John 19:31–42

19:31–35 The Rock. The issue of breaking the legs of those crucified is prominent in verses 31, 32, and 33. John presents this scene to explain why the legs of Jesus were not broken—and what happened instead, in verses 34–35.

Some have suggested that the references to the day of preparation in John are not to preparation for the Sabbath but to preparation for the day when the Passover Feast would be eaten. The suggestion is further made that John means to present Jesus as dying when the Passover lambs were slain, and a corollary of this view is that John does not mean to present Jesus as having a Passover meal with his disciples in chapter 13. Against this view, 19:31 shows that John’s presentation matches that of the Synoptic Gospels; here we see that he means for his audience to understand that Jesus was crucified on Friday, for the next day is the Sabbath. Jesus and his disciples apparently ate the Passover on Thursday night (chs. 13–17), and later that same night Jesus was arrested (ch. 18). He was kept up all night through the various trials and then crucified Friday morning.

Because the Jews do not want the Sabbath to be defiled by the criminals on the crosses, they request Pilate to expedite the executions by breaking the legs of the criminals, hastening their deaths and thus allowing the corpses to be removed before nightfall (19:31). John seems to suggest that the Jews’ concern arises from Deuteronomy 21:22–23, which stipulates,

If a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.

Once again we have great irony: The Sabbath rest was a sign pointing to the rest God’s people would enjoy by faith in Christ, and it is the death of Christ that fulfills all requirements for cleansing. The Jews have missed all this and wrongly think that the cleansing corpse of Jesus would defile the Sabbath. The reality, however, is communicated in the words of Paul: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Gal. 3:13). Jesus has fulfilled the law, and in his death he removed the curse of the law.

In response to the request of the Jews, the soldiers break the legs of the two men crucified with Jesus (John 19:32), but they do not break the legs of Jesus. When they get to him, they find him already dead (v. 33); he had given up the ghost (v. 30). This realization that the legs of Jesus were not broken sets up three things: what did happen to Jesus (v. 34), John’s asseveration that his eyewitness testimony is true (v. 35), and John’s teaching that this was for the fulfillment of both the exodus pattern and the prophecy of Zechariah (vv. 36–37).

Since Jesus was already dead (vv. 30, 33), “one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water” (v. 34). John likely expected his readers to connect the flow of blood and water from Jesus at the cross both to the statements Jesus had made about his blood and about water earlier in the Gospel and to the role of blood and water at the exodus from Egypt. In the exodus, the blood of the lamb on the lintel caused the angel of death to pass over the homes of the Israelites, and Jesus here fulfills the role of the Passover lamb. Anticipating the way he would transform the Passover meal into the Lord’s Supper, Jesus spoke in 6:53–56 of how his blood would give life to those who trusted him. The Israelites drank water from the rock in the wilderness after the exodus, and Jesus offered living water to the woman at the well (4:10–14) and to anyone who was thirsty (7:37–39).

The flow of blood and water from the piercing of Jesus’ side fits with his identity as the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29, 36). Jesus is also the fulfillment of the rock in the wilderness, providing something better than water to keep his people alive in their pilgrimage—the Holy Spirit (7:37–39). The OT prophets and psalmists had pointed forward to a new exodus and return from exile, and Jesus fulfills what they prophesied: “They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts; he made water flow for them from the rock; he split the rock and the water gushed out” (Isa. 48:21).

Jesus is the Lamb of God: his death provides cleansing blood for his people. Jesus is the rock: those who thirst will drink of the living waters that flow when it is struck, will experience the Holy Spirit, and will be satisfied. Jesus is the resurrection and the life: he guarantees the defeat of death and the enjoyment of the abundant life God will give his people.

The biblical authors often speak of themselves in the third person, and John does so in 19:35, asserting that he himself saw these events and has given his authoritative eyewitness testimony concerning them. John asserts that he is telling the truth, so that his audience will believe. His authorial intent is to convince others of the truthfulness of his own eyewitness testimony.

19:36–37 The Lamb. In verses 36–37 John states how the events he has narrated took place to bring about the fulfillment of two different strands of OT teaching, referencing these strands by quoting a representative passage addressing each one. The first strand of OT expectation fulfilled through Jesus’ death is that of the new exodus. John the Baptist heralded Jesus as the Lamb of God (1:29, 36), and John the Evangelist presents Jesus’ dying as the fulfillment of the Passover lamb by means of his quotation of Exodus 12:46: “Not one of his bones will be broken” (in John 19:36).

