John 19:23-25
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
23 [a]When the soldiers had crucified Jesus,(A) they took his clothes and divided them into four shares, a share for each soldier.(B) They also took his tunic, but the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top down. 24 So they said to one another, “Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it will be,” in order that the passage of scripture might be fulfilled [that says]:
“They divided my garments among them,
and for my vesture they cast lots.”
This is what the soldiers did. 25 [b](C)Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- 19:23–25a While all four gospels describe the soldiers casting lots to divide Jesus’ garments (see note on Mt 27:35), only John quotes the underlying passage from Ps 22:19, and only John sees each line of the poetic parallelism literally carried out in two separate actions (Jn 19:23–24).
- 19:25 It is not clear whether four women are meant, or three (i.e., Mary the wife of Cl[e]opas [cf. Lk 24:18] is in apposition with his mother’s sister) or two (his mother and his mother’s sister, i.e., Mary of Cl[e]opas and Mary of Magdala). Only John mentions the mother of Jesus here. The synoptics have a group of women looking on from a distance at the cross (Mk 15:40).
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