Pilate was hoping the people would choose Jesus. He knew "that for envy they had delivered him" (Matthew 27:18), and his wife had just warned him to have nothing to do with "that just man" (Matthew 27:19). Barnes explains that Pilate knew Jesus was still popular with the people and expected them to prefer Him to "an odious and infamous robber." Gill notes that this was the second time Pilate put the question, after time had been given to think it over, and that now "it lay in the breast of the people to choose" which prisoner would go free.

The crowd answered in one word: "They said, Barabbas" (Matthew 27:21). The choice had already been shaped, because "the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus" (Matthew 27:20). Luke records the cry, "Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas" (Luke 23:18). Pilate pressed them with more questions (Matthew 27:22-23), but in the end "released he Barabbas unto them" and delivered Jesus to be crucified (Matthew 27:26).

At the feast the governor "was wont," meaning accustomed, to release one prisoner of the people's choosing (Matthew 27:15). Barabbas was "a notable prisoner" (Matthew 27:16). Mark says he had been bound with rebels and "had committed murder in the insurrection" (Mark 15:7), and Luke adds that he was imprisoned "for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder" (Luke 23:19). "Twain" is the old English word for two. Gill says the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude not by a public speech but by sending their servants, or other fit persons, among the people (on Matthew 27:20).

Pilate offered a choice between a man guilty of murder and a man he knew had been handed over out of envy. The crowd chose the murderer. Peter later described that day plainly to the people of Jerusalem: "ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you" (Acts 3:14). Matthew Henry turns the scene into a searching question for every reader: is not Barabbas still "preferred to Jesus, when sinners reject salvation that they may retain their darling sins?"

Yet the same sermon shows God at work through the worst choice people ever made. Peter says God fulfilled what He had shown "by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer" (Acts 3:18), and he still called those people to repent so their sins might be "blotted out" (Acts 3:19).