Death by Crucifixion

Publishing Committee · Rochester, N. Y. · Oct 10, 1854

Death by Crucifixion.

In various countries crucifixion has been a mode of inflicting capital punishment upon transgressors. Among the Jews it was sometimes spoken of as hanging. It was a cruel and disgraceful death to die, as Cicero says in his oration against Verres. "The worst possible punishment," Ulpian calls it; and other ancient writers speak of it in the same terms. It was in practice among the Persians, and the Greeks, and the Romans with peculiar refinement of torture, according to the taste of the people, or the degree of guilt for which the victim suffered. Kitto has compiled a great many facts respecting this dreadful punishment, which cannot be read without deep emotion, when we remember that this was the death of the Lord Jesus. Herodotus says that Darius crucified three hundred persons after the siege of Babylon. Alexander nailed two thousand captives to as many crosses, by the sea-side, after the capture of Tyre. The Romans scourged the criminal before they crucified him. Thus they treated our Master.

The Hebrews derived the punishment from the Romans. The upright beam was let into the ground, and the criminal being raised up, was fastened to the transverse piece by nails driven through his hands, sometimes through his feet also; and often the feet were crossed, and one nail driven through both. The feet were sometimes bound to the cross by cords. A small tablet, declaring the crime, was placed on the top of the cross. The victim died under the most frightful sufferings; so great, that even amid the raging passions of war, pity was sometimes excited. The wounds were not in themselves fatal. A raging fever soon sets in, and the victim complains of throbbing headache, intense thirst, and pain.—When mortification ensues, as is sometimes the case, the sufferer rapidly sinks. He is no longer sensible of pain, but his anxiety and sense of prostration are excessive; hiccup supervenes, his skin is moistened with a cold clammy sweat, and death ensues. The duration of life under these agonies varied with the constitution of the sufferer, and the state of the weather. Death was hastened by the heat of the Sun and the exposure to the cold night air, but it did not ordinarily come to end the wretchedness of the victim until he had hung for thirty-six or forty-eight weary hours! Richter states that some survive on the cross for three, four, and even for nine days.

Our blessed Lord is believed to have died in about six hours from the time of being nailed to the cross. He gave up the ghost. He laid down his life. The historians speak of him as if he yielded up his breath when his work was done. But a dreadful death it was to die. And for us!

"Was it for crimes that I had done He groaned upon the tree? Amazing pity, grace unknown, And love beyond degree!"

Ch. Penny. Mag.