In its OT context, that statement is not a prediction of something that would happen to the Messiah in the distant future; it merely addresses how the Israelites were to treat the lamb they killed and ate at Passover. John quotes this statement from the exodus narrative in keeping with the way that later OT authors likewise quoted bits of the exodus narrative. For instance, in order to point to a prophesied new exodus, Hosea quotes a phrase from Exodus 1:10 in Hosea 1:11. Even closer to what John does here is what David writes in Psalm 34:17–22. In that text, David seems to present himself as the one whose bones would not be broken (Ps. 34:20, alluding to Ex. 12:46), apparently presenting himself in the place of the Passover lamb. When David is preserved through difficulty with unbroken bones, those who have aligned themselves with him will be “redeemed,” while his enemies and their allies will be condemned (Ps. 34:21–22). Jesus is the fulfillment of the new exodus prophesied by Hosea and is the new and better David who fulfills the role of the Passover lamb. John was taught by Jesus to read Exodus the way that Hosea and David read it, but whereas Hosea and David were pointing forward to the new salvation God would accomplish, John recognizes that Jesus has brought it to pass.

In 19:36–37 John sets the statement about the fulfillment of the new exodus next to a statement concerning the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy of a pierced one (Zech. 12:10), which appears in a context (Zechariah 11–13) that is relevant to the death of Jesus. In Zechariah 11, Zechariah appears to become the Lord’s appointed shepherd of his people, but in what seems to be an enacted parable, the people reject Zechariah (11:8), the covenant is annulled (11:10), and the people pay Zechariah off with thirty pieces of silver (11:12). The Lord tells Zechariah to throw this money to the potter in the house of God and speaks of it as the value Israel put on the prophet (11:13). Jesus fulfills this enacted parable of the Lord’s shepherd, rejected at the price of thirty pieces of silver, which is thrown to the potter (Matt. 26:15; 27:9–10, citing Jeremiah as well).

Then, in Zechariah 12 judgment on the nations is announced (12:1–5), but deliverance is promised for David and Judah (12:6–9). The Lord next says that he will pour “out a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only son, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn” (12:10 AT). Zechariah goes on to reference “the mourning in Jerusalem . . . for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo” (12:11). This seems to allude to the events narrated in 2 Chronicles 35:22–25, in which Josiah is slain at Megiddo and Israel laments his death, led by the prophet Jeremiah. Zechariah appears to present a situation in which the king of Israel, Yahweh’s earthly representative, will be pierced in a battle (Zech. 12:10) in which God’s enemies are destroyed and his people saved (12:1–9), resulting in a mourning over the pierced king akin to the mourning over Josiah (12:11). This victory opens a fountain of cleansing from sin and uncleanness for the house of David and Jerusalem (13:1).

By quoting Zechariah 12:10, John presents Jesus in 19:37 as the pierced king of Israel from the line of David through whom God will judge the nations and deliver his people, through whom the fountain of cleansing will be opened, and over whom they will mourn like the mourning for a firstborn son. Zechariah’s prophecy builds to an emotional catharsis: after the hard-fought triumph the people seek the battle’s hero, the king who led them, who stood fast, whose valor brought victory—the firstborn son, the scion of David, whose right it would now be to ascend the throne. But the battle has been bought with blood. The king has been pierced and will not survive his wounds.

Jesus fulfills Zechariah’s prophecy at every point. He is the Lord’s “good shepherd” (cf. John 10). He is the true king from David’s line, firstborn of his mother (1:49; 7:42). He was valued at thirty pieces of silver, money that was thrown to the potter in the house of God. The sword was awakened against the one who stood next to Yahweh. The shepherd was struck. The sheep scattered. He was pierced. They looked upon him.

19:38–42 The Tomb. In the world the Romans ruled, it would have been dangerous to be associated with people who were crucified. Even to sympathize with the crucified against those doing the crucifying could raise questions, particularly if the crucifiers themselves were not certain about the justice of what they had done. They might decide to handle their own doubts about the rightness of their actions by crucifying anyone who reminded them that the person they executed was a decent human being.

John notes that to this point, Joseph of Arimathea has kept his allegiance to Jesus secret for fear of the Jews, but when Joseph asks Pilate for the body of Jesus in 19:38, he takes a massive risk. To do this is very much to go public with his sympathy for Jesus. Taking a similar risk, going public in a similar way, is Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus by night in chapter 3 and then had spoken in defense of Jesus in chapter 7. Now he brings a very expensive weight of precious ointment for the dead body of the crucified pretender whose contaminated reputation is radioactive, unstable, and therefore deadly (19:39).

These men, Joseph and Nicodemus, have evidently decided that Jesus deserves a decent burial no matter what it costs them. They are probably disgusted with the evil of the Jews who resorted to crucifying this man whom they could not answer. Their moral revulsion at the wickedness of those who were supposed to be “holy to the Lord” makes it so that they cannot stay on the sidelines. They must act. They regard as nothing the risk to their reputations, their standing in the community, and their future safety. Their social standing, to say nothing of the precious ointment, is of no worth compared to the one they will honor.

Having prepared his body (v. 40), they place him in a new tomb in a nearby garden (v. 41). It seems fitting that he is buried in a garden, for his suffering and death resulted originally from a transgression in a garden (cf. Luke 3:38–4:3; Rom. 5:12–21; 1 Cor. 15:21–22, 45–49). The time—probably near dark, when the Sabbath began—and the proximity of the tomb made this burial convenient (John 19:42).