Jesus had asked where the charge came from (John 18:34), and Pilate pushes the question away. His first question is built to expect the answer "no": surely I am not a Jew? Barnes hears a Roman judge claiming distance from the quarrel: "Am I likely to be influenced by Jewish prejudices and partialities?" Gill hears it said "in a sort of derision and contempt."

With his second question Pilate turns from himself to Jesus. Barnes says that here Pilate "denies that it was from anything that he had observed that Jesus was arraigned," yet still tells Jesus the charge "was one of moment, and worthy of the deepest attention." Matthew Henry paraphrases the question as "What provocation hast thou given to thy own nation, and particularly the priests, to be so violent against thee?" Pilate wants the facts behind the accusation.

Jesus does not list His deeds. He answers the charge that lay behind the question, that He claimed to be a king: "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence" (John 18:36). Pilate presses further, "Art thou a king then?" (John 18:37). After hearing Jesus out, Pilate goes outside and gives his own answer to "what hast thou done?": "I find in him no fault at all" (John 18:38).

The Jews who brought Jesus would not enter the judgment hall, "lest they should be defiled," because they wanted to eat the passover (John 18:28). So Pilate went back and forth between the accusers outside and Jesus inside (John 18:29, 33, 38). They had come to Pilate because, as they said, "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death" (John 18:31).

Pilate's first question begins with the Greek particle mēti. Thayer's lexicon describes it as "an interrogative expecting a negative answer." The question is less a request for information than a statement: I am not a Jew, so this is not my quarrel. The word for "nation" is ethnos, meaning a people or nation.

Pilate asked what Jesus had done, and the rest of the trial answers him. Three times Pilate himself declares that he finds no fault in Him (John 18:38; John 19:4, 6). Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary draws the meaning: "though the Lord Jesus was treated as the worst of evil-doers, he never deserved such treatment. But it unfolds the design of his death; that he died as a Sacrifice for our sins."

John also shows that God was not absent from this courtroom. When the Jews said, "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death," John says it was "That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die" (John 18:31-32). A Roman governor trying to keep his distance was, without knowing it, part of what Jesus had already foretold.