The elders of the council had gotten desperate. They needed to be rid of the man Jesus. He made nonsense of their ideologies, and to make matters worse, the people loved Him. Why won't they? He solved their problem and charged nothing in return. The Sanhedrin never did anything without laying a further burden on the people. They envied the man. He got the job done so effortlessly.
Then came the Passover weekend. Twas a good time to nail their sworn enemy. The only problem was they needed evidence, and they had done. Hence their resort to bribing folk to bear false witness.
Like in Hadjia's clime, they found willing vessels amongst the crowd. Every witness came with a bogus claim. He claimed to be God; He said he would bring down the temple that took forty-six years to build and reconstruct in three days. He healed on the Sabbath, would not pay taxes and engineered his followers to do the same. The claims were many, but the bearers needed to be more consistent—another problem for elders who needed to be rid of their enemy in a few hours. Time for them was of the essence. Their activities had to be concluded before the Sabbath.
