41 Jesus Prophecies His Death

Now Jesus begins to seriously instruct them as to exactly what will happen to Him. All through this gospel the confrontations with the Pharisees, priests and Scribes have been escalating to the point where He now says that they will condemn Him to death. Interestingly Jesus omits the Sanhedrin (Elders) here and focuses on the spiritual leaders of Israel. In fact they accused Jesus of making Himself equal with God (John 5:18), which they thought was blasphemy. That was a crime, which was punishable by death. There are several Old Testament prophecies related to His death, which He as the Creator caused the human authors to write (Psalm 22:6-8; Isaiah 50:6; 52:13-53:12; Daniel 9:26a). The Jewish authorities had enough of this person Jesus who never received their sanction to perform miracles of healing and raising the dead back to life. Roman law prohibited capital punishment by the local courts of the Jews. Capital punishment in any case had been made virtually impossible according to Jewish rabbinic law.