expression of death on the countenance of the blessed Saviour that could not be mistaken; and the soldiers were sure He was dead; and John was sure too. And so they brake not His legs. It does not seem as an afterthought, nor as though he was hunting for an argument, but just then, while he was looking on, the law of the Passover was suggested to his mind, and he felt something like this: There is the fulfilment of Scripture there; not a bone of Him is broken. There is the Passover slain for us.
2. There was everything to remind John of the Passover. He had eaten the Passover with Christ the night before. Friends of his from Galilee had come up to keep the Passover; before them all, Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed; it was the great paschal day.
3. And what is the lesson for us? Christ was the Paschal Lamb of the Christian Church. Through the shedding of His blood we plead for mercy; the avenging angel passes by; the wrath of God is averted; there is no demand for death; peace and joy may remain in our houses.
(1) Do not reply; you are not one of the elect, and have no right to plead it. As Moses lifted up the serpent that whosoever–is not that enough? As certainly as the Hebrew in Egypt was safe under the sign of the blood of the paschal lamb, so certainly may you repose in perfect security by pleading the precious blood of Christ your Passover, sacrificed for you.
(2) But you tell me that the Egyptians could have no benefit from the paschal lamb. So far I agree; but I will venture to say, that if some Egyptian, hearing and believing the proclamation of Moses, had slain a lamb and sprinkled his door-posts with its blood, the angel of death would have respected that sign. So I say, be you who you may, only come in upon the proclamation of mercy, and lay hold on everlasting life, and you will not be disappointed.
II. THAT NO DISHONOUR WHATSOEVER WAS TO BE DONE TO THE BODY OF JESUS AFTER HIS spirit had departed.
1. His life was gone, and He was no longer a consenting party. The dishonour as well as the agony He suffered was meritorious, and by it He was perfected in obedience, and was working out our salvation; but there can be nothing meritorious in any sufferings of a dead body; and therefore the body was, after death, under the guardian care of His heavenly Father; and so it was honoured in every possible way. Observe this in the narrative. What a contrast was there between the morning and the evening of that Friday! In the morning He is hung on a malefactors cross; in the evening He is lying in the rich mans tomb. Great purposes were accomplished by the dishonour. Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, &c. He endured the cross, and despised the shame, and showed the meekness and gentleness of His forgiving spirit when others were insulting Him. After death there could be no such object to accomplish.
2. The contrast is very remarkable; but observe how it is brought about. What was to become of the body of Jesus? It was not uncommon to leave the bodies hanging, the prey of carrion birds and ravenous beasts. But it was the great feast-time of the Jews, and it would have been a pollution to have allowed the bodies to remain there. What was to become of Jesus? There was a friend of His, a member of the Sanhedrim, who had the right to go to Pilate and ask a favour; a disciple, but secretly, for fear of the Jews. A man afraid to avow himself a disciple before the Jews, would he avow himself a disciple before Pilate? Well, he did so. God is never at a loss for an instrument, and sometimes He employs the most unlikely. Nicodemus also was emboldened now, and so the two, and the servants, could thus reverently take down the body of Jesus, and convey it to the tomb with every possible honour. It was as if God had marked His approval of the great work which Jesus had finished. He has not long to lie in the tomb, but every honour shall be done Him while He is there. His body saw no corruption. (R. Halley, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Now was there any thing of this but in fulfilling of the Scripture; for it was Gods law about the passover, Exo 12:46; Num 9:12, concerning the paschal lamb, (which was a type of Christ, Joh 1:29; 1Co 5:7), that a bone of it should not be broken. So as by this breaking no bone of Christs body, they might have understood that he was figured out by the paschal lamb.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
36. that the scripture should befulfilled, A bone of him shall not be brokenThe reference isto the paschal lamb, as to which this ordinance was stringent(Exo 12:46; Num 9:12.Compare 1Co 5:7). But though weare to see here the fulfilment of a very definite typical ordinance,we shall, on searching deeper, see in it a remarkable divineinterposition to protect the sacred body of Christ from the lastindignity after He had finished the work given Him to do. Everyimaginable indignity had been permitted before that, up to themoment of His death. But no sooner is that over than an Unseen handis found to have provided against the clubs of the rude soldierscoming in contact with that temple of the Godhead. Very differentfrom such violence was that spear-thrust, for which not onlydoubting Thomas would thank the soldier, but intelligent believers inevery age, to whom the certainty of their Lord’s death andresurrection is the life of their whole Christianity.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For these things were done,…. The not breaking his bones and piercing his side, and that not by chance, and without design; but,
