Matthew 27:18

18. Knew that for envy Pilate was perfectly satisfied that the charge brought by the Jews against Jesus, as seeking to be the rival king against Cesar, was a fiction. He knew the innocence of the accused. When he surrendered him he was guilty of innocent blood. No washing of his own hands could cleanse his soul or clear his character in history.

From the other evangelists we learn to supply several facts omitted by Matthew. Pilate, on learning that Jesus was of Galilee, sent him to Herod, the Tetrarch of Galilee, who was then in Jerusalem, hoping that he would dispose of his case. But Herod, after putting Jesus to mockery, remands him back to Pilate. Pilate endeavours to induce the Jews to allow Jesus to be dismissed with a few stripes, and they refuse with clamour. After he had endeavoured to have him released by amnesty, and they prefer the release of Barabbas, he washes his hands, in token of protesting his innocence of the death of Jesus. They respond loudly by taking the responsibility of his blood upon their own heads and their children’s. Pilate then surrenders Jesus apart, to mockery and scourges and then brings him out as a piteous spectacle, and presents him, with the words, Behold the man.” So far from being melted at the sight, they cry out the more to “crucify him!” On his demanding for what possible reason Jesus is to be crucified, they reply, “Because he called himself the Son of God.” Struck with this new charge, and with the strange assumption of this divine title by his prisoner, Pilate returns to Jesus to examine him, and is so impressed with his noble bearing as to make one more effort to save him. But at last the cry, “If you let this man go you are not Cesar’s friend,” settled the matter. Pilate did not bear to have his faithfulness to the emperor questioned, and to save his own position he sacrificed Jesus. He thus became sharer in their guilt. Taking his seat upon the tribunal of the pavement, so called, in front of his palace, he received the last rejection of Jesus by the Jews, and gave him up to death at about nine o’clock on Friday the day of the crucifixion.