Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover.
Ver. 28. Lest they should be defiled] Putrid hypocrisy! they stand upon legal defilements, and care not to defile their consciences with innocent blood. What is this, but to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel? τον ανδριανταγαργαλιζειν. So Saul seemed to make a heinous matter of eating the flesh with the blood,1 Samuel 14:33, when it was nothing with him to spill the blood of innocent Jonathan. Nay, he was so scrupulous, that he would not so much as name a guilty man or sinner, but, in casting of lots, instead of saying, Show the innocent or guilty, he said, Show the innocent or upright person, as Tremellius reads it; yet at the same time (as is well observed) he made no conscience of bloody oaths. So Doeg was detained before the Lord, either because it was the sabbath, or his vow was not finished, &c. But when he went thence, he became death's man to the Lord's priests.