The centurion at Golgotha had never witnessed a crucifixion like it. Against the background of earthquake and unnatural darkness this Jesus of Nazareth, instead of mouthing imprecations or self-pity, had concerned himself all the time with others round about him, and had ended with prayer and praise to the God of Israel. Meantime the centurion’s own soldiers cowered in fear, terrified by the fantastic happenings in the world of nature around them. It is little wonder that these men, for whom Jesus had prayed, concluded that he was the Son of God.

It was written in the prophets that, “though Israel be not gathered” God would yet be glorified in His Messiah when he became became “a light to the Gentiles” (ls.49 :3,5,6). Here already at the cross were the foreshadowings of such a work.

Awe-inspiring event and O. T. prophecy

Meantime Jews, who earlier had stood around fascinated by the grisly spectacle of crucified men, took themselves off to their homes in fear, “beating their breasts”, as one awe-inspiring omen after another shook their nerves and harrowed their consciences. Zechariah had prophesied: “They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for an only son” (12 :10). Already that scripture was having its token fulfilment, a pale foretaste of the bitter remorse which will one day baptize Israel in sorrow when they see this crucified Jesus glorious in their midst.

In the temple, the like things were happening. At the very time that Jesus died, they began to slay the Passover lambs in the court round the altar of burnt-offering. The law of the Passover had said that the lambs must be killed “between the two evenings” (Ex.12 :6mg), a phrase which traditionally was interpreted to mean between mid-afternoon and sunset (cp.Matthew 14 :15,23, at the previous Passover). On this particular Passover, because of the supernatural darkness, there were literally two evenings, and in that period the slaying of the lambs coincided with the death of the Lamb of God.

At the same time the veil of the temple separating off the Most Holy from the Holy Place was rent from top to bottom. The point has often been made that this symbol of “Christ’s flesh” (Heb.10 :20) was destroyed by act of God—from top to bottom, and not upwards, as a man would have done it. “It pleased the Lord to bruise him: He hath put him to grief.”

But perhaps the most pointed witness of all had been, and was to be, made to the rulers. These men were still desperately uneasy concerning Jesus. Even though he were now crucified, so many strange things had happened that day which his disciples would be able to turn to good account as fulfilment of Bible prophecy, that there was still the possibility of a serious situation if this dead Nazarene were to be proclaimed—with convincing Biblical force—a divine Messiah whose very rejection had been precisely according to the declared will of God in the scriptures.

A crafty plan

With the deliberate cunning of chess players the danger was not only anticipated but met by means of a brilliant device. From the Pharisees’ point of view the situation required that any one of the ancient prophecies be plainly and demonstrably vitiated in the experience of the prophet of Nazareth, for then on this rock all the outlandish claims made on his behalf would immediately come to grief.

So with simulated ingenuousness and concern, and also with a studied ignoring of Passover defilement (Jn.18 :28), an official deputation sought audience with Pilate, and put their case. Passover Feast and Sabbath would begin in a matter of hours. It was needful, therefore according to their religion (Dt.21 :23), that the corpses of these crucified men be suitably disposed of as speedily as possible. Would the governor help them in their difficulty by commanding that the legs of the three men be broken so as to accelerate their deaths? There was little time to spare.

It has been argued that this breaking of the legs of crucified men was a normal practice, and that such treatment would accelerate death by throwing such a strain on the thorax as to inhibit breathing, thus causing the individual to die fairly quickly from asphyxia. The first of these points is quite unsupported by evidence. The second is not true—as may be readily established (as indeed it has been) by actual experiment.

To Pilate the request seemed harmless enough even though the usual Roman practice was to leave crucified men hanging until their bones were picked clean by carrion crows. What could he know about the typology of the Passover? What could he know about Messianic declarations that: “He (Jehovah) keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken” (Ps.34 :20)? Neither would it occur to him to ask why, if they had scruples about leaving a body on a cross on their sabbath, they had no scruples about the murder of an innocent man on one of their Feast Days. Or did it? However, it may be that this ready acquiescence to the Pharisees’ request was actually given by some lesser official, well bribed for the occasion, who was able to act in smaller matters with the governor’s authority (Jn.19 :22 andMk.15 :44 support such a view).

It must have been with great satisfaction that the Jews now transmitted to the centurion the order from the fortress of Antonia that the legs of the crucified men be broken. And, reluctant though that officer was to pass this instruction to his men, the order was given.

Evil intent frustrated

What was it made the soldier detailed for this unsavoury job go first to one thief, then to the other, and last of all to Jesus in the middle? And why, although trained to obey every order explicitly, did he hesitate before that middle cross, take in at a glance that Jesus was already dead, and then lower his mallet? What moved him instead to lift his javelin and make a hard thrust into the side of that corpse?

Thus not only did it stand true that “a bone of him shall not be broken,” but also the way was opened for another scripture to be fulfilled when Christ returns as the Lord of Glory: “They shall look on him (an only son) whom they pierced” (Zech.12:10).

In recording that the soldier’s spear pierced Jesus in the side John may have had also the intention to remind his readers that it was by the opening of his side that the First Adam received his Bride when he awoke from a deep sleep. Or maybe the reader of this gospel is to be reminded of the enigmatic “last words of David” when the Spirit of the Lord spake concerning the Messiah, that “he that ruleth over men must be just. . . and be filled with iron and the staff of a spear” (2 Sam.23 :7).

However, John’s emphasis goes markedly on the truth that not a bone of Jesus was broken. Once again the impressiveness of the literal fulfilment of prophecy must not be allowed to obscure the yet more important symbolic truth that those who belong to the Body of the Redeemed are One and Indivisible, as Jesus himself had prayed: “that they may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also be one in us.”

Of all the arresting and intensely significant happenings at Golgotha none seems to have been so eloquent to John the eyewitness as that flow of blood and water soaking into mother earth at the foot of the cross. Concerning this especially he felt impelled to give his own personal guarantee of truth: “And he that saw it bear witness, and his witness is true ” I saw it with my own eyes!

John’s story of the crucifixion has already given evidence of its mystical interpretation of many an otherwise insignificant detail. And here his distinctive use of two words for “true” (19 :35) shows that once again his symbolic mind is busy enriching his readers’ appreciation of the momentous happening of that Day. Any doubt on that score is set at rest by the emphatic way in which John makes allusion to this very thing in his First Epistle: “This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one” (1 John 5 :6,8). Clearly, like so much else in John’s First Epistle, this reference to water and blood looks back to the gospel narrative for its meaning. But what meaning?

It is plain that in the gospel, just as John the Baptist at the outset proclaimed Jesus as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”, so in the consummation of that work John the Evangelist asserted the same glorious truth by his testimony to blood and water from “the riven side.”

It has often been asserted that Jesus died of a broken heart—not in the modern figurative sense of the term, but in its most completely literal sense, namely, through rupture of the wall of the heart. This could well have been the cumulative result of the terrific emotional strain to which Jesus had been subjected and the long drawn-out physical ordeal of the past twenty-four hours.

But John was not concerned with the physiological facts. Of far greater importance in his eyes were the spiritual truths that such facts proclaim. Why then did he insist so strenuously on the witness of the water ana’ the blood? What is their witness? And for what reason did he omit to expound it? Is it because he considered the meaning to be already sufficiently obvious, or is it because the ideas that cluster round these pregnant symbols of Christ are too many and too profound to be capable of adequate exposistion?

Perhaps a brief review may be attempted of some of the main ideas which associate themselves easily and naturally with the blood and water from the side of Jesus.

1.	They are often linked in Scripture with the opposing principles of flesh and Spirit, the human and the divine in Jesus. “To them gave he power to become sons of God . . . which were born, not of blood . but of God” (Jn.1 :12,13). “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee but my Father which is in heaven” (Mt.16 :17). In contrast with these: “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (Jn.4 :14).
2.	Blood and water and hyssop were the symbols associated with the inauguration of the Mosiac Covenant at Sinai (Heb. 9:19). Here, in John 19:34,29, are the same three symbols, now signifying the bringing in of a New Covenant: “This is my blood of the New Covenant.” “As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water (i.e. from the grave)” (Zech. 9:11). It may be asked: Why should these particular symbols be elements of ratification of God’s Covenants? Because:
3.	They are Covenants with sinners—people afflicted with moral leprosy, the incurable disease. Blood, water and hyssop again combine for the cleansing of God’s lepers (Lev. 14 :6,7). In that day when Jesus died on the cross there was “a fountain opened . . for sin and for uncleanness” (Zech.13 :1). And this follows immediately after: “they shall look upon me whom they have pierced . . (Zech. 12 :10), words quoted in John’s account.
4.	Yet another symbol finds eloquent reinforcement and fulfilment in the piercing of the side of Jesus: “Behold I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that my people may drink” (Ex. 17 :6). It was with allusion to this that Jesus cried out in the temple court on the very day of the Feast ot Tebernacles which celebrated the giving of water in the wilderness: “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and he that believeth on me, let him drink, as the scripture hath said, Out of his belly (I.e. from the Messiah, typified by the smitten rock) shall flow rivers of living water” (Jn 7:37,38).
	On another , occasion Moses was commanded to give the people water by speaking to the rock (at Kadesh, this time). Instead he smote it twice. In this particular place (Numbers 20) the Jewish Targum of Jonathan elaborates the story remarkably, telling that when Moses first struck the rock it dripped blood, and at the second blow water gushed forth! Undue emphasis should not be placed on this uninspired elaboration of Numbers 20, but its insight is certainly remarkable.
5.	But the most immediate and satisfactory interpretation of the water and blood is to be found in the Lord’s own words: “Except a man be born of water and the spirit he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn. 3 :5). “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (6:53,54).
	Here is plain anticipation of the two sacraments Jesus instituted —sacraments which are not really two, but one, for the meaning is fundamentally the same. Baptism, a birth out of spiritual water, is the beginning of a man’s life in Christ; by this means he is identified with the one whom he acknowledges as Saviour, Master, Lord. The Bread and Wine are the outward tokens of the grace and power by which that New Life, begun in baptism, may be maintained and matured. Hence John is able to say with palpable truth: “This is the One who comes in the water and in the blood”-that is, in baptism which begins the life in Christ, and in the Communion which maintains the life in Christ. “Not in the water only,” John persists, putting his case negatively as well as positively, “but in the water and in the blood.” Baptism by itself will achieve nothing. Its work must be consolidated and nourished by a sharing of the fulness of Christ through the life that he can impart.
	Not content with this emphasis, John underlines yet again: “And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth, for there are three that bear witness, in the earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.” Probably here the Spirit which bears witness (called in 5:9: “the witness of God”) is the inspired unfolding of the work and teaching of Jesus which John has set out in his accompanying gospel. In other words John is here asserting that the Gospel he has written is not his own but the Holy Spirit’s. With these words should be compared the challenging claim that John deliberately joined on to his narrative of the stabbing of his Lord: “And he that hath seen it hath borne witness (here in this gospel), and his witness is true: and he (the risen Lord) knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.”

