Matthew 27:32-36 32As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene by the name of Simon; they forced this man to carry his cross. 33And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which is called Place of a Skull, 34they offered him wine to drink, mixed with bitter gall, but when he tasted it, he did not want to drink it. 35And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothing among them by casting lots, 36and after sitting down, they kept watch over him there.
Little did Simon of Cyrene know the privilege he had when the soldiers forced him to carry Jesus’ cross. Simon’s location is not given, but he was somewhere along the via dela Rosa, the “way of the cross.” The condemned usually carried their crosses to their executions. The cross is believed to have been the cross beam the Romans used to hang a person on. Carrying this to one’s execution was humiliating and difficult. Jesus could not carry his cross beam likely because of the severe beating he had just received. Scourging was enough to kill a person, so he was already badly injured. Matthew gives little description of Simon, only that he was Cyrene, which was a city along the coast of north Africa, where Libya is today. Simon was likely in Jerusalem for the Passover. That he is named suggests that he later became a believer, as did his two sons, Alexander and Rufus (Mark 15:21).
The place the Romans chose to crucify Jesus had become notorious. Why this location was called the Place of the Skull is not know for sure, but many historians have pointed out a hill in the Jerusalem area that looks like a skull and believe this was the place of Jesus’ execution. The location may have had a bad reputation during that time as a place of death, and so the two ideas could have been combined in people’s thinking. Wherever the exact location, it was a terrible place where people were humiliated, left exposed in shame, and killed.
The soldiers’ motive for giving Jesus a bitter drink is not stated. There is a reference in a later writing found in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 42a) that may reference Proverbs 31:6 that suggests that it was a practice to provide a numbing drink to those about to be executed. It is difficult to imagine that the soldiers would be kind to Jesus at this point and may have just soured some of their wine in more mockery of his. Jesus refused to drink the bitter wine. Again, the story does not say why. Ideas have included that the wine tasted terrible or that Jesus wanted to be fully alert and experience the pain as he gave his life for the sins of the world.
Verse 35 starts with a temporal participle when they had crucified (staurōsantes) that expresses in one word the focus point of all time. The action of crucifying would have included the whole process of putting Jesus on the cross. Many movies have imagined what this may have been like. Roman crucifixion is one of the worst ways to execute a person in all of human history. Without going into the gory details, it was physically painful as a person either died of suffocation and not being able to breath well, or from exposure to the weather without food or water, or from the wounds received before or during the hanging process. It was also socially humiliating since prisoners were often naked, and their bodies left to hand for the birds to peck on after one’s death. The Romans used this form of execution as a strong deterrent against crime and warning for their enemies or insurrectionists.
Matthew includes a note that the soldiers divided Jesus’ clothing by casting lots. This was in fulfillment of Psalm 22:18. The soldiers’ motive for this is not stated. It could have been another form of mockery, like taking a prize home, since Jesus’ clothes were probably bloody and in bad shape by this point. After the soldiers were finished putting Jesus on the cross, there was nothing to do except sit and watch him die. A simple task that they may have done before became the focal point of all time and eternity.
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