Although Pilate had made up his mind to release Our Lord, he was afraid to dismiss the case there and then as he should have done.  The confident hostility of the chief priests and the long-standing grounds of complaint which they already had against him, made it all too likely that they could and would make trouble for him with the Emperor who could dismiss him at a moment’s notice.  He decided, therefore, to find some other way out.

First, he sent Our Lord to Herod Antipas, hoping that way to relieve himself of his responsibility.  This move failed and Herod, who was far too wily to get involved in a treason trial, sent the Prisoner back.  Pilate then made his first compromise with wrong, and the ground thus lost he was never again to recover: he proposed to please the Jews by flogging Jesus, and his own conscience by releasing him.  In fact, such a concession was bound to be interpreted as the first crack in his resistance.