What were the Jewish leaders, high priests, and elders envious of?

[Ogner]

'But Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews? For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy. But the chief priests moved the people, that he should rather release Barabbas unto them. '

Mark 15:9-11

Why, knowing that Jesus was betrayed out of "envy," does Pilate call Christ the "King of the Jews"? How is envy connected to this strange title? What is the true meaning of each of these words?
Popular interpreters (from various denominations) often claim that the priests’ envy stemmed from the fact that Christ drew great multitudes to His sermons, that the people were supposedly devoted (obedient) to Him, and thus the priests’ authority diminished due to the loss of followers—this, they say, is why the rabbis envied Him. These interpreters (particularly crowd-pleasing preachers) and their compatible flock are untroubled by the fact that on the day of the crucifixion at the Pavement (Lithostrotos), it was the exact opposite: the crowd was loyal to Barabbas and would likely have shouted "Crucify Him!" even without the priests’ prompting. The crowd, if it changes at all, does so only superficially—perhaps in the style of hairstyles—but in its core rejection of God-Truth, it never changes. That crowd was never devoted to Christ for a single moment. And there can be no envy of something that doesn’t exist (the crowd’s allegiance shifting to Jesus’ authority).
So why does this unnatural interpretation of the text persist among ancient and modern believers?
The answer is simple. When explaining the motives of others’ behavior, people most often voice their own hidden desires. It is these crowd-pleasing preachers who are gnawed by envy—envy of those who attract even larger crowds of enraptured donors!
So what, then, did the Jews and their high priests envy?
The question is more accurately posed as: What could the priests have envied?
What did the priests lack that Jesus had in abundance, something they passionately craved with all their souls?
What was the common value for both Christ and His executioners?
The answer to this question seems obvious. No matter how hard you rack your brain, you won’t find something Jesus had more of that the pack leaders of the crowd would also value. These are two different worlds. Two distinct systems of values.
So where is the answer to the riddle of the biblical text?
It’s simple.
According to ancient Greek lexicons, such as Veisman’s Greek-Russian dictionary and Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English lexicon, 'φθόνος' indeed has two primary meanings:  
1. Envy—desiring to possess what another has.  

2. Ill-will or hostility—dislike toward someone due to differences or a perceived threat.
In our terms—incompatibility.
When all this is taken into account, everything falls into place! Pilate, capable of grasping the hidden essence of events, understood that Jesus was neither a criminal nor a threat to the state, but was spiritually or emotionally uncontrollable by the high priests. This is written in the Gospel in black and white: the accusations of the Jewish crowd against Him were merely a rationalization of their hostility toward Him. He was simply different. Alien. Incompatible.
The priests didn’t envy Him—they hated Him.

Even at the moment when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the Pharisees became 100% certain of why the people gathered in crowds and pressed around Jesus. Jesus didn’t control the crowd; on the contrary, the crowd hindered Him. The high priests realized the time had come—now they could act.
As He entered the great city, the Pharisees stood watching the frenzied crowd shouting "Hosanna" to the one they called the King of Israel. The Pharisees looked with envy at the bulging, wild eyes and the drooling mouths, fully aware of their own inability to join the crowd and revel in the swapping of masks.
All they could do was snipe at Jesus from the walls of the street houses, calling the participants in this farce His disciples.
And they did so, mockingly addressing Him as "Teacher":
"Teacher! Rebuke Your disciples," said the "high priests."
But Jesus was wise and experienced: not long before, during a previous attempt to ritually crown Him king, they had tried to kill Him.  
The Pharisees often put Christ in positions where He could neither say "yes" nor "no"—like with the question about taxes to Rome or the woman allegedly caught in adultery.
But Jesus answered.
He answered in a way that an outsider might not have understood, but those present grasped immediately:
"He said to them in reply: I tell you, if they fall silent, the stones will cry out."
The thrill was broken. Shattered.
The Pharisees realized their game had been seen through once again…

The crowd stopped its antics too, and a week later, it wrung from Pontius Pilate the state’s approval of what had always been its deepest subconscious desire—they crucified the King.
The pack finally settled down, the bulging eyes returned to their sockets, the housewives went back to raising children in the likeness of leaders who crucified Jesus, and trade resumed its course.
Everything seemed as it had been before—or so it might have appeared…
But it was not so.
The Kingdom of God had drawn near.

 

 

[NConly]

The way the first paragraph is worded it sounds like one group following Jesus and the same group shouting crucify him. It would be my opinion that there were two different groups the followers of Jesus and the other group shouting cruxify him.

[Ogner]

7 hours ago, NConly said:

The way the first paragraph is worded it sounds like one group following Jesus and the same group shouting crucify him. It would be my opinion that there were two different groups the followers of Jesus and the other group shouting cruxify him.

The Lord’s entry into Jerusalem and the crowd’s jubilation with shouts of "Hosanna..." is the only described instance where, in simple schoolbook terms, the crowd wasn’t labeled as bad. And this, of course, was immediately seized upon by state theologians and mercenary preachers, interpreting the event as if the crowd was supposedly favorably disposed toward Jesus.
Up until this point, in every instance, the crowd was depicted in such a negative light that it was hard to interpret it ambiguously:  
The crowd pressed around Jesus, preventing the sick from easily approaching Him, forcing them to struggle through the idly milling throng with great effort;  

The people gathered into large, dense crowds, "pressing" Jesus and overwhelming, by their mere presence, the reason of the few who wanted to understand Him not just with their hearts but with their minds as well;  

Or those cases when enraged crowds, provoked by Jesus’ preaching, tried to stone Him or throw Him off a cliff;  

Or those instances when the crowd, satisfied with ‘free’ food, attempted to make Jesus a bureaucratic king who would provide all Jews with free rations
Jesus Christ Himself spoke of this: "Jesus answered them and said, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw miracles, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.’" (John 6:26) In other words, the crowd wasn’t moved by Jesus’ compassion for the sick, nor did the joy of the healed inspire them—it upset them instead. Thus, the crowds hindered the sick from receiving healing from Jesus. The only time the crowd paid attention was when, in their fantasies, Jesus began to be seen as a vending machine dispensing free food to the masses.

