Pontius Pilate’s wife had a rough night. She’d slept very little. When she did drift off, her dreams were filled with a Jewish man named Jesus. It was odd because she knew nothing about any such man. She didn’t know many of the Jewish people her husband ruled, and didn’t care to know them. But these had not been normal dreams. They felt so real. She’d dreamed that Jesus was accused of something - but she didn’t know what it was. All she knew was that the man, Jesus, was innocent.
When she rose that morning, she could not shake off the feeling that her dreams were more than just dreams. They had to be some sort of sign. But what sort of sign?
Her husband had been called out early that Friday morning to deal with some Jewish problem. He was still busy with whatever it was. Her servant told her that Pilate was outside the judgment hall speaking to the Jewish chief priests.
“What do they want?” she asked her servant.
“A death sentence for a man called Jesus,” she answered.
Pilate’s wife froze when she heard the man’s name.
“Send the following message immediately to my husband:
Have nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.”
Pilate was irritated that Herod had sent Jesus back to him. He was irritated with the chief priests and Pharisees for wanting him to order the death of an innocent man. He knew the leaders were envious that the Jesus had a large group of followers, and they wanted the man dead.
In the previous years at Passover, Pilate had released a prisoner as a gesture of good will to the locals. Pilate decided to give them a choice. He would free either Jesus or the most despicable prisoner of them all, Barabbas. The choice seemed clear to Pilate. Jesus was a nonviolent leader who taught about God. Barabbas was leader of a violent rebellion who had committed murder.
Pilate gave the Jewish leaders a choice on which prisoner to release.
Just then a message from his wife came to him.
“Have nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.”
Surely a chill ran up his spine when he heard her warning.
Carla Killough McClafferty