Hays on the Fourth Gospel on the Law on the Death of Jesus

This is maybe my favorite passage from the fourth chapter (on the Fourth Gospel) in Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Baylor, 2016).

All of this suggests that there is vivid dramatic irony in the Fourth Gospel's trial scene before the Roman governor, when Pilate says to the Jewish authorities, "Take him and judge him according to your own law" (John 18:31). It has been the consistent testimony of John's story that if they did indeed judge Jesus rightly according to their own law, they would find his testimony to be the truth. And so when they later say to Pilate, "We have a law, and according to that law, he ought to die" (19:7), this is merely one more piece of evidence showing that they have both misjudged Jesus and misinterpreted the very law that actually bears witness to him. And yet, on another reading, might we consider whether this is one more case of exquisitely complex irony? Just as Caiaphas unwittingly prophesies truly that "it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed" (11:49–52), so also the Jewish leaders before Pilate unwittingly speak the truth: Jesus' death is indeed necessary "according to the law," in the sense that the law prefigures it—as John has told us from the beginning of the story. (p. 300)

According to the note (430n44), Hoskyns (p. 523) and Keener (2.1125) also propose this "double meaning in John's statement."