that the Scripture should be fulfilled, a bone of him shall not be broken; referring either to Ps 34:20 he keepeth all his bones, not one of them is broken; which if to be understood of the righteous in general, had a very particular and remarkable accomplishment in Christ; though a certain single person seems to be designed; nor is it true in fact of every righteous man, some of whom have had their bones broken; and such a sense would lead to despair in case of broken bones; for whereas such a calamity befalls them, as well as wicked men, under such an affliction, they might be greatly distressed, and from hence be ready to conclude, that they are not righteous persons, and are not under the care and protection of God, or otherwise this promise would be made good: nor have the words any respect to the resurrection of the dead, as if the sense of it was, that none of the bones of the righteous shall be finally broken; and though they may be broken by men, and in their sight, yet the Lord will raise them again, and restore them whole and perfect at the general resurrection; for this will be true of the wicked, as well as of the righteous: and much less is the meaning of the words, one of his bones shall not be broken, namely, the bone “luz”, the Jews speak of; which, they say i, remains uncorrupted in the grave, and is so hard that it cannot be softened by water, nor burnt in the fire, nor ground in the mill, nor broke with an hammer; by and from which God will raise the whole body at the last day: but the words are to be understood of Christ, he is the poor man that is particularly pointed at in Ps 34:6 who, was poor in his state of humiliation, and who cried unto the Lord, and he heard him, and saved him; and he is the righteous one, whose afflictions were many, and out of which the Lord delivered him, Ps 34:19 whose providential care of him was very particular and remarkable; he kept his bones from being broken, when others were; and by this incident this passage had its literal fulfilment in him: or else it may refer to the passover lamb, a type of Christ, 1Co 5:7 a bone of which was not to be broken, Ex 12:46. The former of these passages is a command, in the second person, to the Israelites, concerning the paschal lamb, “neither shall ye break a bone thereof”; and the latter is delivered in the third person, “nor shall they break any bone of it”; which may be rendered impersonally, “a bone of it, or of him, shall not be broken; or a bone shall not be broken in him”; and so the Syriac and Persic versions read the words here; and in some copies it is, “a bone shall not be broken from him”; and so read the Vulgate Latin and Ethiopic versions; and he that violated this precept, according to the traditions of the Jews, was to be beaten. Maimonides k says,
“he that breaks a bone in a pure passover, lo, he is to be beaten, as it is said, “and a bone ye shall not break in it”: and so it is said of the second passover, “and a bone ye shall not break in it”; but a passover which comes with uncleanness, if a man breaks a bone in it, he is not to be beaten: from the literal sense it may be learned, that a bone is not to be broken, whether in a pure or defiled passover: one that breaks a bone on the night of the fifteenth, or that breaks a bone in it within the day, or that breaks one after many days, lo, he is to be beaten; wherefore they burn the bones of the passover in general, with what is left of its flesh, that they may not come to damage: none are guilty but for the breaking of a bone on which there is flesh of the quantity of an olive, or in which there is marrow; but a bone in which there is no marrow, and on which there is no flesh of the quantity of an olive, a man is not guilty for breaking it; and if there is flesh upon it of such a quantity, and he breaks the bone in the place where there is no flesh, he is guilty, although the place which he breaks is quite bare of its flesh: he that breaks after (another) has broken, is to be beaten.”
And with these rules agree the following canons l,
“the bones and sinews, and what is left, they burn on the sixteenth day, but if that falls on the sabbath, they burn them on the seventeenth, because these do not drive away the sabbath or a feast day.”
And so it fell out this year in which Christ suffered, for the sixteenth was the sabbath day: again,
“he that breaks a bone in a pure passover, lo, he is to be beaten with forty stripes; but he that leaves anything in a pure one, and breaks in an impure one, is not to be beaten with forty stripes;”
yea, they say m, though
“it was a little kid and tender, and whose bones are tender, they may not eat them; for this is breaking of the bone, and if he eats he is to be beaten, for it is the same thing whether a hard or a tender bone be broken.”
Now in this as in many other respects the paschal lamb was a type of Christ, whose bones were none of them to be broken, to show that his life was not taken away by men, but was laid down freely by himself; and also the unbroken strength of Christ under the weight of sin, the curse of the law, and wrath of God, and conflict with Satan, when he obtained eternal redemption for us: and also this was on account of his resurrection from the dead, which was to be in a few days; though had his bones been broken he could easily have restored them, but it was the will of God it should be otherwise. Moreover, as none of the bones of his natural body were to be broken, so none that are members of him in a spiritual sense, who are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, shall ever be lost.
i Bereshit Rabba, sect. 28. fol. 23. 3. Vajikra Rabba, sect. 18. fol. 159. 3. Zohar in Gen. fol. 51. 1. & 82. 1. k Hilchot Korban Pesach. c. 10. sect. 1, 2, 3, 4. l Misn. Pesachim, c. 7. sect. 10, 11. m Maimon. Korban Pesach. c. 10. sect. 9.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Be broken (). Second future passive of , to crush together. A free quotation of Ex 12:46 about the paschal lamb.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
1) “For these things were done,” (egeneto gar tauta) or these things happened,” came to be, or occurred.
