Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first—two of the quaternion employed on the one deed, and two on the other—and of the other which was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was already dead, they brake not his legs.
Their barbarous mercy was unnecessary, and John caw in this another correspondence with the sacred symbolism and prophetic anticipations of the Old Testament. But one of the soldiers pierced—gashed, probably, for the word ἔνυξεν is used in both senses—his side with a spear ( λόγχῃ, a lance, a heavy formidable weapon) to give him the coup de grace, should their expectation not be actually realized, and forthwith came there-out blood and water.
We do not enter into the numerous physiological reasons which have been advanced by Gruner, Bartholinus, and Dr. Stroud ('Physical Cause of the Death of Christ') for this event, but regard it as one of the great portents of the Crucifixion, which cannot be entirely explained as some physiologists have done.
Dr. Schaff appears willing to accept the hypothesis that the extravagated blood, being first separated into its two constituents, was thus liberated from the pericardium—a phenomenon that might seem to justify the supposition of the evangelist, that it was blood and water.
Dr. Stroud endeavored, with much medical learning, to show that this might follow the side-piercing if the Lord's physical death had followed, as he argued, from rupture of the heart due to his intense agonies.
Sir R. Bennett has accepted this solution.