John Chapter 19 verse 36 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 36. - For these things came to pass, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. Both the omission of the crurifragium, and the piercing of the Redeemer's side, with its solemn and strange issues, confirm to this great eye-witness the spiritual meaning and Messianic portraiture involved in them. A bone of him shall not be broken. This quotation from the ceremonial of the Passover (Exodus 12:46; Numbers 9:12), where the lamb offered to God was to be shielded from unnecessary mutilation, is in harmony with the words of the Baptist, "Behold the Lamb of God!" and with Paul's language (1 Corinthians 5:7), "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us," and shows that the Fourth Gospel does recognize this parallel, which is in a very remarkable way thus quietly reaffirmed. This passage acquires meaning from the supposition that the Jews were hurrying away to eat their Paschal lamb, not a bone of which could be legally broken. The opponents of the authenticity think that incidents are invented to establish the supposed relationship. Those who seek to reply to them by explaining away this reference to the Passover think that Psalm 34:20 is referred to, "He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken;" but the force of that passage in this connection would violently clash with any such adaptation of it as could make it refer to the cruel and violent death of the Lord.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(36) For these things were done (better, came to pass), that the scripture should be fulfilled.--The emphatic witness of the previous verse is not therefore to be confined to the one fact of the flowing of the blood and the water, but to the facts in which the fulfilment of Scripture was accomplished, and which establish the Messiahship of Jesus.He saw--that which might have seemed an accidental occurrence--that they brake not the legs of Jesus; he saw--that which might have seemed a sort of instinct of the moment--that the Roman soldier pierced the side of Jesus; he saw in the water and blood which flowed from it visible proof that Jesus was the Son of man; but he saw, too, that these incidents were part of the divine destiny of the Messiah which the prophets had foretold, and that in them the Scripture was fulfilled. (Comp. Note on John 13:18.)A bone of him shall not be broken.--The reference is, as the margin gives it, to the Paschal Lamb, in which the Baptist had already seen a type of Christ (comp. Note on John 1:29), and which St. Paul afterwards more definitely identifies with Him (1Corinthians 5:7). It is not equally apposite to refer to Psalm 34:20, as the thought there is of preservation in life, but the words of the Psalm are doubtless themselves a poetic adaptation of the words of Exodus.