2) “That the scripture should be fulfilled.” (hina he graphe plerothe) “In order that the scripture (particular scripture) might be fulfilled,” to attest their Divine character, Joh 10:35.
3) “A bone of him shall not be broken.” (ostoun ou suntribesetai autou) “Not a bone of him shall be broken,” Exo 12:46; Num 9:12; Psa 34:20; Psa 22:16; Zec 12:10, and one day “every eye shall see Him,” even those who pierced His side, Rev 1:7.
He was both the Paschal lamb and the pierced Messiah, 1Co 5:7.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
36. A bone of him shall not be broken. This citation is made from Exo 12:46, and Num 9:12, where Moses treats of the paschal lamb. Note, Moses takes for granted that that lamb was a figure of the true and only sacrifice, by which the Church was to be redeemed. Nor is this inconsistent with the fact, that it was sacrificed as the memorial of a redemption which had been already made; for, while God intended that it should celebrate the former favor, he also intended that it should exhibit the spiritual deliverance of the Church, which was still future. On that account Paul, without any hesitation, applies to Christ the rule which Moses lays down about eating the lamb:
for even Christ, our Passover, is sacred for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with, the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, (1Co 5:7.)
From this analogy, or resemblance, faith derives no ordinary advantage, for, in all the ceremonies of the Law, it beholds the salvation which has been manifested in Christ. Such is also the design of the Evangelist John, when he says that Christ was not only the pledge of our redemption, but also the price of it, because in him we see accomplished what was formerly exhibited to the ancient people under the figure of the passover. Thus also the Jews are reminded that they ought to seek in Christ the substance of all those things which the Law prefigured, but did not actually accomplish.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(36) For these things were done (better, came to pass), that the scripture should be fulfilled.The emphatic witness of the previous verse is not therefore to be confined to the one fact of the flowing of the blood and the water, but to the facts in which the fulfilment of Scripture was accomplished, and which establish the Messiahship of Jesus.
He sawthat which might have seemed an accidental occurrencethat they brake not the legs of Jesus; he sawthat which might have seemed a sort of instinct of the momentthat the Roman soldier pierced the side of Jesus; he saw in the water and blood which flowed from it visible proof that Jesus was the Son of man; but he saw, too, that these incidents were part of the divine destiny of the Messiah which the prophets had foretold, and that in them the Scripture was fulfilled. (Comp. Note on Joh. 13:18.)
A bone of him shall not be broken.The reference is, as the margin gives it, to the Paschal Lamb, in which the Baptist had already seen a type of Christ (comp. Note on Joh. 1:29), and which St. Paul afterwards more definitely identifies with Him (1Co. 5:7). It is not equally apposite to refer to Psa. 34:20, as the thought there is of preservation in life, but the words of the Psalm are doubtless themselves a poetic adaptation of the words of Exodus.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
36. A bone not be broken John quotes these words with but slight verbal variation from Exo 12:46, and Num 9:12. In those passages it is the Passover lamb to which the words apply. In John’s view, therefore, Christ himself is the paschal victim, so that the words must be true of him. In other words, the Passover lamb is a predictive emblem of the Redeemer. So Paul affirms (1Co 5:7) Christ, our Passover, (or paschal victim,) is slain for us. That it was a substitutive victim is plain from the facts of the original institution of the Passover. Israel was as true a sinner as Egypt; but for Israel the paschal victim died instead. And as, when the destroying angel saw the paschal blood he passed over unharming, so when divine justice beholds in our behalf the atoning blood, it spares our souls. As the paschal victim by its blood redeemed Israel from Egypt and transmitted them to Canaan, so Christ’s atoning blood delivers us from the bonds of sin and furnishes our passport to the heavenly land. And this paschal lamb was to be without blemish, was to be eaten entire, without the breaking of a single bone. And this is the physical symbol of that perfectness, completeness, and sacredness belonging to the Redeemer’s person. So in our Saxon-English dialect the word holiness is but a different form of the word wholeness. Corporeally, our Saviour’s person was so divinely guarded, that except those scourgings and wounds prefigured by the slaughter of the emblematic victims of sacrifice, no harm could mar him. In his body must therefore be fulfilled the requirement laid upon the paschal lamb; not a bone of him shall be broken.