Thus the Spirit (in the gospel), and the water (of baptism), and the blood of Christ shed on the cross and symbolized in the wine of the sacrament do agree in one. They tell the same story. They insist on the same Truth. They are one. Christ is the body, soul, and spirit of then-all.

The death of Jesus on the cross was altogether abnormal in a number of ways —the remarkably short time before death ensued, the loud cry immediately before the end, the flow first of blood and then of water from his side. His burial was equally unusual, for it became the personal concern of two of the leading men in the nation of Israel-Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus. These present a most interesting study in character.

Secret disciple

Joseph was a rich man (Mt.) and “an honourable counsellor” (Mk ), a title which must signify that he was not only a member of the Sanhedrin, but of ”cabinet” rank he was one of the front bench. He was of Arimathea, very, probably the birthplace of Samuel —Ramathaim Zophim. Two of the gospels (Mt. Jn.) describe him as a disciple; the others say that he “waited for the kingdom of God”. John adds that he was a disciple “secretly, for fear of the Jews”. Here is one of the biggest hardships, one of the most taxing demands, that loyalty to Christ puts upon the would-be disciple facing the shame that attaches to association with Christ. The pressure exerted by social opinion against the unorthodox in that day, could be formidable, and Joseph the honourable counsellor had silted in the face of it—he was a disciple, but only secretly.

What was it, then, that stiffened his resolution to such an extent that he now came out into the open and went boldly to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus that he might give him decent burial?

Two hints are supplied by the narrative. One, “he looked for the kingdom of God.” This should probably be translated more strongly: “he expected (as though not far away) the kingdom of God”; and in such a context this can only mean that he was persuaded that Jesus would be its King. Yet here was Jesus a lifeless bloody corpse upon which the rigor of death was already extending its cold embrace. It is a fair inference that something had happened to convince Joseph that this Jesus, crucified and stark, would nevertheless receive back the life he had given up. And in the face of this conviction, social standing and worldly circumstance went for nothing. Thus in his crucifixion Jesus united together three men, poles apart in their origins and status, men who were all happy to confess Jesus as Lord, the Lord who would rise from the dead —and this they did at the climax of his humiliation. It may well be true that at the time Jesus died on the cross the only men who were persuaded of his resurrection to eternal life were Joseph and Nicodemus and the malefactor on the cross I

But this conclusion only pushes a stage further back the mystery of Joseph’s sudden change of outlook. What was it that so convinced him that Jesus would rise from the dead, that he was now fully prepared to face the derision, contempt and ostracism of men whose good opinion he had hitherto highly esteemed?

Present at the trial?

The answer to this enquiry may lie in the trial of Jesus. One of the strangest things about the Lord’s appearance before the Sanhedrin is that although he made no attempt whatever to defend himself, and although prosecution, judge and jury were a unique combination of unscrupulous men bent on a capital sentence and nothing less, the case against the accused broke down time after time. For some reason or other the forms of legality had to be followed, even though all were bitterly hostile to the prisoner at the bar. And how was it that “their witness agreed not together”, being apparently so hopelesly inadequate that even though these wicked men feverishly sought a verdict of “Guilty”, they dared not use such unsatisfactory grounds for condemnation?

The explanation of all such difficulties could be the presence of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, one or both, at the trial. It would need only the presence of one of these, skilful in the Law of Moses, to make the enemies of Jesus realize that they could not blatantly turn the Council Chamber into a Star Chamber. The forms of law would have to be observed. And, further, when the most outrageous accusations were hurled against Jesus, it would require only the very occasional interpolation of a word from an expert lawyer such as Joseph or Nicodemus to demonstrate the contradictory nature or insufficiency of the evidence. “Joseph had not consented (s.w. Ex.23 :1) to the counsel (s.w.Ps.l :1,5) and deed of them”. And is this why Luke describes him as “a good man, and a just”? The first epithet would appropriately describe his honouring the Lord with the best possible burial; the second would apply to his unavailing stand for justice at Jesus’ trial. John’s phrase: “after this” (v.38)-i.e. after v.36,37-suggests that final conviction came by seeing one scripture after another fulfilled in spite of the efforts of the rulers.

Nicodemus

The case of Nicodemus was similar. His name is surely Greek-‘Conqueror of the people’; but if Hebrew it means ‘Innocent of blood’, innocent of the blood of Jesus. He appears at the beginning of the ministry as “the teacher of Israel” (Jn.3 :10RV), i.e. as president of the Sanhedrin, another “honourable counsellor”. He came to Jesus by night because it would be derogatory to his high office and damaging to his social standing if it were known that he had come seeking audience of the young prophet of Galilee. Nevertheless he deferred to the authority of Jesus and suffered himself to be instructed. He, the teacher of Israel, sat at the feet of an unschooled carpenter!

More than two years later he raised his voice in the council in meek protest against the illegal procedure contemplated against Jesus, only to be silenced by crude and angry colleagues. No longer was he “the teacher of Israel.” Ruthless party politics had been quick to suspect his timid sympathies with the man of Galilee, and he had been ousted from office. It was now being openly threatened that any man who acknowledged Jesus as Messiah, be he blind, beggar or front bench Sanhedrist, would be summarily excommunicated. What a thing to happen to members of the Council What a sensational piece of news this would be! How the streets of Jerusalem would hum with excitement about it!

So, although “among the chief rulers many believed on him, because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue. For they loved the glory of men more than the glory of God” (Jn.12 :42,43). Clearly these words were written with reference to men like Joseph and Nicodemus, and must be an accurate description of how things stood with them then, in the last week of the Lord’s ministry. It follows, then, that this drastic change came about in their outlook and response—their conversion, in short—took place between that time and the evening when Jesus was buried; even as Jesus had prophesied: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all ment (all kinds of men) unto me.” It was the crucifixion which convinced both, as it had convinced the malefactor that Jesus was “the Christ who abideth for ever.” (Jn.12 :32,34). As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so was the Son of man now lifted up, and these men, believing in him at last, knew that they would not perish, but in him would have everlasting life.

So here they were, these two-honourable counsellors, truly! —humbling themselves at the foot of the cross, gladly giving homage to a dead man whose claims, when living, they had struggled desperately to hold at arm’s length. Both had found their faith when others had lost theirs. Disciples of a corpse!

One writer has pointed out what a multiplicity of twos were associated with the death and resurrection of Christ: two malefactors, two disciples to provide burial, two women watching, two angels at the resurrection, two disciples run to the tomb to verify the resurrection. Is it because “at the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established”? or is there some further meaning?

Pilate grants the body

Coming to a great decision—”he took courage” —Joseph went in to Pilate to ask for custody of the body. But for this the Lord’s body might have been flung out into Gehenna (Jer.31 ;40). And how glad the chief priests would have been to have it so. But for Joseph’s riches and his high social position there would have been no access to the governor’s presence at all.

Pilate, quite astonished to, learn that Jesus was already dead within six hours of crucifixon, sought confirmation from the centurion in charge. When fully satisfied, he promptly granted the body to Joseph. Mark’s own word to describe this transaction means that he gave it as a gift, freely. There is point in this, for apparently whilst it was not unusual for the bodies of criminals to be granted to friends or relatives for disposal, it was generally expected that the procedure be helped through by means of a douceur. And Pilate was not averse to taking a bribe.

The contrast with his attitude to the chief priests should not be passed over. When they had complained about the inscription over the cross of Christ, Pilate had truculently answered: “What I have written, I have written.” Now with Joseph he is willing —nay, almost anxious-to oblige. Such was the impression made upon him by Jesus.

Thus there came about the fulfilment in remarkably detailed fashion of yet another Old Testament prophecy: “And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death” (Is.53 :9). The Nazarene, crucified between two criminals, found interment in the tomb of a rich man, instead of rotting in Gehenna. The literal translation of these words should begin: “And he gave (or appointed) his grave . . .” The unspecified subject of this sentence might be God, in which case the reference is to His inscrutable foreknowledge of all that was to transpire concerning His Suffering Servant, or-on a lower level —it might be Pilate, in which case the remarkably detailed accuracy of the prophecy is impressive; for-read thus-it anticipates that the same man who appointed that Jesus be crucified between two thieves should later decree his burial in a rich man’s tomb!

Interment

As soon as Pilate had given sanction, all was feverish but reverent haste. Joseph bought a long cerecloth of linen in the shops which were just preparing to shut for the Passover Sabbath Nicodemus brought also an immense quantity of myrrh and aloes, almost as much as was used at the interment of the famous Gamaliel II. No expense was spared. It was the funeral of a king. These two men must have had servants present (Mk.15 :46; 16 :4) to handle the body of Jesus, but if they undertook that holy task themselves, there would be no Passover for them (Num.9 :9,10).

The account of the obsequies of king Asa (2 Chr, 16 : 14) may perhaps suggest a threefold use for the spices employed: first, they were put on and between the folds of the linen in which the limbs and then the entire body was wrapped; also they were used to line the recess in which the body was laid; and, finally, some would be burned in the tomb to make it sweet and fresh.

All this, John says, was “as the manner of the Jews is to bury.” This emphasis was necessary, for the Egyptians, the great masters of the art of sepulture in ancient days, used to remove the brain and vicera before embalming the body. John is here preparing the reader for his account of the resurrection of Jesus, a resurrection that was to be complete, entire, wanting nothing. And doubtless, too, his symbolic mind saw in these facts much of significance concerning the mystical body of Christ, which is his Church.

The detailed mention of spices has pointed Old Testament associations. In Psalm 45 the king who rides in glory and in majesty is one whose garments “smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia.” This is almost to be expected, for he is one who is “anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows”, and the anointing oil prescribed in the Law had these very constituents (Ex.30 :23,24). But this anointing oil was for the priests in tabernacle and temple. Whence it follows that this king is a priest also in his own right!

