To HAND OVER, deliver up — a judicial word: what a magistrate does when he hands a prisoner to the executioner. It tolls three times in Romans 1 (vv 24, 26, 28), 'God gave them over', and the three occurrences are the skeleton of the paragraph. ⚠ It is also the word used all through the Gospels of Jesus being handed over — by Judas, by the priests, by Pilate — and by Paul of God who 'did not spare his own Son but gave him over for us all' (Romans 8:32). The same verb does the condemning and the rescuing. ⚠ Its densest concentration anywhere is Matthew 26, where it sounds in TEN of seventy-five verses (2, 15, 16, 21, 23, 24, 25, 45, 46, 48) and is the chapter's spine. That chapter is also why 'betray' will not do as a standing rendering: Matthew uses the same verb actively of what Judas does AND passively, with no agent named, of what is being done to the Son of Man (26:2, 24, 45), and no English sentence can make 'betray' work in the passives. → first discussed at Matt 26:2