Why doesGolgothamean "place of the skull" (Matthew 27:33)?

The Crucifixion. — Reaching the place called in the Hebrew, or rather Aramaic, Golgotha as Luke explains the name, the place of a skull, probably from some resemblance to one — there they crucified the Lord, and the two thieves with Him. The place was situated outside the city (Heb. 13:12; John 19:17, 20; Matt. 28:11), and near a garden (John 19:41). And now, reading Luke's account of the Crucifixion, the most cursory reader must be struck with its difference from that of the others. Four accounts of it we have, each evangelist describing it, and though Matthew and Mark agree very much in their relation, the former tells what the latter does not, and thus presents the darkest picture of them all. In Matthew men's hatred of Christ and their treatment of Him come out in the fullest way, that taunt of the chief priests of which Psalm 22:8 had forespoken being found only in his history. Then, too, from the time that the Lord owned to Pilate that He was the King of the Jews (27:11) till He cried with a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani" (ver. 46), that evangelist has recorded no utterance from His lips. Nothing in all that part of Matthew's gospel comes in to relieve the darkness and gloom of the scene. In John it is different. Presenting the Lord as a Divine Person, we see Him in all the calmness of One who knew whence He was, providing for His mother, and caring for the fulfilment of every word of God. In Luke it is the Man Christ Jesus who suffers, but the One who shows grace even on the cross. Hence we have the Lord opening His mouth in words which told of grace, the dark picture of the Crucifixion thus lightened by sayings with which all Bible readers are now familiar.

The Crucifixion. — The end now approached. A few hours, and the Lord's life on earth would terminate; the world to see Him no more, till to its astonished gaze the spectacle will appear of opened heavens, and the exit of a train, such as never yet has been seen, headed by the crucified One, arrayed in the emblems, not of mock, but of real sovereignty. The world might see Him going to Golgotha and bearing His cross. It will see Him with many diadems on His brow, returning to deal with His enemies, and to have them put completely under His feet. But the day of which John now writes was the day of the Lord's deepest humiliation, and most awful sufferings. To the cross He was going. "They took Jesus therefore," we read, "And He went out, bearing the cross for Himself, to a place called The place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha" (17) — very likely so named from "the look or form of the spot itself, bald, round, and skull-like." Several details noticed by others are here omitted, — as the Lord's words to the women on the way; His prayer to His Father for His murderers; and the wine mingled with myrrh, offered him by the soldiers before crucifixion, which was customarily provided, it is said, to deaden the sensibility of the crucified ones to the pain of that death. Nor have we any notice of the mockings, of the chief priests, the jeers of the mob, nor the revilings of the two thieves, followed by the conversion of one of them.

The Greek is κρανίον, 'a skull.' The word 'Calvary' is from the Latin Calvaria, having a like signification; agreeing also with the Hebrew GOLGOTHA, which has the same meaning. Matt. 27:33; Luke 23:33. The place where the Lord was crucified, and near to which the tomb was situated in which He was buried. The traditional site of the Holy Sepulchre is now well within the city of Jerusalem, and great efforts have been made to prove that this spot was at that time outside the city, but this is not at all credible. A much more probable place is that pointed out by the Jews on the north of the city, near the Grotto of Jeremiah. Visitors have declared that this site has, at a distance, the natural contour of a human skull. It would have been near the city yet outside it, and near also to where there could have been a garden, in which a tomb could have been cut. It is also a spot from whence the crucifixion could have been seen by the passers-by (on the road from the Damascus gate). This site has therefore several points in its favour.

GOLGOTHA

GOLGOTHA (Hebrew), Calvary (Latin)—“a skull” or “the place of a skull,” outside the walls of Jerusalem, thought to be a hill two hundred and fifty yards west of Damascus gate was the last scene of the Saviour’s sufferings and sorrow.

Gol’ go tha - A skull: place of a skull

580 "Skull," i.e., Golgotha a name avoided, as Gethsemane, etc., in view of Gentile readers. "Calvary" of A.V. is from the Latin Vulgate.

As the other Gospels show, the Lord had used such expressions as "taking his cross," and "bearing his cross," as figurative of the fact that His disciple must be prepared to come under the death sentence of the world. The full force of that figure is seen here, for, "He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull." The place got its name from the peculiar configuration of the rock, but it is significant for all that! A skull speaks of the humiliating end of all man's power and glory. In some living man it may once have held as brilliant and powerful a brain as ever existed; and it has come to this! The Son of God accepted the judgment of death as from man's hand, and to a place which set forth symbolically the end of all man's glory He went to bear it.

And they drew Jesus out of the city. "And there were also two other, malefactors, led with him to be put to death. And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they crucified him." These four words describe the most terrible scene enacted upon earth — "THERE THEY CRUCIFIED HIM." The place, a graveyard; the actors, the whole civilised world; the act, the cruellest and most shameful form of death; the victim, God's own beloved Son! The selected spot was a graveyard — Calvary, Golgotha, "the place of a skull." And why there? Had not Jesus talked about life? Had He not raised the dead? Had He not unstopped deaf ears, and given sight to the blind? Had He not done many wonderful miracles? Had He not talked about the Lord of life coming from glory; and had He not spoken about being the Son of God? He had. And why did they take Him there? To insult Him in that graveyard. They use the signs of death on every hand to mock Him who was the Lord of life. They bring Him, who was "the resurrection and the life," to the scene where there is every evidence of death around Him, as much as to say, Let us see if you can avoid death. It was the most solemn mockery. They had crowned Him with thorns, and now they put Him to death.

It is fitting that the place of execution should bear the gruesome name of Golgotha, Calvary, "the place of a skull." Indeed, the whole world was that in the eyes of God, a lifeless, hideous travesty of what had come so fair from his hands. It is more than mere scorn when the cynic says: "Every face, however full, Padded round with flesh and fat, Is but modelled on a skull."

Calvary was thus a witness of the moral condition of the whole world, also of the love and grace which would come down to the very place where the hideousness of sin was manifested, there to triumph over it. From the skull of Calvary springs the beauty of the resurrection; not only for the Son of God over whom indeed death had no power, and whom it could not disfigure, though it might eclipse His beauty to the eye of man, but for the whole family of the redeemed who are risen with Christ, eternally beyond the power of death to mar or disfigure.

“Golgotha—the place of a skull,” emblematic surely of the world where death reigns on account of sin, is the place to which He in love was brought. John says, “He went forth bearing His cross,” which beautifully accords with the presentation of the “burnt offering” in his Gospel, as does every detail given by this evangelist. In the other Gospels Simon, a Cyrenian, is compelled to bear the cross, but we may gather from Mark (who tells us he was the father of Alexander and Rufus), that his was no irksome service! What a privilege indeed was his to be so identified with the Holy Sufferer.