This bodily inviolable wholeness, belonging both to the emblematic and real victims, must, moreover, be taken with all the momentous import it contains. Christ’s whole nature is perfect before God and man; hence is he acceptable to God completely and perfectly; and hence should he be accepted by man in all the same completeness and perfectness. Thereby we aspire to the same perfection; and thereby, becoming the very body of Christ, we finally attain its own perfectness, and become acceptable once and forever before God the Father Almighty.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Joh 19:36-37 . Not without scriptural ground do I say: . ; for that is accomplished , which I have just testified, Joh 19:33-34 , concerning the lance-thrust, which took the place of the omitted leg-breaking, in the connection of the divine determination for the fulfilment of the scriptural saying ( as in Joh 13:18 ): a bone of Him shall not be broken (Exo 12:46 ; Num 9:12 ). [256] To John as to Paul (1Co 5:7 ) Christ is the antitype of the paschal lamb intended in the historical sense of that passage, in which Baur and Hilgenfeld of course find the formative factor of the history. Psa 34:21 (Grotius, Brckner), because the passage speaks of the protection of life , cannot here be thought of.
The second passage of Scripture, to which, moreover, the reader himself is left to supply the same telic connection, which was previously expressed by . ., contains the O. T. prediction of the lance-thrust which has been narrated, so far as it concerned precisely the Messiah : they will look on Him whom they have pierced , an expression of the future, repentant, believing recognition of and longing for Him who previously was so hostilely murdered. The subject of both verbs is the Jews (not the Gentiles ), whose work the entire crucifixion generally (comp. Act 2:23 ; Act 2:36 ), and consequently mediately, the also is. The passage is Zec 12:10 , where the language is used of a martyr, who at a later time is repentantly mourned for. The citation is freely made from the original (so also Rev 1:7 ), not from the LXX., who take improperly: , have insulted (Aquinas, Theodotus, and Symmachus have also , and rightly). John also follows the reading , [257] which Ewald also prefers.
] Attraction = , comp. Joh 6:29 . To make dependent on . (Luther, after the Vulgate: “they will see into whom they have pierced; ” Baur: “that they have, namely, pierced into Him from whose side blood and water flowed”) corresponds neither to the original, nor to the Greek construction, according to which not , but . is said (Rev 1:7 ; Jdg 9:54 ; 1Ch 10:4 ; Isa 14:19 ; 2Ma 12:6 ; Polyb. v. 56. 12, xv. 33. 4, xxv. 8. 6). It always denotes pierce , stab . So also here Jesus was not indeed first killed by the lance-thrust, but this thrust formed, as its conclusion, a part of the whole act of putting to death, and formed, therefore, the Messianic fulfilment of the prophetic word. On , look upon , in the sense of regard, desire, hope, etc., comp. Xen. Cyr . iv. 1. 20; Soph. El . 913; Stanley, ad . Aesch . Sept . 109. Just so or : Khner, ad Xen. Mem. iv. 2. 2. The LXX. have . The time of the fulfilment of this prophetic , . . . , is, as also in the original, that of the beginning of repentance and conversion ; comp. Joh 8:28 , Joh 12:32 ; not the day of judgment (Euth. Zigabenus, Grotius, and several others, comp. already Barnab. 7), to which , with the mere accus., as in Rev 1:7 , not with , would be appropriate.
A word of Scripture, speaking specially of the outflow of blood and water , does not, indeed, stand at the command of John; but if the facts themselves, with which this outflow was connected, namely, the negative one of the non-breaking of the legs (Joh 19:36 ), and the positive one of the lance-thrust (Joh 19:37 ), are predicted, so also in the miraculous , by which the thrust was accompanied, is justly, and on the ground of Scripture ( , Joh 19:36 ), a special awakening of faith (Joh 19:35 ) to be found.
Schweizer, without reason, considers Joh 19:35-37 as spurious.
[256] As regards its essential substance quite undestroyed, not like a profane dish of roast meat with bones broken in pieces, was the paschal lamb to be prepared as a sacrifice to God (Ewald, Alterth . p. 467 f.; Knobel on Lev 1:7 ). Any peculiar symbolical destination in this prescription (Bhr and Keil: to set forth the unity of those who eat) cannot be established, not even by a retrospective conclusion from 1Co 10:17 .
[257] Not ; Umbreit’s observation in the Stud. u. Krit. 1849, p. 104, that the passage of Zech. has a Johannean element for the idea of the Messiah, because God identifies Himself with the Messiah, applies only to the reading , which, further Hofmann, Weissag. u. Erf. II. p. 152 f., has sought, in a very tortuous way, to unite with the following accus. ; he is followed by Luthardt: “They will longingly look up to me, after Him (i.e. expect, entreat of me Him) whom they,” etc.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
36 For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.
Ver. 36. Not a bone of him was broken ] So he appeared to be the true Paschal Lamb, that was roasted whole in the fire of his Father’s wrath, to deliver us from the wrath to come. The soldiers could not break his legs, because God had otherwise ordered it. Voluntas Dei, necessitas rei.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
36. ] ‘For’ i.e. as connected with the true Messiahship of Christ, ‘these things were a fulfilment of Scripture.’ It is possible that Psa 33:20 (LXX) may be also referred to; but no doubt the primary reference is to the Paschal Lamb of Exod., as in reff.: see 1Co 5:7 .