The tomb was Joseph’s own, new and rock-hewn (Ex.33 :22), in Joseph’s garden hard by the place of crucifixion. “Such was our Saviour’s poverty, that as he lived in lended houses, so he was buried in a borrowed sepulchre, being rather a tenant than owner thereof” (Fuller) If the Gordon tomb is an incorrect identification (and the argument still rages), the remains of Joseph himself now rest where Jesus was laid.

The very newness of the tomb was worthy of special comment. Luke’s phrase: “wherein never man before was laid” employs a triple negative. It was the custom rather than the exception to use ancient tombs over and over again, just as in many an English churchyard a score or more of generations have been buried in the same small acre. But there is more in this. It has been pointed out that here was yet another remarkably accurate fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy: “Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Ps.16 :10). When, on the third day, the Spirit of God breathed life into the Second Adam and the angel of the Lord rolled away the stone, Jesus did not even see corruption, for his tomb was new and had never known any earlier contact with the corruption of death.

Thus, once again, the problem is provoked as to why the writers of the gospels should seize on some fulfilments of Old Testament prophecy to bring to the attention of their readers and yet should fail to emphasize others often more impressive. Isaiah 53 :9 and Psalm 16 :10, just considered, are interesting examples. It has also been observed that the gospels present a remarkable parallel between the birth and the death of Jesus. Instead of Joseph, a just man, and the birth pangs of a virgin womb by the power of the Holy Spirit, there is another Joseph, a just man, and the pangs of death leading to deliverance from a virgin tomb by the power of the Holy Spirit.

John hints at the happy coincidence that Joseph’s garden tomb should be so very near to Golgotha. Evidently the beginning of the Sabbath was almost on them as it was with little margin of time that the self-assigned task was thankfully completed. There in a garden, the Second Adam slept, that through his sleep there might come into existence his Bride-to-be.

And two of his devoted followers, Mary Magdalene and Mary the wife of Alphaeus, sat watching until the last moment when the great stone was rolled into its appointed place, and thereby they surely qualified for the high honour of being the first to see Jesus after he rose from the tomb.

Now, at last, for a short while, the Son of man had where to lay his head (Mt.8 :20). There, hidden in a cleft of the rock (Ex.33 :22; 34:6) he waited until the glory of the Lord came, proclaiming the Name of the Lord.

There is no peace for the wicked. All through that weekend the minds of Annas and his colleagues were plagued by the thought of dreadful possibilities. So much concerning the Nazarene had seemed to happen that day exactly according to familiar phrases in the prophets! More than that, all that he had foretold to his own disciples concerning his own fate (they had had it all from Judas; Mt. 16:21; 20:19) had come about precisely as he said, even though they themselves had originally planned it otherwise. Then would his other words come true as well? — how he had mysteriously said: ‘the third day he shall rise again.” Had they not themselves heard him speak of raising a destroyed temple in three days? — and they knew right well that it was not the temple on Mount Zion that he meant. Linking that with his scornful word to them about the sign of the prophet Jonah (Matthew 16:4), they might well wonder uneasily what strange impossibilities that Passover might yet hold for them. The idea was in their minds, but not one of them dared frame it in words. Yet they separately knew, each in his own heart, that this was the Heir and they had killed him that the inheritance might be theirs (Lk. 20:14).

Men in a quandary

There was nothing else for it now but to carry the thing through consistently. Even though this Nazarene Messiah was already a cold corpse they must nevertheless take every possible precaution to stifle any strange tale which might be put about concerning him. The sooner he and the memory of him rotted together, the better.

In a way the defection of Joseph, the counsellor, to join the disciples of this pseudo-Messiah was a good thing. Their morale was too low to gain much from his accession to their numbers, and the fact that Jesus had been interred in his new tomb, the making of which had been a familiar feature of recent activity outside the city wall, made it comparatively easy to take precautionary measures. If this Jesus did “rise” —and Lazarus in Bethany had been a hard pill to swallow! — they would be ready for him.

But what could they do without Pilate’s approval. Yet the man’s uncertain temper was at its worst that Passover; and no wonder, when one considered how they had bullied him, as they could never have hoped to do, in order to get the condemnation of Jesus signed and carried through that day. They had best leave him alone for a while. In any case, there was no immediate threat of trouble, for this was Passover night, and everyone – disciples and all — would be indoors. It was the one night in the year when there was not a single crime in Jerusalem. The third day would be the time of crisis. That was what they must prepare for.

Even so, relaxation on that Sabbath was an impossibility for them. Their Sabbath rest, had they but known it, was now taken away for ever. Matthew intimates as much by the way in which he refers to it as “the next day that followed the day of preparation”. So it was with light regard for Sabbath desecration that these men, who earlier had shown such public abhorrence of Pilate’s judgement hall (Jr. 18:28), and who had railed at Jesus for his “flouting” of Sabbath law, now went, in secret to the governor once again — this time unworried about defilement.

It may be safely presumed that they took with them an adequate “persuader”, for they knew well enough that Pilate was no longer disposed to oblige them. Their approach was both suave and respectful: “Sir” — the word is literally “Lord”, and contrasts sharply with the total omission of any title of dignity in their encounters with Pilate on the day of crucifixion: “We remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day.” It almost seemed that they believed what his disciples didn’t (Mk. 9:10). Yet it would not do to let Pilate think that they had any serious fear of this really happening (though indeed, this was the stark truth of the matter), so they dressed it up in a way that would represent them as zealous for the common good:…” lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead.” In twenty four hours this was the most plausible cover-up they could concoct. Even if panic-stricken leaderless disciples were to attempt such a hare-brained imposition on public credulity, would it not be sufficient to expose their desperate folly by a public challenge: “If your Jesus has risen from the dead, give us evidence, other than your own word, that he is alive again.”

Aware that they were on the thinnest ice imaginable, these Sadducee priests and their Pharisee rivals (adversity makes strange bedfellows! Jn. 18:3) rushed Pilate on past the absurdity of their postulates to the inconvenience and embarrassment of the outcome: “So the last error shall be worse than the first.” It was bad enough to have this “deceiver” claiming for three and a half years to be the Messiah, but to have the claim published that he was now risen from the dead would be vastly worse — worse in its effects on the people, and thus in its consequences for both Pilate and themselves. The vileness of these men comes out in their choice of phrase: “The last error shall be worse than the first,” they actually quoted the words of Tamar, raped by her abominable brother Amman (2 Sam. 13:16) — as though the gracious ministry of Jesus fell into the same category as such wickedness!

But now, in fact, the last truth — his resurrection -was to prove greater than the first —his virgin birth.

Bribed or not, Pilate received their plea for precautionary measures with brusque lack of sympathy: “Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can.” The Greek expression is peremptory and contemptuous: “Away with you. Be off!” As recently as the previous morning, Pilate had been pushed around by these men more than enough, and he was still fuming over it.

The reference to a watch is commonly interpreted as meaning the temple guard, a squad of Jewish policemen under the authority of the chief priests. But this view ignores what was said to the guard next day: “and if this come to the governor’s ears (RVm_: to a hearing before the governor) we will persuade him, and secure you” 28:14). Had they been the temple police Pilate would not have used the Latin word for “a guard,” nor would he have been interested in the affair at all, much less in applying discipline.

Nor will it do to read the words: “Have a watch” – RVm: take a guard — as though offering them a squad of Roman soldiers. This is a rather forced unnatural reading of the Greek word.

It seems likely that for the duration of the great Feasts, a detachment from the Roman garrison was assigned to the Jewish rulers to help in time of emergency in maintaining order among the crowds of worshippers. Some of these had already been on duty at the arrest of Jesus and at his crucifixion. Now Pilate reminded the chief priests: “You have some of my men at your disposal already; then why bother me about this business?”

It was tacit approval, but coupled with a strangely enigmatic observation: “Make it as sure as ye know.” Was this a sardonic derisive way of showing that he had seen through them? ‘You know what a formidable problem those chicken-hearted disciples of Jesus are. So by all means take the most stringent precautions against them.’

Or is it possible that Pilate was saying: You know he will rise from the dead, and you are scared of the consequences; so by all means do all you can to stop him! Such a surmise is less improbable than it seems at first sight. The previous day Pilate had spent much time in the presence of Jesus, and had conversed with him a good deal. There was also the portentous dream which his wife had had. And, not least, there was the astonishing sequence of awesome events coinciding with the crucifixion. Pilate himself was nearer to believing in Jesus than he cared to admit to anyone. Yet what he had written he had written!

So the priests went their way. They sealed the stone — presumably by the time-honoured method of tape and sealing wax, or by the copious use of cement. And the Roman soldiers who had been on duty at the crucifixion were again more close to Jesus than anyone.

It was a measure of the distraught and anxious frame of mind of these priests that they could deem their seals adequate to prevent either theft or resurrection, certainly the seals, carefully affixed, were a clear evidence that they did not trust the soldiers! Nevertheless, next morning, when these men came to them, all bewildered and shaken with a circumstantial tale about earthquake and angels, their story was never questioned for a moment! Of the obvious reaction: “Liars, all of you!” there was never a sign.

As these priests lay sleepless on their beds that night did it occur to any of them to wonder whefher perhaps they had made a mistake? Could it be that in sealing the stone they had actually provided evidence, which they themselves would not be able to deny, that the crucified Jesus was risen from the dead?

NOTES: Matthew 27:62-66

What a dramatic contrast between the preceding narrative with its record of sorrowing devotion and the scheming fearful hostility of these rulers!

