'What I have written I have written.'--JOHN xix. 22.
This was a mere piece of obstinacy. Pilate knew that he had prostituted
his office in condemning Jesus, and he revenged himself for weak
compliance by ill-timed mulishness. A cool-headed governor would have
humoured his difficult subjects in such a trifle, as a just one would
have been inflexible in a matter of life and death. But this man's
facile yielding and his stiff-necked obstinacy were both misplaced. 'So
I will, so I command. Let my will suffice for a reason,' was what he
meant. He had written his gibe, and not all the Jews in Jewry should
make him change.
But his petulant answer to the rulers' request for the removal of the
offensive placard carried in it a deeper meaning, as the Title also
did, and as the people's fierce yell, 'His blood be on us and on our
children,' did. Possibly the Evangelist had some thought of that sort
in recording this saying; but, at all events, I venture to take a
liberty with it which I should not do if it were a word of God's, or if
it were given for our instruction. So I take it now as expressing in a
vivid way, and irrespective of Pilate's intention, the thought of the
irrevocable past.