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Bible Dictionaries
Gabbatha
Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance And Dictionary
or A memorable word in the believer's recollection, and rendered both solemn and sacred to the meditation, when frequently by faith the soul is looking over again the transactions at the hall of Pilate. The word Gabbatha our translators have thought proper to preserve, in our Testaments, in the original Hebrew; and yet have given the English of it, calling it Pavement. (John 19:13) It means an elevated spot; probably it formed a balustrade, or gallery, from whence to the court below, Pilate might more conveniently speak to the people. Let the reader figure to himself this gabbatha, with a seat for the Governor to sit above the people, and probably separated by railing. Let him fancy he sees the rabble below surrounding the sacred person of our Lord, and Crying out, "Away with him, away with him; crucify him." Let him behold the meek and suffering Lamb of God, silent, patient, and submissive. And while with that contempt which marked Pilate's character, we hear him say, "Shall I crucify your king?"the chief priests, unconscious of what they said, answered,"We have no king but Caesar;"thereby fulfilling the dying patriarch Jacob's prophecy (that "the sceptre should not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come;" Genesis 49:10 and thus proving from their own testimony, that the Shiloh was come.) Let all these interesting views be but in the reader's contemplation when he reads of these transactions, and he will have a lively idea of the Gabbatha of Pilate's palace.
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Hawker, Robert D.D. Entry for 'Gabbatha'. Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance and Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/pmd/g/gabbatha.html. London. 1828.
