“His blood be on us and on our children”
All the people answered, 'His blood be on us and on our children!' (Matthew 27:25 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A self-curse, and this verse has one of the darkest reception histories in the Bible.
The cultural key
'His blood be on X' was a standard legal idiom for accepting liability for a death: 'his blood shall be on his own head' (Joshua 2:19; 2 Samuel 1:16). In the scene, the crowd formally assumes the responsibility Pilate has just theatrically disclaimed: a legal exchange between two parties in one courtyard. What the idiom is not: a racial or perpetual curse. For centuries this verse was catastrophically misread to justify antisemitic persecution of all Jews in all generations, a reading the text doesn't support (it is one Jerusalem crowd, speaking a liability formula; Peter in Acts offers that same city forgiveness, and Jesus himself prays 'Father, forgive them').
Recovered meaning
A first-century legal formula transferring responsibility for one verdict, and, for readers of Matthew's Gospel, an unintended irony: the blood they invoke is the blood 'poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins' (26:28). An entry where recovering the idiom matters more than usual.