1 Early in the morning, the men of the Jewish Leaders Council talked with each other about what they will do with Jesus. That council mob were the bosses of the Jewish ceremonies, and the law teachers, and the elders. They tied Jesus’s hands together, and they took him over to the big government boss. His name was Pilate. They asked him to judge Jesus. 2 So Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the big boss over the Jewish nation?”

Jesus said, “Those are your words.”

3 The bosses of the Jewish ceremonies blamed Jesus, and they told Pilate he did a lot of bad things, but Jesus didn’t say anything. 4 Then Pilate said to him, “They are saying lots of bad things about you. Why don’t you say something for yourself?”

5 But Jesus said nothing, and Pilate was really shocked.

6 Every year, at the ceremony time called Passover, Pilate always did something special for the people in Jerusalem. He let one prisoner go free from the jail.

7-8 At this Passover time, some of the Jerusalem people came to Pilate and asked him to let a prisoner go free, like he always did. They came up to Pilate while Jesus was still there. At the same time, there was a murderer in jail there. His name was Barabbas. Before that time, Barabbas and his mob fought against the government and killed some of the government people, so the soldiers grabbed him and put him in jail.

9-11 Pilate knew that the bosses of the Jewish ceremonies were jealous of Jesus, and that was the only reason why they brought him to Pilate. They wanted Pilate to kill him. So when those Jerusalem people asked Pilate to let a prisoner go free, Pilate said, “All right, how about I let Jesus go? You reckon he says that he is your big boss. What do you reckon, will I let him go?”

But the ceremony bosses got all those people to be angry with Jesus, and those people told Pilate, “No. Not him. We want you to let Barabbas go free.”

12 Pilate said, “So what do you want me to do with this man that you Jewish people call your big boss?”

13 They all yelled, “Kill him. Nail him to a cross and let him die there.”

14 Pilate said, “Why? What did he do that was so bad?”

But they didn’t listen. They yelled even louder, “Kill him. Nail him to a cross.”

15 Pilate didn’t want that mob to get wild, so he did what they wanted. He let Barabbas go out of jail, and he told his Roman soldiers to hit Jesus a lot with whips. After they finished whipping him, Pilate told them to nail Jesus to a cross and leave him to die.

16 The soldiers took Jesus outside into the yard of the big house where Pilate lived. They called out to the rest of the soldiers there to come out into that yard. 17 They put a purple coat on Jesus. Then they made some prickly branches into a headband that looked like a crown, like a big boss wears, and they put it on Jesus’s head. 18 And they made fun of him. They got down on their knees in front of Jesus and said, “Hey, you reckon that you are great. And you reckon that you are the big boss over the Jewish people. But you are not.” 19 And they kept on hitting him on the head with a stick, and they spat on him.

20 When they finished making fun of him, they took off the long purple coat and put his own clothes back on him. Then they took him out to another place to kill him.

21 There was a man walking past them on the road at that time. He was coming into the city from the bush. His name was Simon, and he was from the country called Cyrene. (He was the father of our friends Alexander and Rufus.) The soldiers forced Simon to carry the cross for Jesus.* Romans 16:13 22 Then they got to the place called Golgotha in their language. That name means Skull Place.

23 Then the soldiers tried to give Jesus some wine to drink. That wine had some medicine called myrrh mixed in it. But Jesus wouldn’t drink it.

24-26 Then the soldiers nailed Jesus’s hands and feet to the cross. Then they stood it up, and they left him to die like that. And they made a sign and put it above his head, to say why they killed him. It said, “The big boss over the Jews.” It was 9 o’clock in the morning when they nailed Jesus to that cross. After that, the soldiers gambled with each other to get his clothes.* Psalm 22:18

27-28 The soldiers also nailed 2 criminals to crosses next to Jesus. One criminal was on his left-hand side, and the other criminal was on his right-hand side. 29 Some other people walked past Jesus and rubbished him too. They stood there and shook their heads to shame him, and they said, “You reckon you can knock down God’s ceremony house, and then build it again in 3 days, do you?* Psalm 22:7; 109:25; Mark 14:58; John 2:19 30 All right, if you are so smart, save yourself. Get off the cross and come down.”

31 The bosses of the Jewish ceremonies and the law teachers joined in and laughed at Jesus. They said to each other, “He saved other people, but he can’t save himself. 32 He thinks he is the Christ, the special man that God promised to send to save us. He reckons he is the big boss over us Israel nation. No way. We will not believe him unless we see him come down off that cross.”

The men on the other crosses joined in too and rubbished Jesus.

33 In the middle of the day, at about 12 o’clock, all of the country got dark, like it was night time. It stayed dark for about 3 hours, until 3 o’clock in the afternoon. 34 Then Jesus yelled out in his language. He said, “Eloy, Eloy, lama sabakthani?” That means, My God, my God, why did you go away and leave me all by myself?* Psalm 22:1

35 Some of the people standing around heard Jesus say that. They thought that he called out for Elijah to come to him from heaven. 36 One man got up quickly and got a sponge, and he filled it with sour wine, and he put it on a stick and held it up to Jesus’s mouth, so he could suck a bit of it. And that man said, “All right, just leave him. Let us wait and see if Elijah will come and get him down.”* Psalm 69:21

37 Jesus yelled out again, and then he died.

38 Over in Jerusalem, in God’s ceremony house, there was a big curtain that blocked off God’s special place. At the same time that Jesus died, that curtain just ripped right down the middle from the top to the bottom, into 2 bits.* Exodus 26:31-33

39 And at the cross, the boss over those Roman soldiers stood near Jesus, and he saw the way Jesus died. Then that boss soldier said, “I reckon this man really was the son of God.”

40-41 There were some women there at the cross too. Before this time, those women went everywhere with Jesus in Galilee country. They looked after him there, and after that, they came with him to Jerusalem. While Jesus was dying, they stood looking from a long way off. They were Mary Magdalene, and Salomi, and the other Mary that was the mother of young James and Joses, and some other women with them.* Luke 8:2-3

42 That day that Jesus died was the day when the Jewish people got everything ready for their rest day. That rest day was going to start when it got dark. 43 There was a man there that was called Joseph, and he was from a place called Arimathia. Everyone said that he was a good man, and he was one of the Jewish Leaders Council men too. He was waiting for the time when God will get all his family together and show everyone that he is the biggest boss. So when it was nearly night time, before that rest day started, he went to Pilate. He was a little bit frightened, but he went to Pilate anyway, and he asked him, “Can I get Jesus’s body to take care of it our way?”

44-45 Pilate was shocked. He said, “Is that man dead already?”

He sent somebody to get the boss over the soldiers, and he asked that boss soldier, “Is it true? Is that man properly dead now?”

That boss soldier told Pilate, “Yes, it is true.”

Then Pilate told Joseph, “All right, you can take Jesus’s body.”

46 So Joseph bought a good sheet, and he took Jesus’s body down from the cross and wrapped it in that sheet. Then he took Jesus’s body and put it in a cave to bury it. That cave was a special place to put dead bodies. It was a big hole, like a little room that somebody cut in the rock. Then Joseph rolled a big flat stone in front of that cave to block it.

47 And those women, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses, they saw the place where Joseph put Jesus’s body.