But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar.
All Commentaries on John 19:15 Go To John 19
Cyril of Alexandria
AD 444
The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar.
Hereupon the well-beloved Israel spurned his God, and started aside from his allegiance, and, as Moses said, abandoned the God that was his Father, and remembered not the Lord his helper. For see how he turned his eyes upon an harlot, according to the Scripture, refused to be ashamed, disowned his own glory, and denied his Lord. Of this very charge God accused Israel of old, speaking by the mouth of Jeremiah: For pass over the isles of Chittim, and send unto Kedar, and see whether the nations change their gods, who are yet no gods; but My people have changed their glory. And again: The heavens were astonished thereat, and were horribly afraid, saith the Lord; for My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me the fountain of living waters, and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that hold no water. For while other nations throughout the whole world clung fast to the deceitfulness of their idols, and steadfastly adhered to the gods whom they so deemed, and did not readily undergo a change of faith, nor easily alter their form of worship, the Israelites started aside, and joined themselves to the empire of Caesar, and cast off the rule of God. Therefore, very justly, were they given over into Caesar's hands, and, having at first welcomed his rule, afterwards brought themselves to grievous ruin, and underwent expulsion from their country, and the sufferings of war, and those irremediable calamities that befell them.
Observe, too, here the minuteness of the writer. For he does not say that the people started the impious cry, but rather their rulers. For he says: the chief priests cried out, everywhere pointing out, that it was through their submissively following their leaders that the multitude was carried down the precipice, and fell into the abyss of perdition. The chief priests incur the penalty, not merely as losing their own souls, but also as having been leaders and responsible guides of the people subject unto them, in the fatal shedding of blood; just as also the prophet rebuked them, saying: Because ye have been a snare unto the watch-tower, and as a net stretched out upon Tabor, which they who catch the prey have spread. The Prophet here means by the watch-tower the multitude, who were subject unto them, who were arrayed, as it were, to observe the conduct of their rulers, and to conform their own to it. And, therefore, the leading men of the people are called watchmen in Holy Writ. The chief priests themselves, then, were a snare and a net unto the watch-tower; for they both started this denial, and also induced all the rest to cry: We have no king but Caesar. These miserable men presumed so to say, though God the Father, by the mouth of the Prophet, predicted the coming of the Saviour, and cried out: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: He is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass. These men, who had once brought Jesus into Jerusalem riding upon an ass, and honoured Him as a God with blind praises, with one accord, for they cried: Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord! now make an outcry against Him, accusing Him only of attacking the Roman rule, and shaking off, as it were, the yoke of the Kingdom of God from their necks. For this was the plain meaning of the cry: We have no king but Caesar. But we shall find that then, too, it was the people that raised the shout for the Saviour Christ, and that it was the chief priests who presumed in their madness to make this exclamation, just as the others had proceeded from them.
