Caiaphas wanted the council to pronounce sentence. Barnes paraphrases the question: "What is your opinion? What sentence do you pronounce?" The high priest had already named the crime and said no more witnesses were needed (Matthew 26:65), so the question asked the council only to agree. Gill takes it the same way, as asking whether Jesus' words did not amount to blasphemy.

The council answered, "He is guilty of death" (Matthew 26:66). Mark adds, "they all condemned him to be guilty of death" (Mark 14:64). Then the abuse began: "Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him" (Matthew 26:67). When morning came, the chief priests and elders "took counsel against Jesus to put him to death" and delivered Him to Pilate (Matthew 27:1-2).

"Guilty of death" translates the Greek enochos thanatou. Thayer defines enochos as "bound, under obligation, subject to, liable"; joined to a penalty, it means liable to that penalty. Barnes explains the phrase as "he is found guilty of a crime to which the law annexes death," and names the law as Leviticus 24:10-16, which punished blasphemy by stoning.

Gill notes that the trial broke the council's own rules. A Jewish canon he quotes says capital causes "they try in the day, and finish in the day," and none on the eve of a feast, yet this one was carried on at night, "quite contrary to one of their own canons." Even with a verdict, the council could not carry out a death sentence. As they later told Pilate, "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death" (John 18:31).

This question shows justice turned upside down. The highest court in Israel was asked for its verdict on the One who "did no sin" (1 Peter 2:22), and it answered with a sentence of death.

Yet the verdict did not have the last word. Matthew Henry writes, "Christ was accused, that we might not be condemned." Peter later preached that in these very events God fulfilled what He "before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer" (Acts 3:18). What the council meant as an end, God used for rescue.