Matthew 27:33-34 meaning

The parallel gospel accounts of Matthew 27:33-34 are found in Mark 15:22-23, Luke 23:33-34, 36, John 19:16-17.

The Roman soldiers led Jesus, along with the other two criminals who were to be crucified with Him (Luke 23:32), and Simon of Cyrene (Matthew 27:32) to a location outside the city walls. John wrote that “the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city” where “many Jews” could witness it (John 19:20). Hebrews 13:12 says the place Jesus “suffered [was] outside the gate” (Hebrew 13:12). This would have been according to Roman custom.

Roman crucifixions were intended to be as humiliating and shameful as they were brutal and horrifying. This artistically cruel form of execution was a public stigmatization of the criminal and was designed to terrorize and deter would-be criminals into submission. Jesus’s place of crucifixion being outside the gate is further supported by the fact that “those passing by were hurling abuse at Him, wagging their heads” (Matthew 27:39).

All of this indicates that Jesus was crucified in front of tens of thousands of Jews who passed by Him on their way into the city to celebrate the first day of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This made Jesus’s execution a national spectacle.

They came to a place called Golgotha, which means Place of a Skull (v 33).

It is generally held that the place they came to was a hill. There were lots of hills around Jerusalem, and a hill would have made crucifixions more widely visible, but beyond a few clues and the title, Golgotha, the Bible does not specify which hill. The term, Golgotha, is an Aramaic word. Aramaic was the common language used by the Jews in the first century A.D.

To learn more, see The Bible Says article: “The Four Languages of Jesus’s Judea.”

Matthew explains Golgotha’s meaning as Place of a Skull. The Latin word with this meaning is “calva” from which the English term “Calvary” is derived. Therefore, the Aramaic term Golgotha and the English term “Calvary” have the same meaning.

The reason this place was called Golgotha, or Place of a Skull, was either because the landscape appeared to resemble a skull, or because it was a place of death and execution—or both.

Golgotha was likely the place where the Romans usually crucified its criminals outside Jerusalem. And so, it earned a reputation of being a place of death—hence its name place of a skull.

The naming of Golgotha in this manner is similar to the naming of other places which were named after the activity that took place there. For instance, inlets that are named “Pirate’s Cove” are given this name, not because they are shaped like a pirate ship, but rather because they are a haven for pirates.

Matthew has already referred to several places outside Jerusalem with similar names:

• “The Mount of Olives” (Matthew 21:21)

• “The Potter’s Field,” which likely took its name from the potters who harvested the red clay from that field to make their pottery (Matthew 27:7).

Golgotha, therefore, likely derived its name from the awful executions that regularly occurred there.

There are at least two possible locations outside the old city walls of Jerusalem that may have been the place where Jesus was crucified.

One possible location for Golgotha is near what the ancient Jewish historian Josephus referred to as “the Gennath gate.” This traditional location for Golgotha is situated about five hundred meters/yards north of the Praetorium where Jesus was condemned by Pilate. The location of this site is near where the “Church of the Holy Sepulcher” presently (2024) stands.

The original construction for this church was built in the fourth century A.D. by the mother of the Roman Emperor, Constantine. She chose this location because, centuries earlier, the pagan Emperor Hadrian had a temple built to Venus on the site venerated by 1^st and 2^nd century Christians as the place where Jesus was crucified. Ironically, in his attempt to desecrate a site that was special to Christians, Hadrian seems to have inadvertently preserved Golgotha’s location for posterity.

This location is also in harmony with Hebrews 13:8, John’s eyewitness account (John 19:20).

A second possible location for Golgotha is known as “Gordon’s Calvary.” This site was first suggested in the nineteenth century by a German archeologist, Otto Thenius, in part because the side of the cliff resembled the eyes and nose of a human skull. It is called “Gordon’s Calvary” because the English military officer, Charles Gordon, popularized it for religious pilgrims.

Gordon’s Calvary is located to the north of the old city, “outside the gate” (Hebrews 13:8), about a kilometer/half a mile or so from Herod’s palace/the Praetorium where Pilate condemned Jesus. Gordon’s Calvary is about 500 meters/yards further north from Golgotha’s traditional site and about a quarter mile beyond where the outer walls of Jerusalem stood in Jesus’s lifetime.

While either location is possible, The Bible Says favors the traditional site of Golgotha, rather than Gordan’s Calvary.

None of the four Gospel writers describe in detail what Roman crucifixion entailed. Their primary readers would have been familiar with its brutality, making its description unnecessary.

To learn more about Roman crucifixion, see The Bible Says article: “Bearing the Cross: Exploring the Unimaginable Suffering of Crucifixion.”