62.	The day of the Preparation. According to Edersheim a standard expression for Friday (Mark explains it; 15:42). At this Passover the usual Sabbath and the special Passover Sabbath (Lev. 23:5-7) coincided.
	Came together. Gk. passive surely implies that they were specially convened by the Sadducee chief priest, who doubtless hod disturbing memories of the Lazarus episode.
63.	We remember. They tell Pilate that Jesus made this prophecy. Then in 28:14, they probably told him of its fulfilment! Gk. suggests ‘we were reminded’ — by whom? Was it the last act of Judas? Or a specially brave word of witness by Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea?
	That deceiver. There is no instance in the gospels of the enemies of the Lord referring to him as “Jesus”. “He is called deceiver for the consolation of his servants who shall (also) be called deceivers”. (Augustus).
	Said -When? Jn. 2:19; Mt. 12:40 – which they evidently understood.
	While he was yet alive. A crass pleonasm! Could Jesus have said it after he was dead? The use of these words betrays the intense agitation of these men. His enemies knew him to be dead. Why do his modern enemies (e.g. Shonfield) think they know better?
64.	The third day. This interprets the idiomatic: After three days. Cp. Mk. 8:31; 10:34. See, for details, ‘Passover”, HAW ch. 10. Jerusalem Targum: “A day and a night together make up a night-day, and any part of such a period is accounted as the whole.”
	The last error worse than the first. Here first (Gk. protos) implies not just one initial evil, but many (his miracles and his teaching). Instead, that truth (resurrection) is better than the first (virgin birth). What a smear it was to quote such a passage as 2 Sam. 13:6 about Jesus!
	Error (deseil) is virtually s.w. verse 63: deceiver.
65.	Three curt verbs here make evident Pilate’s impatience and lack of sympathy. Contrast here his marked willingness to oblige Joseph of Arimathea; v.58
	A watch. Roman,- s.w. 28; 11; Jn. 18:3,1 2
66.	Made the sepulchre sure. The plural use of this word in three vereses – they made sure also that there would be yet more witnesses to the resurrection, unwilling witnesses, too! In a Messianic prophecy Is 41:10 LXX) the same word has a drastically differed context: “Uphold thee.”
	Sealing the stone. Jn. 6:27 s.w, but what a contrast there! Not onlyin his ministry but again in his resurrection Jesus showed his disregard for protocol and red tape, cp Job 5;12, 13, 12-17 Consider also Acts 5:23; 12.10; 16:26. Dan. 6:17 provides a remarkable type.

It is no easy matter to harmonize the gospel narratives in their accounts of the visits to the tornb, and of the appearance of the angels and of Jesus himself. Many say dogmatically that it cannot be done. Unwilling to believe themselves capable of error, such critics are very ready to assume fallibility in the gospel writers. In the world of mathematics the man who says: “I cannot find a solution to this problem, therefore it cannot be solved,” is written off as a fool. Yet in the field of Bible exegesis there are plenty of such. Close akin to these are others who take the line: “This is the only way in which I can make any sense of this passage. Therefore this is the correct interpretation. All others are mistaken.” Of course, such attitudes are never baldly expressed in so many words, but it is often possible to detect this kind of self-confidence. Maybe there are times when it is justified, but the study of the resurrection of Jesus can hardly be reckoned as being in that category. Hence, because of the difficulty of piecing the four records together into a smooth continuous story, let conclusions be regarded as tentative.

Blending the records

The accounts of the visits of the women to the tomb near Golgotha certainly present difficulties. Some solve the problem —or, at least reduce its dimensions – by assuming that two different groups of women, each actuated by the same motive, set out early on the Sunday morning to visit the sepulchre. Thus, by applying some details to one group and some to the other, the gospels are made to yield a coherent continuous inter-woven account.

The basis of the present study, however, will be that only one group of women is involved. The tendency to resolve superficial difficulties in gospel harmonization by the slick assumption of similar but different incidents builds up its own antibodies. By the time one has got two separate anointings in Bethany, two healings at the house of the centurion, two restorations of sight to the blind at Jericho, and four malefactors instead of two, the fever is on in way out. (Yet it is necessary to insist on more than one cleansing of the temple. The evidence for this is strong, and the reason compelling; see “Passover”, HAW ch.3).

There are, however, indications of time whicr strongly suggest more than one visit to the tomb. Whereas Mark, Luke and John make it clear that it was on the Sunday morning when the women set out with this intention, Matthew has the expression: “in the end of the sabbath,” i.e. on Saturday evening. Not by any stretch of imagination or translation can this be made to mean anything different. Yet immediately Matthew goes on to confuse the picture with an expression which can only have been intended to make it more explicit: “as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week.” These words would normally mean at first light on Sunday morning. Yet the writer of this wonderful gospel was no fool. Is it likely that he would be content to set down in the same sentence words which involve a shouting contradiction? There is need to look further into this.

Frst, then, the word translated “end” (of the Sabbath) means “late in the day.” A cognate word is normally translated “evening ” The word which gives rise to “as it began to dawn” normally meant “to grow light.” Its proper application is to early morning. However, because by beginning at sunset the Jewish day was out of step with Gentile reckoning, this word came to be applied to the beginning of the Jewish day. In this way a word meaning “to grow light” came to mean “get dark”! Luke’s record of the burial of Jesus has a clear example of its usage. In a verse which unquestionably refers to Friday evening, Luke has: “And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath drew on”(RVm: Gk. began to dawn; Luke 23:54).

Thus both of Matthew’s expressions are seen to refer to the Saturday evening when “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the sepulchre.” What a sabbath of sorrow and lamentation that was! In its earliest hours well before midnight, the whole of Jewry was eating the Passover meal. But not these, for had not Jesus himself said: “The days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and the;-shall they fast” (Mt. 915).

Then, as soon as the end of sabbath restrictions would allow, in the last hour of daylight they were bock at the tomb. And how natural that they should do this! It may be argued against this interpretation that Matthew’s record runs on apparently to equate this visit with that which was made to the tomb next morning. This is undeniable, and is probably to be attributed to the compression which is characteristic of the gospel (compare what is said about this in chapter 243). The only alternative would seem to be the elimination of this visit to the tomb on Saturday evening. But that can only be done by assuming that when Matthew writes ‘late on the Sabbath” (which ended at sundown on Saturday) he really means “early the next morning.” it would also require that he uses the Greek verb epiphosko (translated in the AV: began to dawn) in a different sense from which it is used in Luke 23:51. The hint of Saturday evening activity in Mark 16:1 supports the interpretation adopted here.

“When the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought [not, as in AV: had bought) sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.” That this was done on the Saturday evening as soon as the shops were open after the sabbath is put beyond doubt by the words which follow: “And very early in the morning the first day of the week they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun” (John 20:1: when it was yet dark).

It is noteworthy that Matthew omits to mention Salome. So perhaps this group of women acted in concert, Salome seeing to the purchase of the spices whilst the others made their evening visit to the tomb.

This must have been before the guard was posted there. This inference follows from the fact that when the women returned next morning they showed no concern regarding the soldiers, but only about means of access to the body: “Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?” And it is understandable that the watch would not be set until daylight had ended because in this way public attention to a very unusual procedure would be avoided. Also, during daylight hours there would, of course, be no risk of interference with the tomb, by disciples or anybody else.

The sequence of events

Thus the sequence of events would appear to have been.

1. The last hour of sabbath daylight, the two women come to see the tomb.
2. Sabbath sunset, the placing of the guard.
3. Just after sunset, the purchase of spices.
4. Before Sunday daylight, Mary Magdalene sets out to join the other women to go to the tomb to complete the anointing of Jesus.
5. Earthquake (and resurrection?) at sunrise. The fright of it probably delays the women.
6. The guard, scared, abandon the tomb and return into the city,
7. The sun is alreadr risen by the time the women arrive at the tomb.

Precisely when Jesus rose from the dead is not ascertainable. In fact, his resurrection is not described, but is first mentioned in the words of the angel. The gospels, which are content to mention the crucifixion of Jesus in a brief participial phrase – “and having crucified him” (Matthew 27:35 Gk) – make no attempt whatever at a picture of the resurrection.

There was a great earthquake, caused by the corning of the angel. “The earth which trembled with hoi rot (Matthew 27:51) at the death of Christ,” says a seventeenth century commentator, “leapt for joy at his resurrection.”

This resurrection angel was resplendent in divine glory: “His countenance was like lightning, and hi; raiment white as snow” (Matthew 28:3). With the possible exception of Daniel 10:6, this would appear to be the first time that an angel was seen in appearance different from that of an ordinary man. Yet after Jesus rose from the dead there are several descriptions similar to this (contrast Lk. 24:4, Acts 1:10 and 10:30 with Gen. 18:2 and 19:1,5; Josh 5:13 and Jud. 13:9-1 1). Is this change altogether fortuitous or without meaning? Or did the resurrection of Jesus somehow change the status of angels (Col. 1:1 6)? One would fain know more about these mysteries.

The angel of the Lord

The inevitable effect on the soldiers is vividly described: “For fear of him (not for fear of the earthquake, though there are few experiences which strike such terror in men’s hearts) the keepers did shake, and became “as dead men”, corpses guarding a corpse! This word “shake” is essentially the same as that for “earthquake.” Impressive as the heaving of the ground might be, it was nothing to the upheaval within themselves. Literally paralysed from fright, they grovelled on the ground, and later slunk away at the first opportunity — presumably when the angel went inside the tomb. It is not absurd to enquire as to the source of this information about the effect of angels and earthquake on the Roman guard. There is a hint (see p.770) that it may have been supplied to Matthew in later days by some of the soldiers themselves.

At first, the angel “rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.” (But epano above, over). The priests had taken all care to seal the tomb shut, but now here was the Almighty sealing the tomb open – by His angel sitting on the stone.

There is no hint that the great stone was rolled away to allow Jesus (at first in a state of revived mortality?) to emerge to the world outside. Then could it be that the stone was removed in order to give the disciples access to the place of interment, so that they might see for themselves the evidence that their Lord was risen? Whatever the reason, there is ground for deep thankfulness that the resurrection did take place this way. For many that stone rolled away has become a foundation stone of faith.

Notes: Matthew 28:1-4.

1.	The first day of the week. It was 16th Nisan, the anniversary of Gen. 8:4 and Ex. 14:20.
	Came. Remarkably, a singular verb with plural nouns, is this to put the emphasis on Mary Magdalene, or to indicate their complete unaniminity of spirit?
	The other Mary. See ch.229, and Mark 1 6:1.
2.	For, indicating that the reason for the earthquake was not either “natural causes” nor the resurrection of Jesus, but the coming of an angel of glory.
	An angel…from heaven. Apparently another pleonasm, as in 27:63 (see note), for whence else might an angel come down? Perhaps the phrase is intended to steer the reader away from reading angel as meaning a human messenger.
	The details here must have been supplied by one of the soldiers, surely; v.l la.
3.	The appearance of this angel matches in some respect that of the angel seen by Daniel in 1 0:6ff, where note:
	lightning … a guard … quaking fell upon them … they fled., in a deep sleep upon my face.
	His countenance. This word is unique in the NT, but is the exact equivalent of appearance, vision, in Dan. 1 0:1,1 8. These echoes of Daniel’s experience might suggest that whereas some of the soldiers fled in terror, others bowed in worship.

