Jesus the Bridegroom & the Crucifixion

The Crucifixion

  • When we examine just how gruesome, cruel, and horrific a Roman crucifixion was,
  • Josephus called it “the most wretched of deaths” (War 7.203).
  • Along similar lines, the Roman jurist Paulus describes it as “the most severe punishment” possible (Sententiae 5.21.3). Often the “sadistic creativity of Roman executioners added to this.
  • First, prepared by scourging. Then, if still alive, forced to carry the beams of the cross to the site of execution, often whipped along the way. At the execution site, he would be nailed or hung to the cross, often at a place as public as possible. The Roman author Quintilian wrote: “Whenever we crucify the guilty, the most crowded roads are chosen, where the most people can see and be moved by this fear” (Declamations 274).
  • Most shameful death possible. Considered “cursed by God” to be hung on the cross.
  • Indeed, the famous ancient orator Cicero refers to the Roman cross as “the tree of shame” (Cicero, Pro Rabiro 16) (98). + “for he that is hanged is a curse of God.” (Mishnah, Sanhedrin 6:4, citing Deuteronomy 21:23) (97).
  • As Cicero says: the cross is the “extreme and ultimate penalty for a slave” (In Verrum 2.5.169). In the words of another Roman writer, it was “the slaves’ punishment” (Valerius Maximus 2.7.12). The very fact that a person was being crucified was a public declaration that he was nothing more than a slave of the empire, a nobody in the eyes of the world. 98.
  • The crucified man would eventually die of asphyxiation, “suffocating under the weight of his own lacerated body” (98).
  • Normally crucified naked. Just to make sure this man has no possible sense of dignity remaining.
  • In the first century, crucifixion was a weapon of mass destruction (500 Jews per day during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD).
  • In sum: In a first-century Jewish setting, the Roman practice of execution by crucifixion was widely considered to be one of the cruelest and most shameful ways a person could die. As such, it was hardly the kind of death that anyone would ever associate with the happiness of a wedding. 101.

“If crucifixion was so cruel and so shameful and so bloody, why would Jesus—or anyone else, for that matter—compare the event to a wedding day?” (101).

“I would suggest that the authors of the Gospels are inviting us to look beyond the history of Jesus’ execution to the mystery of the Bridegroom Messiah’s wedding day” (102).

  1. Crowning of thorns: Although, on the surface level, it is a part of royal mockery, like the robe and the scepter, Jewish bridegrooms also wore crowns on their wedding day (they dressed like a king). “In modern times the way you identify the bridegroom is to look for the man wearing the fanciest tuxedo or the nicest suit at the wedding. In an ancient Jewish context the way you spotted the bridegroom was to look for the man with the crown” (103). Song of Songs 3:11. As Jewish scholar Michael Satlow puts it: the ancient Jewish bridegroom was “king for a day.” 104. And yet, Jesus is not just king for a day. His wedding crown is made of thorns.
  2. The seamless garment: Jesus’ seamless garment is evocative of the “tunic” worn by the Jewish high priest. In the context of the Jewish prophecies of the Bridegroom Messiah… As New Testament scholar André Feuillet puts it: “For some, Jesus’ seamless tunic recalls the likewise seamless robe of the high priest and means that the crucified Christ is a priest and his death a sacrifice he offers to God.” 107. The Jewish bridegroom was not only a symbolic king for a day, but priest for a day. Why? The bridechamber was designed to resemble the Tabernacle of Moses – the sanctuary, the supreme place of priestly sacrifice. “A striking analogy is established between the union of God and Israel in the Tabernacle at Mount Sinai and the union of the Jewish bridegroom and his bride in the “tabernacle” of the “bridechamber” (Hebrew huppah). Just as God was united to his bride, Israel, through the covenant sacrifice in the Tabernacle of Moses, so too the Jewish bridegroom was united to his bride in the miniature tabernacle of the bridechamber, in a permanent and loving marriage “covenant” (Malachi 2:14). The same is true of the Bridegroom Messiah. When the time comes for his wedding day on the cross, Jesus “decks himself as a priest” (1 QIsaiaha 61:10) in order to offer the nuptial sacrifice of his own flesh and blood, through which God will be united to his people in a new and everlasting covenant” (108-9).
  3. The blood & water flow from Jesus’ side: Through the perspective of Jewish Scripture, we can draw a parallel between the “flow of blood and water from his side and the biblical account of God taking flesh from the side of Adam in the Garden of Eden” (110). Eve was created out of Adam’s “side” (Hebrew tzela’). “Just as Adam falls into a deep sleep so that God can create the Woman from his “side” (Hebrew tzela’; Greek pleura) (Genesis 2:21), so too Jesus falls into the sleep of death, and blood and water flow from his “side” (Greek pleura) (John 19:34). And just as the miraculous creation of the first bride from the side of Adam is the foundation for the marriage of man and woman, so too the miraculous flow of blood and water from the side of Jesus is the origin and foundation of the marriage of Christ and the Church. In the words of St. Augustine, who recognized this parallel many centuries ago: [In] those two original humans … the marriage of Christ and the Church was prefigured.… [A]s Adam was a type of Christ, so too was the creation of Eve from the sleeping Adam a prefiguration of the creation of the Church from the side of the Lord as he slept, for as he suffered and died on the cross and was struck by a lance, the sacraments which formed the Church flowed forth from him. By Christ’s sleeping we are also to understand his passion.… As Eve came from the side of the sleeping Adam, so the Church was born from the side of the suffering Christ. (Augustine, Exposition of the Psalms 138:2) In other words, just as Eve was given life by the miraculous gift of flesh from Adam, the first bridegroom, so too the Church—the bride of Jesus—receives her life through the twofold gift: the “living water” of the Holy Spirit that is given in baptism and the living “blood” of Jesus that is received in the Eucharist. And just as natural life was given to Eve, and, through Eve, to all humanity, through the flesh from the side of Adam, so supernatural life is given to the Church through the water and blood from the side of Jesus the Bridegroom. 111-2.