And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him,.... The Gentiles, as the Roman soldiers did; the one at the connivance, and the other by the order of their governor:
and shall spit upon him; on his face, as the Syriac and Persic versions render it, and as they did; see Mark 15:19. This clause is placed by the Vulgate Latin, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions, between the two former; though, according to the order in which these things were executed, he was first scourged, then mocked, and then spit upon: all which express both the cruel and indecent usage he was to meet with:
and shall kill him, and the third day he shall rise again. The Persic version between these two clauses read, "and shall put him in a grave"; which is not in any copy of this text, nor in any other version; nor indeed was this done by the Gentiles, but by Joseph of Arimathea.

And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him: and the third day he shall rise again--Singularly explicit as this announcement was, Luke (Luke 18:34) says "they understood none of these things; and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken." The meaning of the words they could be at no loss to understand, but their import in relation to His Messianic kingdom they could not penetrate; the whole prediction being right in the teeth of their preconceived notions. That they should have clung so tenaciously to the popular notion of an "unsuffering" Messiah, may surprise us; but it gives inexpressible weight to their after-testimony to a suffering and dying Saviour.
Ambitious Request of James and John--The Reply (Mark 10:35-45).