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Joh 19:36 . . He records these things, contained in this short paragraph, because they further identify Jesus as the promised Messiah. . The law regarding the Paschal lamb ran thus (Exo 12:46 ): , cf. Psa 34:20 . Evidently John identified Jesus as the Paschal Lamb, cf. 1Co 5:7 . . Another Scripture also here found its fulfilment, Zec 12:10 . The original is: “They shall look upon me whom they pierced”. The Sept [93] renders: : “They shall look towards me because they insulted me”. John gives a more accurate translation: : “They shall look on Him whom ( ) they pierced”. The same rendering is adopted in the Greek versions of Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus, and is also found in Ignatius, Ep. Trall. , 10; Justin, I. Apol. , i. 77; and cf. Rev 1:7 , and Barnabas, Ep. , 7. In the lance thrust John sees a suggestive connection with the martyr-hero of Zechariah’s prophecy.
[93] Septuagint.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
John
CHRIST OUR PASSOVER
Joh 19:36
The Evangelist, in the words of this text, points to the great Feast of the Passover and to the Paschal Lamb, as finding their highest fulfilment, as he calls it, in Jesus Christ. For this purpose of bringing out the correspondence between the shadow and the substance he avails himself of a singular coincidence concerning a perfectly unimportant matter-viz., the abnormally rapid sinking of Christ’s physical strength in the crucifixion, by which the final indignity of breaking the bones of the sufferers was avoided in His case. John sees, in that entirely insignificant thing, a kind of fingerpost pointing to far more important, deeper, and real correspondences. We are not to suppose that he was so purblind, and attached so much importance to externals, as that this outward coincidence exhausted in his conception the correspondence between the two. But It was a trifle that suggested a greater matter. It was a help aiding gross conceptions and common minds to grasp the inward relation between Jesus and that Passover rite. But just as our Lord would have fulfilled the prophecy about the King coming ‘meek, and having salvation,’ though He had never ridden on a literal ass into the literal Jerusalem, so our Lord would have ‘fulfilled’ the shadow of the Passover with the substance of His own sacrifice if there had never been this insignificant correspondence, in outward things, between the two.
But whilst my text is the Evangelist’s commentary, the question arises, How did he come to recognise that our Lord was all which that Passover signified? And the answer is, he recognised it through Christ’s own teaching. He does not record the institution of the Lord’s Supper. It did not fall into his scheme to deal with external events of that sort, and he knew that it had been sufficiently taught by the three earlier Gospels, to which his is a supplement. But though he did not narrate the institution, he takes it for granted in the words of my text, and his vindication of his seeing the fulfilment of ‘A bone of Him shall not be broken’ in the incident to which I have referred, lies in this, that Jesus Christ Himself swept away the Passover and substituted the memorial feast of the Lord’s Supper. ‘This do in remembrance of Me,’ said at the table where the Paschal lamb had been eaten, sufficiently warrants John’s allusion here.
So then, marking the fact that our Evangelist is but carrying out the lesson that he had learned in the upper room, we may fairly take the identification of the Paschal lamb with the crucified Christ as being the last instance in which our Lord Himself laid His hand upon Old Testament incidents and said, ‘They all mean Me.’ And it is from that point of view, and not merely for the purpose of dealing with the words that I have read as our starting-point, that I wish to speak now.
I. Now then, the first thing that strikes me is that in this substitution of Himself for the Passover we have a strange instance of Christ’s supreme authority.
What does it imply? It implies two things, and I must say a word about each of them. It implies that Christ regarded the whole of the ancient system of Judaism, its history, its law, its rites of worship, as pointing onwards to Himself, that He recognised in it a system the whole raison d’etre of which was anticipatory and preparatory of Himself. For Him the Decalogue was given, for Him priests were consecrated, for Him kings were anointed, for Him prophets spake, for Him sacrifices smoked, for Him festivals were appointed, and the nation and its history were all one long proclamation: ‘The King cometh! go ye forth to meet Him.’ You cannot get less than that out of the way in which He handled, as is told in this Gospel, Jacob’s ladder, the Serpent in the wilderness, the Manna that fell from Heaven, the Pillar of Cloud that led the people, the Rock that gushed forth water, and now, last of all, the Passover, which was the very shining apex of the whole sacrificial and ritual system.