Instead, the Gospels tend to focus on events or aspects of Jesus’s crucifixion that accomplish one of three objectives. These three objectives are:

1. They demonstrate fulfillments of Messianic prophecies.

2. They reveal insight into Jesus’s heart as He suffered and died.

3. They highlight something unusual that demonstrates Jesus’s deity.

Matthew’s crucifixion account primarily focuses on (1) prophetic fulfillments and (2) the unusual events that prove how Jesus was the Son of God. Again, one of Matthew’s original purposes for writing his Gospel was to prove to the Jews that Jesus was their Messiah.

The first Messianic prophecy to which Matthew alludes within his account of Jesus’s crucifixion is found after they came to a place called Golgotha—it is in the next verse:

They gave Him wine to drink mixed with gall and after tasting it, He was unwilling to drink (v 34).

This is a prophetic fulfillment of a Messianic prophecy in Psalm 69 which says:

“They also gave me gall for my food.”
(Psalm 69:21a)

The likely reasons Matthew did not explicitly point out that this was a prophetic fulfillment was because his Jewish audience would have easily recognized the connection between the wine mixed with gall which they gave Him to drink and Psalm 69—and pointing it out would have bogged down the narrative and taken up valuable papyrus.

The They in Matthew 27:34 refers to the Roman soldiers. One of the few acts of mercy commonly shown by Roman soldiers when they crucified their victims was that they gave the condemned men a concoction of wine and gall to drink as an anesthetic. This anesthetic would partially dull one of the sharpest and most severe pains of the cross—the driving of the nails through the victim’s wrists and feet to the beams of the cross.

The nails would crush through the median nerve, located between the ulna and radius bones of the forearm. The median travels from the elbow to the hand. The pain that would have convulsed up the victim’s arm from these nails would have been excruciating.

But in addition to dulling the pain, this wine and gall mixture also dulled the mind. Jesus refused it. He was unwilling to drink it.

The likely reason He refused it was because He was about to face the final and most intense trial of His life. Jesus wanted to have all His faculties to trust God and thus overcome the innumerable and intense temptations to abandon His Father’s will that He suffer and die for the sins of the world (Matthew 26:39, John 12:27, 1 John 4:9-10). Had Jesus succumbed to this temptation He would not have fulfilled His purpose. Abandoning His Father’s will could have manifested in multiple ways:

• It could have looked like summoning an angelic rescue instead of obeying God. (Matthew 26:53)

• It could have looked like giving into despair and cursing God for allowing His Son to suffer like this. (Matthew 26:38, Job 2:9)

• It could have looked like using His divine power to save Himself and humiliate His enemies instead of saving them through His death and suffering. (Matthew 27:41-44, Luke 23:39)

Jesus could have succumbed to the temptation and relied on His own strength to quit or overcome the cross instead of trusting God by faith. But Jesus did not rely on His own strength while He was on the cross. He emptied Himself (Philippians 2:7) and did not use His supernatural power to “win” this fight. Rather, He overcame it solely by trusting God in faith. This is why the book of Hebrews calls Jesus “the author and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:2).

Jesus tossed “aside every encumbrance” (Hebrews 12:1) in pursuit of His mission—including the alleviating but distracting drink of wine mixed with gall. He did not want to compromise Himself. He wanted to be focused to overcome the trial of the cross by faith.

Jesus cared more about obeying His Father and winning the world’s redemption, even if it meant enduring greater suffering (Philippians 2:8, Hebrews 12:2). When Jesus told His disciples: “the Son of Man did not come to be served” (Matthew 20:28a), it included any comfort the wine mixed with gall might have afforded Him. The Messiah came rather “to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28b).

Therefore, He was unwilling to drink the wine and gall mixture they gave Him.

Unaccustomed to having their offer rejected, Luke informs us that when Jesus refused to drink the sour wine which they were offering Him, the Roman soldiers began to mock Him: “If You are the King of the Jews, save Yourself!” (Luke 23:36-37).

Luke’s Gospel further indicates that it was around the time, or perhaps during the time when the Roman soldiers were driving nails through His wrists and feet that Jesus was repeatedly praying the first thing He said while He was crucified:

“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
(Luke 23:34a)

To learn more about Jesus’s statement, see The Bible Says article: “Jesus’s Seven Last Words from the Cross—Part One: A Word of Mercy.”

Jesus’s merciful prayer for His executioners may have begun to change their perspective toward Him (Matthew 27:54).

Mark informs us that Jesus was crucified at “the third hour” (Mark 15:25). According to modern timekeeping, this would have been nine o’clock in the morning.