John 19:17-24

Contemporary English Version

¹⁷ and he carried his cross to a place known as “The Skull.”^[a] In Aramaic this place is called “Golgotha.” ¹⁸ There Jesus was nailed to the cross, and on each side of him a man was also nailed to a cross.

¹⁹ Pilate ordered the charge against Jesus to be written on a board and put above the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” ²⁰ The words were written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.

The place where Jesus was taken wasn't far from the city, and many of the people read the charge against him. ²¹ So the chief priests went to Pilate and said, “Why did you write that he is King of the Jews? You should have written, ‘He claimed to be King of the Jews.’ ”

²² But Pilate told them, “What is written will not be changed!”

²³ After the soldiers had nailed Jesus to the cross, they divided up his clothes into four parts, one for each of them. But his outer garment was made from a single piece of cloth, and it did not have any seams. ^24 (A) The soldiers said to each other, “Let's not rip it apart. We will gamble to see who gets it.” This happened so the Scriptures would come true, which say,