Mark 14:63-65 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Then the high-priest rent his clothes Rending of clothes was an expression sometimes of deep grief, sometimes of holy zeal. The precepts, Leviticus 10:8; Leviticus 21:10; forbidding the high-priest to rend his clothes, relate only to the pontifical garments and to private mourning: that is, mourning on account of the calamities befalling himself or friends. Griefs of this kind the chief minister of religion was not to make public by any outward sign whatever. But it was neither unlawful nor unusual for him to rend his ordinary garments on account of public calamities, or instances of gross wickedness, as a testimony of his grief for the one and abhorrence of the other. See 1Ma 11:71. That the high-priest was clothed in his ordinary apparel on this occasion, appears from Exodus 29:29-30, where the pontifical garments are ordered to descend from father to son; and therefore were to be worn only at their consecration, and when they ministered. And saith, What need we any further witnesses Namely, of his being guilty of blasphemy. Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? What punishment do you judge him to have deserved? They all condemned him, to be guilty of death Namely, all present; for it is probable Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and some more, who were his disciples, or favourably disposed toward him, were not present: or if they were, they doubtless remonstrated against the iniquity of this sentence. And some began to spit on him See note on Matthew 26:67-68.