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The Crowd

Encountering God’s love

John 18: 1-11
Introduction

n Jesus’ journey towards the cross, we come across a group of
Ipeople sent with a mission to arrest Jesus. The Gospels refer
to them as “a crowd” - όχλος, people who necessarily do not
know or need to know each other. They may or may not meet or
engage with each other in the future also. They have been made
to come together for a specific reason, to arrest Jesus.

The Crowd
Matthew’s Gospel points out that they were a large
crowd, the number was sizable (Mt. 26:47). John’s Gospel tells
that a cohort (a group of about 600 soldiers) along with the
police, literally ὑπηρέτας (operatives, workers or assistants (Jn.
18:3) were sent. Some of them may have been mercenaries hired
to strengthen the arrest party. They were not just Police or Army
battalion, this crowd has been gathered from different people
groups. They were given specific instructions to arrive there
fully armed with torches and weapons (Jn. 18:3) like swords
and clubs (Mk. 14:43) as if they are going to arrest a dangerous
criminal, a bandit.
Jesus asks the crowd as to why they have come fully
armed with such additional reinforcements as if to catch a
bandit ληστής. (Mt. 26: 54 Mk. 14: 48 Lk. 22: 52). A bandit
is not a common thief, κλέπτης, who primarily robs someone
with stealth, trying to avoid direct confrontation with the one
he/she robs. A bandit is armed and never hesitates to unleash
violence upon those whom they want to dispossess. In Jesus’
Palestine, the word bandit ληστής was also used to refer to the
revolutionaries who opposed the Roman Empire and the local

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Lenten Meditations Re - Imaging People