The priests immediately put things in shape for the sentence to be pronounced that night, and, if possible, carried into effect before the festival, without making a stir.
If the matter had rested with Herod, King of the Jews, he would have rid himself of his rival from Nazareth with a snap of his lingers; but it was the Roman governor with whom they had to deal.

So Pontius Pilate also was awakened in the night.

He was a Roman, and had been appointed by the Emperor to hold Judaea in spite of Herod, whose Jewish kingdom had become as nothing.

Pilate often declared that this office of ruling the Jewish people for the Emperor had been his evil star.

He would rather have remained in cultured Rome, whose gods were much more amiable than the perverse Jehovah, about whom all kinds of sects disputed.