That they might take Jesus by subtilty, and kill Him.
Craft and cruelty coupled in the Church’s adversaries
Neither of them “wants their mate,” as the Scripture says of those birds of prey and desolation (Isaiah 34:16). These priests and elders were so bitterly bent against Christ, that nothing would satisfy them but His blood. All plants and other creatures have their growth and increase to a period, and then their declination and decay, except only the crocodile, who, grows bigger and bigger, even till death. So have all passions and perturbations in man’s mind their intentions and remissions, except only malicious revenge. This dies not, many times, but with the man (if that), as nothing can quench the combustible slime in Samosaris, nor the burning flame of the hill Chimaera, but only earth. St. Peter tells us (1 Peter 2:23), that our Saviour, being reviled, did not only commit His cause to God, but Himself to God: as expecting the increase of His enemies’ opposition till they had put Him to death. (John Trapp.)