I’ll keep this short and sweet.

“…They took Jesus, therefore, and He went out, carrying His own cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull, which in Hebrew is called, Golgotha. There they crucified Him, and with Him two other men, one on either side, and Jesus in between. Now Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It was written: “JESUS THE NAZARENE, THE KING OF THE JEWS.”  Therefore many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and in Greek.  So the chief priests of the Jews were saying to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews’; rather, write that He said, ‘I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.” – John 19:17-22 (NASB)

I seen this on Facebook a while back:

This is a breakdown of the Hebrew inscription that was placed on the Cross. In English it would read “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews”.  It is worth noting that Hebrew is written and read from right to left, as opposed to our standard of left to right.

^{the Jews <– and King of <– the Nazarene <– Jesus}

Any Questions?

Of course, there’s questions, there’s always questions. Every time I think something will be simple, “Short and Sweet” as it were, it always turns out not to be the case. One example that comes to mind was the incident where I simply needed to change a washer to fix a leaky faucet, but by the time I was done, I ended up replacing the spigot, the taps, the sink, and wound up re-plumbing my entire kitchen.

So…

First off, when I initially submitted this, my beloved publisher wanted me to verify this. “After all,” he said, “you can’t always trust everything you see on Facebook.”  I agreed and reminded him that I had seen a quote attributed to Gaius Caesar on Facebook addressing the very same matter. Taking his point to heart, I made some inquiries, and got ahold of my dear friend Peter Appleton, a wise man who is well versed in such matters. Here is his explanation.

“JESUS” starts with the tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, “YUD” י  

“OF NAZARETH” starts with the fifth Hebrew Letter “HEH” ה

“AND KING” begins with the sixth letter, “VAV” ו

“OF THE JEWS” again starts with “HEH” ה

This forms the acrostic: YHVH, or in Hebrew  יהוה  

This was not lost on the Jewish religious officials, who were not only very familiar with acrostics, such as in the Psalms, but more importantly, that the acrostic formed the very NAME of GOD that He introduced Himself to Moses with, YHVH .

This is where we get the word “Jehovah” from.

Perhaps someday I will go more into depth about The Name of God, YHVH / Jehovah, but today is not that day, after all, I’m trying to keep this short and sweet.

So here is the short version.

The religious people had a conniption over the fact that Jesus claimed deity. They dragged Him before the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, on totally fabricated charges of sedition. Pilate publicly stated that he “…found no fault in this man…” but in a moment of weakness he decided to appease the crowd, and ordered that Jesus be executed by crucifixion. In keeping with Roman Law, Pilate placed an inscription and the charges levied against Jesus, which in turn he verified the true identity of Jesus!

 JESUS THE NAZARENE, THE KING OF THE JEWS,

 YHVH

 יהוה

Thanks for letting me take up some of your time.