Mark 16:1.

1.	Anoint; 14:8. Edersheim says Jewish usage allowed the opening of a tomb on the third day to attend to the body. On this first day of the week believers now come to Christ with the incense of praise and the frankincense of thanksgiving.

All four gospels emphasize that it was on the first day of the week when certain of the women came to the tomb. John does this in a fashion peculiar to himself: “on day one of the seven,” using the familiar expression in Genesis 1: “and there was evening and there was morning, day one,” the day when “God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light… and God divided the Light from the darkness.” Until this happened, the disciples were all tohu bohu (Genesis 1:2).

This was the beginning of God’s New Creation. Here is the idiom found in many a place in the New Testament, not least in the prologue to John’s own gospel. In Colossians 1 especially: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all (the New) Creation… the beginning, the first-born from the dead… By him were all things (in the New Creation) created… And (in point of time) he is before all things” (v.l 5-18).

Women going to the tomb

Some of the apparent contradictions in the records regarding who came to the tomb, and at what time, present little difficulty to those who read with care. John mentions only Mary Magdalene — surely for the simple reason that his narrative is to keep the spotlight on her. Even so, Mary’s words to Peter and John clearly imply that she had not gone to the tomb alone: “They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him,” (contrast with this, the words of verse 1 3 spoken when she was at the tomb alone: “and I know not where they have laid him”).

The details of time are not so readily tidied up. John says it was “while it was yet dark.” Luke has the phrase: “at very early dawn (s.w. Ps. 90:14 LXX; literally: at deep dawn).” But Mark says explicitly “when the sun was risen” (RV)_; but he also adds “very (exceedingly) early.”

The supposition is by no means unreasonable that the women started out as soon as there was a glimmer of light in the sky. Mary Magdalene, coming from Bethany (see ch.74) would need to set out before the others, lodging in Jerusalem. And, in any case, by the time they reached the tomb there was broad daylight. If they were not all staying under the same roof an appreciable amount of time would be lost in collecting the party of possibly five people or more (Luke 24:1 0).

Also, the prepositions used to describe their coming “to the tomb” are different — John implying the start of their short pilgrimage, Mark and Luke suggesting the time of arrival “of the tomb.”

The women came carrying spices with which they hoped to anoint the body of Jesus. The hasty attentions bestowed on the body late on Friday did not satisfy their womanly minds. As they walked they kept on talking (so Mark) about the problem of access to the tomb: “Who shall roll us away the stone?” Without levers and other equipment and without the aid of masculine muscles how could they hope to shift it? It is clear that they were unaware that a guard of soldiers has been posted, or this would have been their primary concern. Indeed, in that case it is unlikely that their mission would have been attempted.

There was little likelihood that any of Joseph’s men would be around at that hour. And it was useless to expect that any of the twelve would be willing to help them at the tomb. These were marked men. To be found interfering with the body of Jesus was more than their lives were worth. So this journey to the sepulchre as day was breaking was a pure act of faith on the part of these women — and their faith was rewarded: “They that seek me early shall find me.”

“And looking up they see that the stone is rolled back” (Mark 16:4RV). As they approached the foot of the slope where the tomb was sited it was immediately evident that the great stone was not in its original position. Mary Magdalene promptly assumed that the enemies of the Lord, not content with all the evil they had wrought already, were still bent on further mischief, and she turned and ran as hard as she could first to the lodging of Peter and then to John, gasping out the news: “They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.” (Jn. 20.2). What surmise was in her mind? — that “they” were Joseph acting under instructions? But in that case, why not go direct to him? Or did she fear that the malevolence of the Lord’s enemies had had him thrown out into Gehenna? She might even have had hopes of his resurrection. What could they do to help?

Peter and John met, and both ran as hard as they could to see the sepulchre for themselves. Mary, fatigued with the unaccustomed effort, trailed on behind them. Everything about this part of the narrative, and almost every other detail which follows, suggests that the minds of the Lord’s followers, (Mary excepted?), were shut to the possibility that he had risen from the dead. That was the last thing they thought of.

Meantime the other women had climbed the slope to the tomb’s entrance. There they encountered the angel of glory who spoke words of reassurance which did nothing to allay their sudden fear at the sight of him.

In reply to their instinctive semi-coherent questions: “Who are you? What are you doing here? What has happened to Jesus?”, he said: “Fear not ye” (an implied contrast here with the soldiers who had fled panic-stricken, before the women came on the scene), “for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.” They were recognized as friends. Fear was out of place. The same contrast between fearful Gentiles and astonished disciples who need have no fear will be evident when the messenger of the Lord is manifest in glory to announce the Second Coming.

The angel went on to remind them of what should have been already uppermost in their minds: “He is not here; he is risen, 05 he said” During his ministry Jesus had not shrunk from speaking about the rejection and suffering he must experience. But he had anticipated also his own resurrection. The sign of the prophet Jonah may have been a mystery to his disciples, but its meaning had not been lost altogether on his enemies. But in the last months of his ministry, there had been clear and explicit instruction to the Twelve and also to the rest of his followers that he must endure the worst that his enemies could engineer for him, and yet come through it all triumphant: “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify: and the third day he shall rise again.” (Matthew 20:18,19).

This repeated teaching, which at the time the disciples had probably misconstrued as yet another of their Master’s “parables” (as in Mt. 1 5:1 5), came flooding back into the minds of these women as the angel, now no longer sitting on the stone but standing in the mouth of the cave, beckoned them on to learn for themselves: “Come, see the place where the Lord lay.” For this angel of glory, as for Mary Magdalene, that cold lifeless corpse which had lain within was the Lord—“hot the outer frame or casket of the inner spirit, now departed, but the Lord himself. Popular ideas about personal disembodied immortality could hardly receive a more direct, decisive or authoritative refutation than this: “See the place where the Lord lay”!

Angelic encounter

So they went in to see for themselves, stooping and squeezing together in the very limited space available to them. All eyes were for the place where the dead Master should have been lying. At a glance they saw that the body was gone. In the same instant they became aware of the presence of another angel sitting there. Why does Mark record that he sat “on the right side”? On the right side of what? And what is the point of mentioning the fact — except as a vivid memory?

As they entered he stood along with his fellow and spoke to them reassuringly. But they were overpowered with astonishment, for not only was there the shock of realizing more fully that Jesus no longer lay there, but there was also a sudden appreciation of the fact that, with only a dim light in the tomb, the garments and persons of these men glowed with a dazzling radiance utterly outside normal experience. Amazed at the sight, and with hardly any power to think, they backed away out of the cave and prostrated themselves before these heavenly beings.

“Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen. Remember how he spake unto you when he was yet In Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.”

They remembered it well enough — that unusual intermission in the Lord’s ministry when he had gathered together not only the twelve but themselves also and other close disciples and had led them off into an unfrequented part of that busy area that he might teach them concerning himself (Mark 9:30-32). they remembered how he spake unto them. I he angels words imply that they too had heard that instruction given — how the Lord had said it (1 Peter i :1 2). With what unwonted emphasis and earnestness (even for him!) had Jesus sought to prepare hi, disciples’ minds for the shock of his own passion, at a time when they were set only on greater glory. They remembered it all now, with shame but also with gladness – how, time and again, he had quoted them strange passages from the prophets which they could not make sense of, because they would not. So often they had taken his vigorous parables and figures of speech in a crudely literal fashion. But on that occasion it was the other way – their Master’s very plainness of speech defeated its own purpose because the message was one they were unwilling to learn. “Doth he not speak parables?”

But new they saw it all, with a gladness past describing, and they marvelled at their earlier blindness.

The angel was still speaking. It was a further commits on specially committed to these heavenly ministers by Jesus himself before he left the tornb. “Go your way, tell his disciples and Peter.” Like themselves the apostles needed to be saved from the depths of despondency and helpless bewilderment into which the crucifixion had plunged them , but none needed this resurrection as much as Peter.

None of the disciples loved Jesus as much as Peter did. None had been louder in those repeated protestations of loyalty. None had fallen so low as on that accursed occasion when — possessed with a devil, as it had seemed — he had crudely, fiercely, violently, blasphemously disowned this Leader whom he loved as his own soul. None had suffered such wretchedness and helpless misery over that weekend as Peter had. “Would God I had died for thee, O Jesus, my lord, my lord!”

But Jesus had died for him. And even at that moment, had these women only known it, the first anticipations of the message were reaching him in breathless broken phrases from a panting Mary.

Galilee

“Tell his disciples that he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him.” Jesus, the good shepherd, was soon 10 lead his flock forth that they might find pasture, such as they never dreamed or, away from Jerusalem, the city of his rejection, the place of tearfulness for his followers.

A four-fold emphasis on Galilee binds together Matthew’s record of the resurrection appearances (26:32 and 28:7,10,16). Why was it that this repeated insistence should be part of the message of the angel and of the Lord himself at a time when they seemed to be more in need of a simple conviction that their Master was alive? No clear convincing answer to this problem has ever been supplied. Doubtless there is something instructively symbolic in this choice of Galilee of the Gentiles as a place of fuller manifestation. This message of a risen Christ was not to be kept within the confines of a Judaistic Jerusalem; but why this should so dominate the message of the first Easter day is not so easy re understand. (Perhaps practical considerations should come in here. Where in Jerusalem could Jesus meet with “above five hundred brethren at once’ ? — most of whom were Galileans anyway.)

The plain promise: “There shall ye see him,” was the first clear intimation that these disciples could expect to meet and talk with their risen Lord. Perhaps as they rose up from the ground incredulity regarding this expectation was written on their faces, for the angel added his own emphatic reassurance: “Behold. I have told you.” It was a phrase they had heard on the lips of Jesus himself (John 13:19 and 14:29). Then how could they disbelieve?

So without a moment’s further delay they obeyed the angelic commission and went off in haste, “with fear and great joy” – fearful because of the revelation of divine glory which they had witnessed, yet made joyful by the incredibly good news which they had just learned.