And remember, too, that this way of dealing with all the institutions of the nation as meaning, in their inmost purpose, Himself, is exactly parallel to His way of dealing with the sacred words of Mosaic commandment and prohibition in the Sermon on the Mount, where He set side by side as of equal-I was going to say, and I should have been right in saying, identical-authority what was ‘said to them of old time’ and what ‘I say unto you.’ Amidst the dust of our present controversies as to the processes by which, and the times at which, the Old Testament books assumed their present form, there is grave danger that the essential thing about the whole matter should be obscured. The way in which what is called Higher Criticism may finally locate the origins and dates of the various parts of that ancient record and that ancient system does not in the slightest degree affect the outstanding characteristic of the whole, that it is the product of the divine hand, working if you will through men who had more freedom of action whilst they were its organs than our grandfathers thought. Be it so; but still that divine Hand shaped the whole in order that, besides its educational effects upon the generations that received it, there should shine through it all the expectation of the coming King. And I venture to say that, however grateful we may be to modern investigation for light upon these other points to which I have referred, the ignorant reader that reads Jesus Christ into all the Old Testament may be very uncritical and mistaken in regard to details, but he has got hold of the root of the matter, and is nearer to the apprehension of the essence and spirit and purpose of the ancient Revelation than the most learned critic who does not see that it is the preparation for, and the prophecy of, Jesus Christ Himself. And the vindication of such a position lies in this, among other facts, that He in the upper room, in harmony with, and in completion of, all that He had previously spoken about His relation to the Old Testament, claimed the Passover as the prophecy of Himself, and said, ‘I am the Lamb of God.’
I need not dwell, I suppose, on the other consideration that is involved in this strange exercise of authority-viz., the naturalness, as without any sense of doing anything presumptuous or extraordinary, with which Christ assumes His right to handle divine appointments with the most perfect freedom, to modify them, to reshape them, to divert them from their first purpose, and to enjoin them with an authority equal to that with which the Lord said unto Moses, ‘Keep ye this day through your generations.’ There is only one supposition on which I, for my part, can understand that conduct-that He was the possessor of authority the same as the Authority that had originally instituted the rite.
And so, dear brethren! when our Lord said, ‘Do this in remembrance of Me,’ I pray you to ask yourselves, What did that involve in regard to His nature and the source of His authority over us? And what did it involve in regard to His relation to that ancient Revelation?
II. And now another point that I would suggest is-we have, in this substitution of the new rite for the old, our Lord’s clear declaration of what was the very heart of His work in the world.
What do men and churches that falter in their allegiance to the truth of Christ’s redemptive death do with the Lord’s Supper? Nothing! For the most part they ignore it, or if they retain it, do not, for the life of them, know how to explain it, or why it should be there. The explanation of why it is there is the great truth, of which it is the clear utterance and the strong defence, the truth that ‘Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,’ and that ‘the Son of Man came. . . to give His life a ransom for the many.’
What did that Passover say? Two things it said, the blood that was sprinkled on the lintels and on the door-posts was the token to the destroying Angel, as with his broad, silent pinions he swept through the land, bringing a blacker night into Egyptian darkness, and leaving behind him no house ‘in which there was not one dead.’ All the houses of which the occupants had put the ruddy mark on the lintels and on the doorposts, and were wise enough not to go forth from behind the shelter of that mark on the door, were safe when the morning dawned. And so to us all who, by our sinfulness, have brought down upon our heads exposedness to that retribution, which, in a righteously governed universe, must needs follow sin, and to that death which the separation from God-the necessary result of sin-most surely is, there is proffered in that great Sacrifice shelter from the destroying sword.
But that is not all. Whilst the blood on the posts meant security, the Lamb on the table meant emancipation. So they who find in the dying Christ their exemption from the last consequences of transgression, find, in partaking of the Christ whose sacrifice is their pardon, the communication of a new power, which sets them free from a worse than Egyptian bondage, and enables them to shake from their emancipated limbs the fetters of the grimmest of the Pharaohs that have wielded a tyrannous dominion over them. Pardon and freedom, the creation of a nation subject only to the law of Jehovah Himself-these were the facts that the Passover festival and the Passover lamb signified, and these are the facts which, in nobler fashion, are brought to us by Jesus Christ. So, I beseech you, let Him teach you what His work in the world is, as He lays His own hand on that highest of the ancient festivals, and endorses the Baptist’s declaration, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!’
III. Now, lastly, let me ask you to notice how, in this regal and authoritative dealing by our Lord with that ancient festival, there lies a loving provision for our weakness.
