‘But they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and rushed on him with one accord, and they cast him out of the city, and stoned him.
Everything broke at once. They could no longer restrain themselves. With cries of anguish the members of the Sanhedrin blocked their ears at this blasphemy, a symbolic gesture indicating their horror, and rushing at him, dragged him through the street to outside the city, where they stoned him. It was as though they had been taken with madness. All restraint had gone. This was the staid Sanhedrin, but they were baying like mad hounds which had smelled blood. Such moments of madness can seize even the sanest of people. And it had happened here. They had become a lynch mob. That is what unreasoning belief mingled with a bad conscience can do to people.
Serious blasphemy was in fact almost the only crime for which the Sanhedrin could pass the death sentence. There were notices in the Temple warning of instant death to anyone unauthorised who went beyond the outer court. And in spite of their fury they appear to have ‘observed the rules' in that the witnesses were present in order to cast the first stones (Deuteronomy 17:7).
‘Cast him out of the city' (compare Deuteronomy 17:5; Numbers 15:35). Death must not take place within the city, for it would defile the city. It is ironic that he who had pointed them to what their fathers had done in following idolatry was treated as though he had been guilty of idolatry (Deuteronomy 17:5-7). In the same way had Jesus died ‘without the gate' (Hebrews 13:12). So in their dreadful crimes did they maintain the niceties of the Law.
‘And stoned him.' He had dared to point out to them that they had rejected and slain the prophets (Acts 7:52). So now they stoned him. The only actual record we have of the death of a prophet was of one they stoned (2 Chronicles 24:21). This was their way of getting rid of prophets, and they proved themselves adept at it. The irony of the whole situation is obvious. They sought to prove that he was wrong by proving that he was right.