The charge on which a person was condemned was often written on a placard and hung around his neck. In Jesus’s case, it was nailed to his cross (John 19:19). Each of the four Gospels records the words differently (cf. Matthew 27:37; Luke 23:38; John 19:19), possibly because the inscription was trilingual (John 19:20).
26 And the inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.”