So what happened to the crowd when Jesus entered Jerusalem before His death?
"The next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, and cried out: ‘Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! The King of Israel!’" (John 12:12-13)
Did the crowd really change its attitude toward Him? Not in the least!
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, everyone already understood perfectly well who Jesus was.

A few days later, the crowd was already shouting "Crucify Him," using the mocking jubilation of the crowd during Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as evidence for the charge of treason. It was a setup.
And everyone understood this—the Pharisees understood that the crowd was creating a pretext for the accusation, and the crowd understood that just a few days later, they would use their street performance as an argument for demanding "Crucify Him." The Pharisees realized this, which is why they said to Jesus, "Teacher! Rebuke Your disciples." In essence, the Pharisees sarcastically and mockingly called the crowd "disciples," which was obviously not true, and then suggested forbidding the crowd from creating a motive for a future accusation. In short, it was all a spectacle. And Jesus exposed their secret, insidious intent.

 

 

Edited March 22 by Ogner

[In the Clouds]

Jewish leaders wanted God all to themselves.  

[Ogner]

1 hour ago, In the Clouds said:

Jewish leaders wanted God all to themselves.  

What do you mean?

[missmuffet]

The Jewish leaders were envious of Jesus's growing popularity,authority and influence.

They found it to be a threat.

[Ogner]

52 minutes ago, missmuffet said:

The Jewish leaders were envious of Jesus's growing popularity,authority and influence.

They found it to be a threat.

Your claim that the Jewish leaders were envious of Jesus due to His growing popularity, authority, and influence, considering it a threat, doesn’t stand up to the facts of the Gospel or the logic of the Gospel itself.
Let’s break down why there was nothing to envy.

First, the crowd never obeyed or pleased Jesus. His "popularity" is a myth. Yes, He was widely known, but not popular in the sense that worldly leaders understand it. People followed Him as long as He fed them bread, but as soon as He began speaking of spiritual matters—about the Kingdom of Heaven, the bread of life—many turned away. In the Gospel of John (6:66-67), it says: "From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. Then Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you also want to go away?’" Even His disciples, beyond the Twelve, abandoned Him. And before the trial, those Twelve scattered too—Peter denied Him three times, the others simply vanished. Where’s the popularity in that?

Second, the crowd, which was supposedly the basis of His influence, shouted "Crucify Him!" for nearly half a day during the trial. Then Jesus was dragged around Jerusalem—to Pilate, to Herod, and back—and not a single person stood up for Him or gathered in His defense. If He had real popularity or authority in the crowd’s eyes, someone would have acted. But no one did. The crowd hated Him, not supported Him.  

Third, Jesus posed no threat in a physical or political sense. Pilate knew this—he openly testified to Jesus’s innocence and washed his hands under pressure from the crowd. Herod saw no threat either—he laughed at Jesus and sent Him back (Luke 23:11). Neither Roman authorities nor Herod perceived Him as a rival. The only threat was to the high priests, and it was purely spiritual.  

Here’s the crux: Jesus came from a different world. He brought the Kingdom of Heaven, which is incompatible with the worldly, pseudo-religious order of the high priests. They didn’t envy His popularity or influence—what was there to envy when the crowd rejected Him? They didn’t even envy the Kingdom of Heaven—they hated it. They didn’t want to live in it or accept it. Their goal was to destroy Jesus and, with Him, the Kingdom of Heaven itself, to prevent it from coming and dismantling their control over people’s minds. This wasn’t envy of something He had; it was a war between two worlds: the spiritual versus the worldly. Call it what you will, but it doesn’t remotely resemble envy.
 

[Michael37]

5 hours ago, Ogner said:

Your claim that the Jewish leaders were envious of Jesus due to His growing popularity, authority, and influence, considering it a threat, doesn’t stand up to the facts of the Gospel or the logic of the Gospel itself.

Yes it does.

The Gospel narratives have these words:

Mat 27:17-18  Therefore, when they had gathered together, Pilate said to them, "Whom do you want me to release to you? Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?"  (18)  For he knew that they had handed Him over because of envy.
Mar 15:9-10  But Pilate answered them, saying, "Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?"  (10)  For he knew that the chief priests had handed Him over because of envy.

God's Word teaches about something Pilate KNEW, not something he supposed, or conjectured. He KNEW that the chief priests envied Jesus.

Those who persist in contradicting the Bible find themselves on a slippery slope.
 

[Indentured Servant]

On 3/21/2025 at 5:02 PM, Ogner said:

Why, knowing that Jesus was betrayed out of "envy," does Pilate call Christ the "King of the Jews"? How is envy connected to this strange title? What is the true meaning of each of these words?

The word envy can also denote "spite," or "ill will." 

I find this parallels with the parable (book of Luke) about the hired hands killing the son of the owner of the vineyard, not because they mistook him for someone else, but they knew he was the heir, and they spitefully killed him because of that in an attempt to have his inheritance.

"This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours."

The killing of Jesus and the parable are the same event. 

 

[In the Clouds]

6 hours ago, Ogner said:

What do you mean?

Specifically the Sanhedrin and specifically Caiaphus.  Many Jews became Christians.  They were not the envious ones.  Many gentiles became Christians, too.  But, even today many Jews think of themselves as being the only chosen of God.  They were the first chosen children of God; but, by God's grace all can be saved through Jesus Christ.