The Passover was purely and simply a rite of remembrance. I venture to believe that the Lord’s Supper is nothing more. I know how people talk about the bare, bald, Zwinglian ideas of the Communion. They do look very bald and bare by the side of modern notions and mediaeval notions resuscitated. Well, I had rather have the bareness than I would have it overlaid by coverings under which there is room for abundance of vermin to lurk. Christ puts the Lord’s Supper in the place of the Passover. The Passover was a purely memorial rite. You Christian people will understand the spirituality of the whole Gospel system, and the nature of the only bond which unites men to Jesus and brings spiritual blessings to them-viz. faith-all the better, the more you cling, in spite of all that is going on round us to-day, to that simple, intelligible, Scriptural notion that we commemorate the Sacrifice, not offer the Sacrifice. Jesus Christ said that the Lord’s Supper was to be observed ‘in remembrance of Me.’ That was His explanation of its purpose, and I for one am content to take as the expounder of the laws of the feast, the feast’s own Founder.
Now one more word. In the Passover men fed on the Sacrifice. Jesus Christ presents Himself to each of us as at once the Sacrifice for our sins and the Food of our souls. If you will keep your minds in touch with the truth about Him, and with Him whom the truth about Him reveals to you, if you will keep your hearts in touch with that great and unspeakable sign of God’s love, if you will keep your wills in submission to His authority, if you will let His blood, ‘which is the life,’ or as you may otherwise word it, His Spirit, come into your lives, and be your spirit, your motive, then you will go out from the table, not like the disciples to flee, and deny, and forget, nor like the Israelites to wander in a wilderness, but strengthened for many a day of joyous service and true communion, and will come at last to what He has promised us: ‘Ye shall sit with Me at My table in My Kingdom,’ whence we shall go ‘no more out.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
A. bone, &c. This has reference to Exo 12:46. Num 9:12. Thus in all things He was the antitype of the Passover lamb.
broken. Greek suntribo. Not the same word as in verses: Joh 19:31, Joh 19:32. Compare Psa 34:20.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
36.] For-i.e. as connected with the true Messiahship of Christ, these things were a fulfilment of Scripture. It is possible that Psa 33:20 (LXX) may be also referred to;-but no doubt the primary reference is to the Paschal Lamb of Exod., as in reff.: see 1Co 5:7.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Joh 19:36. , not a bone of Him shall be broken) Instead of , some Greek MSS. have from the LXX. I know not whether also any versions have this reading. is more in accordance with the subject itself in John; nay more, it accords also with the Hebrew in Moses: the LXX. in Exo 12:46, have ; in Num 9:12, (Alex. ) . But also in Psalms 34(33):20, ( ) , John accords with Moses, in that he employs the singular number ; he accords with the Psalm, in that he passes over (omits) the particle , which he would not omit if he were referring to the Mosaic : Comp. ch. Joh 6:45, , where the is retained in the quotation from the original, Isa 54:13; and in that he says . Therefore the Psalm refers back to Moses, John to the Psalm, as also to Moses. The Passover was a type, 1Co 5:7, Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened; for even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; and that type is fulfilled in the passion of Christ. The bones of Jesus Christ did not undergo breaking or injury; nor did His flesh undergo corruption. The cross was the direst of capital punishments; and yet any other would have been less suitable for the raising again of the body [in its unbroken integrity] presently after.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Joh 19:36
Joh 19:36
For these things came to pass, that the scripture might be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.-This prophecy was made in the passover lamb, a type and prophecy of the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, repeated in Psa 34:20. The fulfillment that a bone should not be broken was the more significant, as Pilate had commanded that they should be broken, and the legs of the others were broken.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
that the: Exo 12:46, Num 9:12, Psa 22:14, Psa 34:20, Psa 35:10
Reciprocal: Num 9:11 – fourteenth 1Ki 2:27 – that he 2Ki 15:12 – And so Mat 1:22 – that Mat 2:15 – that Mat 4:14 – it Mat 21:4 – this Mat 26:24 – Son of man goeth Mar 14:21 – goeth Joh 10:35 – the scripture Joh 12:38 – That Joh 15:25 – the Joh 19:24 – that Act 1:16 – this Act 13:27 – they have Act 13:29 – when Eph 4:10 – fill
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
6
This is commented upon at verse 33.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.
[A bone of him shall not be broken.] These words may have some reference to that of Psa 34:20; but they are more commonly referred by expositors to that law about the Paschal lamb, Exo 12:46; for “Christ is our Passover,” 1Co 5:7.
“If any one break a bone of the Passover, let him receive forty stripes.” “The bones, the sinews, and what remains of the flesh, must all be burned on the sixteenth day. If the sixteenth day should happen on the sabbath” [and so indeed it did happen in this year wherein Christ was crucified], “then let them be burned on the seventeenth: for they drive away neither the sabbath nor any holy day.”
Fuente: Lightfoot Commentary Gospels
Joh 19:36-37. For these things came to pass, that the scripture might be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not he crushed; and again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced. The passages referred to in the first of these quotations seem to be Exo 12:46 and Num 9:12, rather than Psa 34:20. It is probable, however, that the last of these is founded upon the first two. Great importance was attached by the Jews to the precept that no bone of the Paschal Lamb should be broken. Gods counsel, typified in this, is now fulfilled in the true Paschal Lamb (see chap. Joh 1:29).