Mark describes their experience thus: “They trembled (in body) and were amazed (in their minds)”. The language is precisely that which describes the effects of the risen Jesus on Saul of Tarsus, on the road to Damascus. “Neither said they anything to any man.” The commonsense meaning here is that, full though they were of their awesome experience and of the knowledge that the Master was alive, they mentioned it to no one outside the circle of his followers — “for they were afraid” that the disciples might blamed and punished for the disappearance of the body.

It is probably a mistake to imagine them going oft singly in different directions so as to get the news round the various groups of believers more quickly. Even though they would wish to bring the news speedily to Mary, the Lord’s mother, and to John and others related to Jesus, and to the main body of apostles, and to the home at Bethany, and to Joseph of Arimathea – at least these- they would be held together by the realization that without one another’s corroboration the astonishing story which they had to tell woul be believed by nobody. As it turned out even their united witness was written oft as a delusion Only the manifestation of Jesus himself was to take away the veil of unbelief

Notes: Matthew 28:5-8

5.	The women Beside; the three mentioned in Mk. 16:1 there was Joanna and at least one other (Luke 24:10.
6.	Come, see the place. The story put abound almost at once about the stealing of the body (v13, 15) shows that the Jews knew better than to argue against the fact of an empty tomb.
7.	Lo I have told you. Quoting from the Lord’s own words: Jn 13:19; 14:29
8.	And did run. This would hardly be true of middle-aged women, but John says this about Mary Magdalene, the youngest of the group.

Mark 16:2-8

4.	When they looked. Literally, looking up. But if may be that here the prefix is an intensive: looking eagerly
6.	He is risen Passive verb. The gospels do not say that the Lord rose, but that he was risen
	See the place. Singular verb- yet Mt. 28:6 has a plural. Did the angel persuade first one of the women and then the rest to enter and inspect the tomb? This word place is common in the OT/NT as a meaning a holy place.
7.	And Peter: 1 Cor 15:5; Lk 24.24
8	They fled, awestruck by the angelic encounter.

Luke 24:1-9.

4.	Shining garments; s.w. Lk. 9:29. Then what does this teach about the transfiguration?
5.	Among the dead- This plural implies that there were other tombs there
7.	Must be delivered That must means must, it is necessary,
9.	The eleven. Thomas included; and he made up his mind forthwith

John 20:1-3

1.	Prov 8:17 is a lovely commentary on this verse.
	The stone. This detail assumes the readers knowledge of Mt. 27:66
2.	Loved: Gk: phileo, indicates personal affection.
	We know not. This plural implies that she had been at the tomb with other women.
3.	The language here seems to imply that they set off separately, from different lodgings, and met and ran together.

At this point, so Hoskyns very usefully observes, John’s narrative is so constructed that the weight of testimony depends on the two chief disciples and not on the women — this for the special benefit of Jewish readers, doubtless: “at the mouth of two witnesses’ (Dt. 19:15), and men rather than women.

Peter and John ran as they had not run since the days of boyhood on Galilean hills. Men at the north gate of the city stared at them as they went rushing past. John, more lithe and supple, and probably younger, was soon well ahead of the other. Perhaps, too, his being unembarrassed by a bad conscience made some difference. But Peter, being Peter, was probably already resolved to track down the desecrators of his Lord’s tomb and by some desperate act of reprisal make a last futile gesture of loyalty to the one he had denied.

At the tomb – different reactions

So John was at the sepulchre with a good lead With a fineness of feeling which might be expected of him, he was content, on arrival, to stand by the entrance and stoop to peer in. There was just time to take things in before he was pined by Peter breathing heavily, but one quick look was sufficient for him to realize, though with no certainty, the main fact that the body was gone. The linen wrappings were there in position, yet it seemed that there was no body inside them.

Peter had no compunction whatever about going straight into the sepulchre. He went right up to the place where Jesus had been laid and stood staring hard at the grave clothes. John joined him, and quickly saw more than he did.

“He saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.” These words from John’s account carry a double difficulty. The expression ‘knew not’ must surely be taken in a deeper sense: ‘they understood not’, for of course they were acquainted with the Old Testament passages which anticipated the resurrection of Jesus – the stories of Jonah and of Isaac, Psalm 16, Isaiah 53, the Passover ritual described in Leviticus 23, and so on. With the text of all, or most, of these the disciples would certainly be familiar, but it is one thing to know the words, it is a another to grasp the truth they convey. Not yet did they understand.

The sequence of ideas in this part of John’s record presents a much more tricky problem: “he saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the Scripture.” If John had written’: ‘even though as yet they knew not…’, all would be consistent. But lack of knowledge (or understanding) of Scripture as a reason for believing hardly makes sense. For this reason many, following the fourth century Augustine, have given the words a very different application, thus: John saw the grave-clothes and believed the story brought by Mary (that the body of Jesus had been taken away), and he was the more ready to do this because the Bible prophecies concerning the Lord’s resurrection were not understood as yet.

There is, however, one simple fact which disallows this interpretation — quite apart from the not too satisfying conclusion which it leads to. The sight of the linen winding sheet supplied immediate proof that the body of Jesus had not been carried away, for who in their senses wishing to do such a thing would first go to the trouble of tediously unwrapping the corpse? The presence of those linen wrappings was the plainest possible proof that the body had not been removed by either friend or enemy. This must be John’s main reason for mentioning the fact.

A problem of interpretation

Then why that perplexing word “for”? This is not the Greek word which in such a place must mean “because.” Instead, it is a word which may carry this meaning but which can and often is added simply for emphasis, rattier in the way in which ‘truly, indeed, really, actually’, are used in modern English. For instance: “But some said, What, doth the Christ come out of Galilee?” (John 7:41 RV; the AV leaves the word untranslated). Again: “Why, herein is a marvellous thing…” (9:30). There is no lack of examples of this kind.

John’s statement is now seen to be a clear-cut declaration that it was because of what he saw that he believed Jesus to be risen, not because of what he expected: “Actually as yet they knew not the scripture…”

The circumstantial detail with which John describes what he saw in the tomb shows that he regarded it all as specially significant: “He seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was upon his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.”

From this description, and especially from the word translated “wrapped together,” it has been argued that John was wishing his readers to infer his own conviction that the body of Jesus had come through the linen wrappings, leaving them in the shape they had taken round the corpse.

Whilst this conclusion can hardly be said to follow from the expression used in the narrative here, a consideration of a different sort provides strong support for it. My friend, Raymond Mallinder, an analytical chemist of first-rate ability and wide experience, tried the experiment of using muslin and a mixture of myrrh and aloes (as Joseph and Nicodemus had done in burying Jesus; 1 9:39), and he found that if the myrrh and aloes were used in a dry form, as powders, then weeks later the material was unchanged in character. If, however, these spices were wetted either with water or alcohol (wine), the muslin immediately became very sticky and soon set firm like a plaster cast on a broken limb.

It has been argued that since the women who came to the tomb on the resurrection morning were hoping to be able to anoint the body, they must have known that the former method of using the spices in a dry form must have been adopted at the time of interment. But this does not necessarily follow for the two Marys who attended the burial “sat over against the sepulchre” (Mt. 27:61), and therefore (most probably) would not be near enough to see whether the wrappings were wetted or not.

Symbolism

So with the limited information available, it does not seem possible to decide whether, at his coming to life again, the Lord manually divested himself of the wrappings (or was helped by angels), or whether his resurrection body with its extraordinary powers came through the cerecloths, leaving them undisturbed. The word “wrapped (folded)” in John 20:7 might be read as supporting the former conclusion. But neither this point nor any other detail available seems to be decisive. John often thought and wrote symbolically. Those who pore reverently and sympathetically over his gospel can trace this characteristic in many a place (e.g. 3:2; 13:3; 10: 22,23; 19:22; 19:34; there are a great many more). Here — who can doubt it? — is another eloquent example. That separation, so clearly seen even in the dim light of the tomb, between the head-wrapping and winding sheet round the body stamped itself on the memory of John. In years to come he treasured it as a symbolic picture of the divine appointment for the resurrection of the faithful: “Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.” (1 Cor. 15:23; cp. the distinction in Rom. 1:4; 6:4). Between the resurrection of Christ the Head and the rising again of those who are his Body there must needs be a significant space of time during which men either see and believe or are unable to see and yet believe just the same. Even the rather colourless word “place” — “in a place by itself” — may have been intended to have special significance, for very often in the Old Testament (and in several New Testament places also) this word has the specialised meaning of “A holy place, a sanctuary.” John’s theology (1 Jn. 2:1) and phrasing together suggest an extension of the symbolism.

All this the disciple whom Jesus loved saw with the inspiration of faith but dared not utter. So he went back to his own folk to brood on it, leaving a bewildered, less discerning Peter to go his own way. “Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own.” Without Jesus the disciples tended to fall apart. (And when disciples fall apart they show that they are without Jesus). Conversely, the news of his resurrection was to bring them together again (Luke 24:33).

NOTES: John 20:4-10

4.	Came first Gk: protos means first of more than two. Thus it is implied that Mary followed; v.11.
	Did outrun Peter, and in faith also.
5.	linen clothes. This assumes that Mt. 28:13 is known. Body stealers would not trouble to unwrap the body.
	Stooping down. Souter’s lexicon defines the meaning: ‘stretch forward the head to catch a glimpse; or peep; or peer in.’ Cp. its interesting use in Gen. 26:8 LXX, Jas, 1:25; and especially 1 Pet, 1:12, as though suggesting that angels had preceded the two apostles in this exciting exercise, and are still as eager (in a less literal sense).
6.	Seeth. The words used about John and Peter are different. Peter stared s.w. verses 12, 14. John saw with new enlightenment. Went into. The Gk. is emphatic: went right in.
7.	Gk- from upon his head. Contrast 11:44: Gk. perf The phrase in a place by itself suggests a special place.
	The words for wrapped and lying point to a distinction here of both appearance and meaning.
	The napkin upon (Gk.) his head was separate. Then what price the Turin shroud? The details of this passage, and also Rom. 1:4; 6:4; 1 Pet. 3:18; Mt. 3:16, suggest a Jesus immortal from the moment of resurrection.
8.	That other disciple, which came first. Why does John say this twice? is it so important? Indeed, why does he say it at all?
	believed Jesus to be risen; cp. v.25, 27, 29. In view of this economy of words, the repetition just mentioned is the more remarkable. In this verse, John is careful to emphasise that he was the first of those blessed disciples who believed without seeing (v.29). Note how conviction came to others (a) Mary; (b) the apostles,- (c) the two at Emmaus; (d) Thomas.
9.	Knew not; s.w. 13:12. Consider Mt. 16:21; 17:9-23; 20:19.
	He must rise again Gk: it is necessary: (a) because foretold in OT; (b) “raised again for our justification The word must mean- it was necessary.
10.	Unto their own home – and not go and tell all the fellow-disciples they could reach? (Mt. 28:7). Surely not so. It is more likely that this masculine plural means: ‘to their own (friends)’

“Golgotha” is from the Hebrew “gulgoleth” (skull; it is turned into New Testament Greek as “kranion” (cranium) and in the Latin Vulgate becomes “Calvaria.” The last of these names has found its way into the English Bible and into common use simply through the influence of the Bible of the church of Rome. It should therefore be used specially by those who have strong sympathies with Rome.

