Charles Ellicott Commentary John 19:15

"They therefore cried out, Away with [him], away with [him], crucify him! Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar." — John 19:15 (ASV)

But they cried out...—Better, they cried out therefore... They feel the sting of Pilate’s irony, therefore cry the more passionately, Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him.

Shall I crucify your King?—In the order of the Greek words your King comes emphatically first, Your King—shall I crucify Him? The taunt is uttered in its bitterest form.

We have no king but Cæsar.—They are driven by Pilate’s taunt, and by their hatred of Jesus, to a denial of their own highest hopes. They who gloried in the Theocracy, and hoped for a temporal Messianic reign, which should free them from Roman bondage; they who boasted that they were never in bondage to any man (John 8:33); they who were chief priests of the Jews, confess that Cæsar is their only king.

The words were doubtless meant, as those in John 19:12, to drive Pilate to comply with their wishes, under the dread of an accusation at Rome. They had this effect.