Jesus died the same day the sacrificial Passover lambs were slaughtered. The Perfect Lamb without spot or blemish had suffered the wrath and condemnation of God in the place of his people. His blood covered them, the angel of death would mercifully pass over them.

Five Centuries before the crucifixion of Jesus the prophet Zechariah watched the returned exiles rebuilding, stone by stone, Yahweh’s Temple in Jerusalem. A worshipful work of tremendous faith.

Yet as the people laboured Yahweh spoke, “the LORD who stretches out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the human spirit within a person” (Zech. 12:1).

“They will look on me, the one they have pierced” (12:10).

Yahweh foretold that He himself would one day be put to death by the people of Jerusalem. This prophecy – so staggering, appalling – was among many similar prophecies fulfilled to the letter at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

As John shows:

John 19:16–18 Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. 17Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). 18There they crucified him, and with him two others – one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

A routine Roman crucifixion so far. The soldiers make Jesus carry his own cross – or the crossbeam – the instrument of his own torture and death. A cruel refinement. The execution grounds are chillingly named. (Perhaps “Golgotha” inspired Tolkien’s Gorgoroth, the “Valley of Terror” in the midst of Mordor.)

John says matter-of-factly, “They crucified him.” Everyone knew that this meant being stripped and bound and in this case nailed to a wooden cross, to be lifted up before the crowds to a die a shameful, protracted, and agonising death by exposure and asphyxiation as the lungs stretched, tired, and failed. It was the cruellest death reserved for criminal non-citizens, a ferocious symbol of Rome’s absolute intolerance of resistance .

Jesus was crucified with others like a common criminal. “He was numbered with the transgressors” (Isa. 53:12).

John 19:19–22 Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the jews. 20Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. 21The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, ‘Do not write “The King of the Jews”, but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.’ 22Pilate answered, ‘What I have written, I have written.’

The condemned’s identity and crime was placarded above his executed body. “King of the Jews” hints at sedition, the defiance of Rome. Pilate knew the chief priests lied when they said that Jesus defied Caesar so perhaps this wording was chosen to humiliate both Jesus and them: “Gaze upon your ‘king,’ losers!”

Pilate refuses the chief priests’ demand to change the wording. Ironically, what was written sarcastically was in fact true. And prophetic, because what was placarded in the three primary languages of Rome would in three centuries come to be the accepted religion of the Empire.

John 19:23–24 When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. 24‘Let’s not tear it,’ they said to one another. ‘Let’s decide by lot who will get it.’ This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said, ‘They divided my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.’ So this is what the soldiers did.

The clothes of executed criminals were the soldiers’ perk. Five items possibly include Jesus’ tunic, outer cloak, belt, sandals, and cap. Perhaps Jesus wore a tunic like that which Josephus described of the High Priest: “not composed of two pieces, nor was it sewed together upon the shoulders and the sides, but it was one long vestment so woven as to have an aperture for the neck” (Ant. 3.159).

John shows how Jesus’ death fulfils David’s prophecy:

Psalm 22:16–18 Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.

The direct fulfilment of these three central verses in Psalm 22 claims the whole Psalm as prophetic of the crucifixion. Jesus’ suffering for the sins of the world was long predetermined, exactly foreseen.

His unripped tunic contrasts with the torn garments of Samuel and Saul which represented the faithless king’s divided realm. Though crucified, Jesus’ universal rule is intact.

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