Assumption that the name is descriptive led General Gordon to identify the spot, and his conclusion is fairly commonly accepted. Sir Ambrose Fleming (Vict. Inst. 1930) has this: “Part of this cliff (at Jeremiah’s Grotto’) when seen from the front has a most remarkable resemblance to a human skull; there are the holes forming the eye sockets, and a broken nose, and a slit which resembles a mouth. When once it has been pointed out, it cannot possibly be overlooked. This skull-formation is certainly not an artificial construction and not of very recent date, and if it has existed for 1900 years there is nothing more likely than that a place showing such a curious characteristic would come to be called “Skull Hill”, or “the place of a skull”, by persons familiar with it … There is an ancient tradition that it was called also “the place of stoning.”

There is other appropriateness about this identification. The Law commanded that the burnt offering be slain on the north side of the altar (Lev. 1 :11), and the ashes of the sin-offering were to be poured out “without the camp” (Lev. 4 :12; Heb. 13 :11). Thus there is point in the use here of the word “place” (maqom) which commonly has the meaning of “a sanctuary, an altar, a holy place.”

The name Golgotha itself is intended to be read with symbolic meaning. Matthew’s phrasing seems to imply this: “a place called Golgotha, that is to say, the place of a skull.” Yet Matthew wrote for Jews who would not need to have the name interpreted for them. What then is its symbolic meaning? At least four possibilities present themselves:

1. Wordsworth has suggested that the original meaning was: “The skull of Goliath.” Certainly Nob, to which David brought Goliath’s head (1 Sam. 17 :54; 21 :9) was in the immediate vicinity of Golgotha, if not identical with it. And the entire episode lends itself readily to interpretation as a type of Christ’s greater victory. Thus: After some outstanding achievements against those who ravaged the flock, he-an eighth son, and despised by his brethren-came from Bethlehem at his father’s command, leaving his sheep, in order to fight the great Enemy alone. He put aside all human help and support, and with the first (Gen. 3 :15) of five stones bruised the adversary in the head. This success rallied the Lord’s people behind him, and they now added their onslaught and victory. In answer to enquiry: “Whose son is this?” the leaders can only reply: “We cannot tell” (Mt. 22 :41-44). He is the son of Jesse (=”God exists’), and he has for his prize a king’s daughter (Ps. 45 :14) and freedom for his oppressed people. Thereafter the men who were close kin to the Enemy become his choicest followers (2 Sam. 15:18,19).
2. The close connection with the name Gilgal suggests “the rolling away of the reproach of Egypt” (Josh. 5 :9; Col. 2 :11,12), which again was itself only part of another elaborate type of redemption. A people redeemed out of bondage were baptized “in the cloud and in the sea.” Given God’s law, they experienced a long wilderness pilgrimage before reaching their inheritance. The Jordan ( = “that which goes down”) the barrier to their progress, was divinely cut off at Adam, and they came into the Land with the Ark of God’s covenant two thousand cubits ahead of them, and then in their midst. Twelve stones were left in Jordan and twelve fresh stones were erected or the bank. Circumcision rolled away the reproach of Egypt. The manna ceased, being no longer necessary. With the blowing of Jubilee trumpets and a sevenfold circuit (cp. the Trumpets of Revelation), there came earthquake and irresistible victory over the stronghold of the Enemy. And in all this they were helped by their brethren whose own inheritance was not in the Land itself.
3. Or, yet again, in view of the use in the gospels of Hosea 10 :8,9; “They shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills, Fall on us. O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah (Gabbatha),” the Gilgal allusion may be to Hosea 9 :15: “All their wickedness is in Gilgal (Golgotha); for there I hated them: for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of my house, I will love them no more: all their princes are revolters.”
4. Quite differently, “Golgotha” may be intended to suggest the wheels (galgal of the cherubim chariot of the Lord: Ez. 10:2,6,12,13, (an impressive context!) and Dan. 7:9 (Jesus had used v. 13 about himself at his trial: Mt. 26:64). This suggestion is the more apt because of the Psalm 22 quotation derisively thrown at Jesus on the cross by the chief priests: “He trusted in the Lord that he would deliver him,” is, in the original, “He rolled himself (Heb. gol) upon the Lord” (Ps. 22:8).

Which of these ideas was intended by the early church to be associated with the name Golgotha?

There has been much discussion as to the shape of the cross of Jesus. It is a matter of little consequence. No great issues depend upon the answer. The word for “cross” is (literally) ‘a stake’, and the Greek verb for ‘crucify’ is derived from the same root. This would seem to suggest that the cross was not really a cross but simply an upright pole. But it is a known fact that this same Greek word was used for all forms of crucifixion, and there were at least three other types of cross:

1. The T shape,
2. The St. Andrew’s cross,
3. The traditional form

Of these the first two can probably be ruled out by the fact that “they set over his head his accusation written.” There is one further line of Biblical evidence which tends to rule out the third in favour of the upright stake. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.” (Jn. 3:14). Ezra 6.11RV also uses this expression “lifted up.” It would suggest that crucifixion was a Persian practice long before the Romans came on the scene. Since Moses was commanded: “Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole (or standard),” it seems likely, but not certain, that the Lord’s experience was similar. And there, none too conclusively, the matter must rest.

Drugged?

Before Jesus was actually impaled on the cross, “they gave him vinegar mingled with gall.” The vinegar was wine and the gall myrrh (Mk). It is usually assumed that the myrrh was given as a narcotic. There is a passage in the Talmud which points to this interpretation. The Talmud also states that there existed in Jerusalem a society of charitable women who made themselves responsible for providing a drink of this nature for all who were condemned to crucifixion —this in obedience to the Scripture: “Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more” (Pr. 31:6,7).

The chief difficulty here is that the narcotic powers of myrrh are not very marked, so that one is left wondering why some other more potent drug was not used for this purpose. Opium, for example, was in very common use at that time. Is it possible that Mark employs the expression “myrrhed wine” not only to suggest that the drink was medicated but also in order to make more pointed allusion to the symbolic gift of the Wise Men (Mt. 2:11)? On the other hand Matthew has the word “gall” so as to establish contact with a remarkable prophecy of Messianic suffering: “They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (Ps. 69:21).

Whatever its purpose, by contrast with the “vinegar” offered to him later in the day, now, “when he had tasted, he would not drink.” The wording here suggests that Jesus was glad enough to take the drink that was put to his lips, but when the first taste of it told him what its purpose was, he would not have it.

It was offered him repeatedly (so the Greek verb would suggest), and as often refused. A different potion was appointed for him: “The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink if”? And to have faced crucifixion and death in a state of stupefaction would have been, in a sense, to have turned away from the cup which his Father now held out to him. In any case there yet remained work-his Father’s work-to be done, as the gospels abundantly demonstrate, and for this a clear mind was necessary.

Suffering for sin

It is surely strange that one of the most remarkable archeological findings in Israel in recent years should have gone almost unnoticed —the discovery very near Jerusalem of the remains of a man who was crucified in the first century.

The experts were able to deduce that in his crucifixion one large nail was used to transfix the back of both feet to the cross. The Achilles tendon is one of the toughest pieces of tissue in the human body. Hence the procedure.

Now it is possible to see even more relevance than ever in the gospel promise made in Eden: “Thou (the serpent) shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15).

It was now “the third hour” —nine o’clock in the morning. The actual crucifixion is described in the briefest of phrases: “Golgotha, where they crucified him.” Matthew’s gospel disposes of it in a mere participial clause: “and having crucified him, they parted his garments . . .”, as though the later activity were far more important than the former— as indeed it was, to the Roman soldiers.

This brevity and simplicity of phrase in describing the physical experiences of Jesus is in marked contrast with the purple style which modern reporting would adopt for such an occurrence. All through the gospels, and in this section especially the restraint and complete absence of all striving after effect is such as to set these writings in a class by themselves. Yet each reader, if this curse of “hanging on a tree” was for his sake, is under a moral obligation to fill in for himself his own understanding and appreciation of the pain and torment, the wretchedness and shame of it all. The mind instinctively recoils from the contemplation of such hard inhuman cruelty to “the Altogether Lovely.” Nevertheless, it is a mental task that should not be evaded, that there might be clearer realization just how foul is the foulness of sin in those whom Jesus came to save from its dominion.

See Jesus, then, stripped of his garments, so that, amongst all the other curses of humanity, he might share the shame of Adam’s nakedness. (Gen. 3:8-11). See him flung down, not too gently, and stretched out weary and sore on the rough contraption that was to be his gibbet. See him held there, a soldier kneeling on one arm, whilst his fellow callously, almost casually, hummers a nail through first one palm, and than the other, and last of all through his feet also. Imagine the searing, angry pain, more savage at each repeated blow of the hammer. See the crimson trickles of blood, in which is the Life, meandering away to be lost in the dry soil. See the face of the Crucified distorted with pain as the cross with its burden is clumsily brought upright. Imagine the sickening jar in hands and feet as the cross thuds into the socket prepared for it in the ground, but especially hear the brief, earnest prayer that mingles with the stream of oaths and imprecations proceeding from the other crosses: ”Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

The shame of it

Then followed one endless hour after another of searing pain, dull ache and torturing thirst, all competing for dominance in the unutterably weary mind of the sufferer. Yet when the Bible alludes to the crucifixion of Jesus it is never in terms of the agony of the experience but the shame of it all:

“Jesus . . . endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb. 12:2).

