They had then a notable prisoner. The plural verb must refer to the multitude, to whose class the man belonged. The Vulgate, with Origen, reads, "he had," habebat, referring to Pilate, whose prisoner he was.
The man was notorious; as St. Mark tells us, "He lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him, men who had committed murder in the insurrection." We have no account elsewhere of this particular rising, nor of its leader, but such commotions were very common, and under the guise of political aims were utilized for purposes of robbery and assassination.
Called Barabbas. The word means "Son of the father," which some explain "Son of a rabbi," which is improbable; and it is a question whether this was his real name, or one applied to him with reference to his pretensions to being "a political anti-Christ"—"a hideous caricature of the true Jesus, the Son of the eternal Father."
It is a strange fact that in some (not very trustworthy) manuscripts the name is given as Jesus Barabbas, which affords a remarkable antithesis in Pilate's question in the following verse, "Wilt ye that I release Jesus Barabbas or Jesus called Christ?"
There can be no reasonable doubt that the prefix is not genuine, but has crept into some texts inadvertently.