And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again.
This verse continues Jesus' detailed prediction to his disciples on the road to Jerusalem. After naming his betrayal and condemnation by Jewish religious leaders, he describes what the Gentiles — non-Jewish people, specifically the Roman authorities who governed the region — would do to him. Crucifixion was the Roman method of execution reserved for criminals and enemies of the state, designed to be public, slow, and humiliating. Flogging was a brutal whipping that often preceded it. Jesus names each stage of his suffering in order, with unflinching clarity. And then, after all of that, he speaks the resurrection: "On the third day he will be raised to life." The sequence is everything — he names the death before the life.
Lord, you named the suffering before it came, and you named the resurrection in the same breath. Teach me to do the same — to face hard things honestly without letting them be the final word. Speak Sunday over my Fridays. Amen.
He knew. That's the thing that's almost impossible to sit with. Jesus walked toward Jerusalem carrying a precise mental picture of what was waiting for him there — the soldiers mocking him, the whip, the nails, the cross. He didn't stumble into his suffering by accident. He walked into it with his eyes wide open, every step chosen. And he told his disciples. He laid it all out, step by brutal step — and then he ended with resurrection. "On the third day he will be raised to life." He spoke the ending before the suffering ever began. Whatever Friday you're currently living through — the diagnosis that arrived out of nowhere, the relationship that's fracturing, the 3 AM when everything feels like it's collapsing — Jesus spoke Sunday over it before Friday ever arrived. That's not a promise that hard things won't happen. He literally just listed the hard things. It's a declaration that hard things don't have the final word.
Jesus described his suffering in specific detail before it happened. What does that level of foreknowledge suggest about his relationship to his own death — and to the nature of God's plan?
The disciples heard this prediction but still couldn't receive it. Have you ever been told something true that you simply couldn't absorb until you'd lived through it yourself? What was that experience like?
There's a real tension in this verse between suffering and hope — Jesus names the worst and then names the resurrection in the same breath. How do you hold both of those things at the same time in your own life right now?
Jesus experienced mockery and humiliation, not just physical pain. How does that change the way you extend compassion to people who feel publicly shamed, embarrassed, or written off?
Where do you need to hear "on the third day" spoken over something specific in your life? What would it take to actually believe it?
Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him.
John 19:1
Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
Matthew 27:26
He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,
Luke 24:6
For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
1 Corinthians 15:3
And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.
Luke 24:44
And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!
Matthew 27:29
From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.
Matthew 16:21
He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.
Matthew 28:6
and will hand Him over to the Gentiles (Roman authorities) to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and He will be raised [to life] on the third day."
AMP
and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”
ESV
and will hand Him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify [Him], and on the third day He will be raised up.'
NASB
and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”
NIV
and deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge and to crucify. And the third day He will rise again.”
NKJV
Then they will hand him over to the Romans to be mocked, flogged with a whip, and crucified. But on the third day he will be raised from the dead.”
NLT
They will then hand him over to the Romans for mockery and torture and crucifixion. On the third day he will be raised up alive."
MSG