And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.
They condemned Him in their own court for blasphemy, but knowing they lacked power to execute, they shifted their malice to Pilate's forum and dressed it in the language of sedition. Here is their cunning: the charge they dared not bring before Caesar was the only one they actually feared, yet the crime they invented against Him was the very one that would, within years, destroy themselves.
AI summary
Commenting on Luke 23:1-12
And they were the more fierce,.... Or urgent to have him put to death; so the Hebrew word is rendered in Exo 12:33 which answers to that here used. "They cried out", as the Syriac, Persic, and Ethiopic versions read; they were more clamorous and noisy; they cried out louder, and exerted themselves with great fury and violence, and added strength to their clamour, and...
Verse 5. The more fierce. The more urgent and pressing. They saw that there was a prospect of losing their cause, and they attempted to press on Pilate the point that would be most likely now to affect him. Pilate had, in fact, acquitted him of the charge of being an enemy to Caesar, and they therefore urged the other point more vehemently. Stirreth up the people.