Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 27-28.

The first thing I want to point out is that Pilate found none of the charges against Jesus justified putting Him to death, despite the fact that Jesus mounted no defense against the charges.  I have often seen commentators write that from what we know about Pilate he was unlikely to have been bothered by condemning an innocent man.  From this, they conclude that the account of Pilate washing his hands and the crowd taking responsibility for Jesus’ death was an attempt to shift blame from the Romans to the Jews.  I think the people who see this are on to something, but I believe they see antisemitism where there is none.  Instead I believe Matthew meant for us to understand that “the crowd” was responsible for Jesus’ death, not the government.  And we are “the crowd”.  We are responsible for Jesus dying on the cross.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.