In the second passage referred to (Zec 12:10), the Evangelist sets aside what is universally allowed to be the false translation of the Septuagint, and translates from the Hebrew. It is not impossible that in this passage also there may be a distant allusion to the rites of the Pass-over; for the bitterness of the mourning alluded to seems to be founded on the mourning of Egypt for its first-born. But, whether this be so or not, it will not be denied that the allusion in the Prophet to Him who is to come as the manifestation of God to His people is distinct. The true reading of the passage in Zechariah is, They shall look on Me whom they pierced, where the word Me is to be explained by the fact that the Sender is identified with the Sent, the Lord with His prophet. It is worthy of notice that the words translated pierced in Joh 19:34; Joh 19:37 are different, from which we may conclude that the Evangelist does not rest in the mere detail of the piercing, .but dwells upon the wider thought, that Israel rejected and crucified its Lord. Such, however, had been Gods counsel; and thus spoken, not only by the law but by the Prophets (comp. chap. Joh 1:45), this counsel is now fulfilled in Jesus.
One remark more may be permitted on the peculiar light in which the whole of this remarkable scene seems to present itself to the eye of the Evangelist. Jesus is obviously here, as indeed He has been throughout the Gospel, the true Paschal Lamb (chaps, Joh 1:29; Joh 1:6). Yet He is that Lamb looked at not simply in the moment of dying, but as, in dying (in that dying which has been going on throughout His whole suffering life and only culminates now), the true substance of His peoples Paschal feast, their nourishment, their life. The conduct of the Jews to Jesus as He hangs upon the cross thus assumes the form of an inverted, a contorted, Passover. They had that morning lost their legal Passover,had lost even the shadow; because they rejected and despised the substance. Yet, says the Evangelist, they found a Passover. Let us follow them to the cross. There let us see the righteous dealings, the deserved irony, of the Almighty, as He makes their cruel mockings of the true Paschal Lamb shape themselves into a Passover of judgment, of added sin and deepened shame. If the passage be looked at in this lightthe only light, as it seems to us, which at once explains the general structure of the section and the peculiar expressions employedit will be found to be full of the most important consequences alike for the biblical critic and for the dogmatic theologian.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Verse 36
This was said originally of the paschal lamb. (Exodus 12:46,Nu+9:12.)
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
"These things" refer to the facts that the soldiers did not break Jesus’ bones but did pierce His side. Here were two more fulfillments of Old Testament prophecy.
In Joh 19:36, John could have had any of three passages in mind: Exo 12:46; Num 9:12; and or Psa 34:20. The first two specify that the Israelites were not to break the bones of their Passover lambs. Elsewhere Paul and Peter described Jesus as the Passover Lamb (1Co 5:7; 1Pe 1:19), and this figure is prominent in John’s Gospel as well (cf. Joh 1:36; et al.). Psa 34:20 describes the righteous man by saying that God would not allow anyone to break his bones (cf. Luk 23:47). The first passage seems best since its fulfillment was more literal, though admittedly it involves the Passover typology.
This quotation has spawned the theory that Jesus died at the same time the Jews were slaying their Passover lambs. This view seems untenable since all the evangelists presented the Last Supper as a Passover meal. There have been several attempts to harmonize these views and to explain how there could have been two Passovers on successive days. [Note: See Hoehner, pp. 81-90.] None of these explanations is convincing to me. It seems better to view the Passover meal as happening on Thursday evening, Thursday being the fourteenth of Nisan, which was the normal day for the Passover. Even though Jesus’ death fulfilled the Passover typology it apparently did not coincide exactly with the Jews’ sacrifice of their lambs for their Passover meals. That happened the afternoon before Jesus died.
|
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
|
April 1 |
Midnight 3:00 a.m. 6:00 a.m. 9:00 a.m. Noon 3:00 p.m. |
April 2 The Jews slew their Passover lambs |
Midnight 3:00 a.m. 6:00 a.m. 9:00 a.m. Noon 3:00 p.m. |
April 3 Jesus was crucified Jesus died |
|
14 Nisan |
6:00 p.m. Midnight |
15 Nisan The Jews ate their Passover lambs |
6:00 p.m. Midnight |
16 Nisan |
In Joh 19:37, the prophecy in view is clearly the one in Zec 12:10 (cf. Rev 1:7). Jesus quoted this verse in the Olivet Discourse (Mat 24:30). There He stressed a different part of it. The piercing of God’s coming Shepherd happened when Jesus died on the cross (cf. Joh 10:11). The Gentile nations will look on Him whom they have pierced when He returns at His second coming (cf. Rev 1:7). Both Jews and Gentiles were responsible for Jesus’ death.