Matthew 27:25 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

His blood be on us, &c.— As this terrible imprecation was dreadfully answered in the ruin so quickly brought on the Jewish nation, and the calamities which have since pursued that wretched people, in almost all ages and countries; so it was peculiarly illustrated in the severity with which Titus, merciful as he naturally was, treated the Jews whom he took during the siege of Jerusalem; of whom Josephus himself writes, that μαστιγουμενοι ανεσταυρουντο, having been scourged, and tortured in a very terrible manner, they were crucified, in view and near the walls of this city, (perhaps, among other places, on mount Calvary; and it is probable that this might be the fate of some of those very persons who now joined in this cry, as it undoubtedly was of many of their children.) For Josephus, who was an eye-witness, expressly declares, "That the number of those thus crucified was so great that there was not room for the crosses to stand by each other, and that at last they had not wood enough to make crosses of:" a passage which, especially when compared with the verse before us, must impress and astonish the attentive reader beyond any other in the whole history. If this were not the very finger of God, pointing out their crime in crucifying his Son, it is hard to say what could deserve to be called so. Elsner has abundantly shewn, that among the Greeks, the persons on whose testimony others were put to death, used by a very solemn execration to devote themselves to the divine vengeance, if the persons so condemned were not really guilty. See his Observat. vol. 1: p. 123. Joseph. War, lib. 5. 100: 11 and Doddridge. Bishop Fleetwood observes, that the modern Jews are as virulent against the name of Jesus, as their fathers were against his power; so that they suffer as their fathers did, and for a like reason.