“The reproach of Christ. . . (Heb. 11:26).

“Let me not be ashamed, O Lord; for! have called upon thee: let the wicked be ashamed …”(Ps. 31:17).

“Let not them that wait on thee be ashamed for my sake (RV: through me) . . . for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face . . . They that sit in the gate speak against me, and I was the song of drunkards . . . Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonour. . . Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. ..”(Ps. 69:6,7,12,19,20).

Numbered with transgressors

In John’s description of the crucifixion there is a remarkable redundancy of phrase: “. . they crucified him, and two other with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.” This was doubtless intended to be meaningful. These men were rebels against the established order, and here was Jesus in their midst with the title of King, as though he were a king among rebels. And so indeed he has been throughout the centuries. This triple crucifixion was doubtless so arranged, with Jesus on the centre cross, by command of Pilate. It was his way of declaring to Jewry: ‘Your precious Barabbas should be here.’

It has been, conjectured, with fair probability, that some time during that Passover day Barabbas must have gone out to Golgotha impelled by a strong natural curiosity to see this man through whose death he himself, against all expectation and all deserving, had suddenly been given life and freedom. What Barabbas might well have said to himself then, the disciple in every generation can also say with much more truth as he reads the crucifixion story: ‘That man hangs where I should be. He, undeserving, suffers the punishment which is my due. Through him I am saved from death and given liberty.’

But John’s words also draw attention to the central Bible truth concerning Jesus that “he was numbered with the transgressor:” (Is. 53:12), which words are explicitly quoted in Mark’s gospel at this point. It is a pity that modern editors of the text, following their own theories about the manuscripts, have chosen to omit the words, when there is such strong evidence in their favour.

The way in which John writes here may be taken as a subtle indication that he associated this prophecy with the crucifixion. Yet Jesus himself appropriated the same words to a different circumstance (Lk. 22:35-37)-the fact that his disciples would henceforth be reckoned offenders against society, and himself the worst of all.

Yet in neither case-Mark or Luke-can it be said that this prophecy of the Suffering Servant of Jehovah is given its true application. Only too obviously its real intention ii to stress the complete one-ness of Jesus with those whom he came to save. “Numbered with the transgressors” —the words are Isaiah’s equivalent of the fine familiar phrases in Hebrews: “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same … in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren .. . For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted” (2:14,17,18).

But of course the gospels are not in error in their use of the Isaiah passage. Clearly the disciples had come to see Jesus’ crucifixion along with two malefactors as emblematic of the deeper more valuable truth concerning himself. And the rest of his experience with these two men goes to confirm strongly this impression. As they showed themselves for what they were — the one a railer and blasphemer, the other rising to a matchless confession of a faith which received its assurance of everlasting blessedness- so also will all who claim to have died with Christ. In the day of his glory they will find themselves at his left hand or at his right, gnashing their teeth or marvelling at the loving kindness of the Lord.

This crucifying of Jesus between two thieves makes a powerful contrast with an earlier incident in his ministry. It was when Jesus “set his face stedfastly to go to Jerusalem” and when the disciples “thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear” that the sons of Zebedee came nsking “that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory” (Mk. 10:37). After all, they were the Lord’s cousins, his nearest of kin among all who had confessed discipleship. So was not this honour theirs by right? The answer of Jesus was another question: “Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” Their answer-a blithe confident affirmative.

But now one of the two was present, close to the cross, and must have thought with shame of that conversation. This, then, was the cup that Jesus had spoken of. Could they drink of that? And could they substantiate a claim to deserve being at his right and his left in his kingdom if they were not there in his agony and humiliation also where now the two suffered and cursed?

“Father, forgive them”

At this time, however, Jesus was concerned with neither thieves nor disciples nor himself, but with the Roman soldiers meting out such torture to him: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” The Greek verb implies that the prayer was repeated several times.

That this prayer was for his Roman crucifiers and not for the Jews who rejected him is made clear, first, by the lucid sequence of pronouns in Luke 23:34, and also by the words of the Lord’s own parable: “This is the heir: come, let us kill him . . . They perceived that he had spoken this parable against them” (Lk. 20:14,19). The Lord’s words in another place confirm that these Jewish leaders certainly knew what they were doing: “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloke for their sin … If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father” (Jn. 15:22,24).

“I wot that through ignorance ye did it” (Acts 3:17) seems to tell a different story; but not really, for this word agnoia is used frequently in LXX for a sin done in blameworthy ignorance. So Peter was not excusing the crucifixion of Jesus. The rulers, knowing enough of the truth about Jesus, might have known a great deal more but for their own obduracy.

In any case the prophetic Scriptures, in so many things the guide and stay of the Son of God, had plainly bidden him three times over: “Pray not for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee” (Jer. 7:16; 11:14; 14:11). At least two of these three passages have an unmistakably Messianic context (7:11 = Mk.ll:17; 7:13 = Mt. 23:37; ll:19=is. 53:7,8; 14:12 = Rev.6:4,5,6,8).

Prayer answered

If, then, it was for the soldiers who crucified him that Jesus prayed and not for his Jewish rejectors it may surely be taken us certain that such a prayer offered at such a time by such a Man would be heard by the Father and the response that he sought granted him. These men were forgiven the dreadful thing which they had done.

But since it is a cardinal truth in God’s plan of redemption that forgiveness of sins comes only through faith in Christ (even for those also who died under the Old Covenant: Rom. 3:24-26; Heb. 9:15), then is it not to be expected that the answer to the prayer of the crucified Jesus meant that ultimately these Gentile executioners were to come to a fuller knowledge of the Nazarene and to acceptance of his service in lieu of Caesar’s?

Considerations such as these almost require the remarkable conclusion with which all the synoptists round off their narrative of the Lord’s earthly life. As Jesus died, the centurion in charge of the squad stood facing him (Mk.), as though in some way fascinated by this dying man. Yet in his years of service he must have seen many men die, not a few of them by crucifixion. Evidently what he had witnessed this day—the demeanour and words of Jesus, and the darkness and earthquake (the anger of God)-had made a mighty impression on his mind-and not on his mind only, but also on the soldiers doing duty with him (Mt. 27:54). These rough men had begun by joining in the mockery of Jesus (Lk. 23:36), but now officer and men alike “feared exceedingly”, and said: “Certainly this man was righteous” (Lk.), that is, “innocent” (RSV). More than this, they “glorified God”, for they also said: “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mk.). To translate “a Son of God”, as some of the modern versions do, is an attempt to bring the meaning down to what is evidently deemed to be the limited comprehension of an ignorant Gentile. But in every other place in the gospels the identical anarthrous phrase means “the Son of God.” If the Greek phrase had read “a son of the gods,” this weaker translation might have been justified.

Was it not remarkable that a Roman should go so far as to say “This man was the Son of God”? He had seen and heard enough that day to be led to confess: “This was a good man/’or: “This was a remarkable man,” or even: “This was a holy man”; but why “The Son of God”? This centurion had been on duty earlier when the priests shouted at Pilate: “He ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God”; and also he had heard Jesus say: “Father, forgive ‘hem they know not what they do.”

There is also a fair likelihood that he and his men had heard and understood the Lord’s reciting of Psalm 22 (Study 232) especially these words “Thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly” (v.9,10). so there is nothing improbable about the fulness of conviction which his confession appears to express.

Some readers may also find special meaning in the connection of Roman soldiers gambling for the garments of Jesus and the words of faith: “If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole” (Mt. 9:21).

Such a remarkable accumulation of detail about these soldiers at the cross develops in the mind of the thoughtful reader a half-expectation that somehow these men must ultimately have been brought by God to a fuller knowledge of the Truth in Christ and to personal acceptance of the forgiveness of sins which is possible only in him. Certain considerations suggest the likelihood of this.

The centurion and soldiers on duty at Golgotha would also be the men set to guard the tomb of Jesus, for did not Pilate say: “Ye have a watch”? (Mt. 27:65). It was these men who had the best evidence of all that Jesus rose from the dead (Mt. 28:2-4). And it was only some of them (28:11) who took the bribe of the Jewish rulers. The effect on the others was evidently different.

Again, is it just coincidence that the man through whom the outreach of the gospel of salvation to Gentiles was to be divinely demonstrated was “a centurion … a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house”? Here, evidently, was an officer, now retired from service, having a settled home and a retinue of household servants and also “devout soldiers who assiduously adhered to him” (Acts 10:7). Whilst there is nothing in the narrative in Acts to link Cornelius specifically with the centurion who was at the cross, all the details and circumstances are such as would fit most harmoniously with what the gospels record. It was even possible for Peter to say to Cornelius and those with him: “That word (concerning Jesus) ye (already) know”, and this with a fulness of detail which is not readily accounted for.

The identification of these two centurions with one another can hardly be regarded as proven; yet there is a marvellous fitness about this, that the last hours of Jesus should see the conversion not only of Simon of Cyrene and of the crucified thief, not only of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea, but also of the firstfruits of the Gentiles as well.

On Pilate’s instructions there was fastened over the head of Jesus a description of the man and his crime: “Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews.” It was one of the few opportunities Pilate had to score in a small way over these chief-priests who had so astutely bullied and blackmailed him into compounding their felony. He knew it would rankle. He meant it to. But it is not impossible that Pilate appointed that inscription believing it. Jesus had made a deep impression on him, and this may have been his way of saying: “I’m sorry, but I had to.”

Whose inscription?

As anticipated, the inscription was greatly resented, and protest was made immediately. From which fact springs an interesting inference, that either the chief priests made a special journey back into Jerusalem to seek audience and so register their protest, or else Pilate was there at the crucifixion in person. The first alternative is a measure of the high degree of priestly indignation; the second of Pilate’s abiding concern about this man Jesus.

The little word “also”, which comes in the original text here (see RV) and has been somehow ignored by King James’ translators, seems to imply that, foreseeing difficulties, the priests had already prepared an inscription of their own to put over the cross of Jesus. But Pilate would have none of that.

This protest by the priests was a gross impertinence: “Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews” (observe the subtle dropping of the definite article)). These men must have been flushed with the success that had attended their handling of both Pilate and Jesus, or they would surely have never presumed thus to dictate to their governor.

However, Pilate would not budge. Although later on (Jn. 19 :31,38) he was accommodating enough, just now regarding this he was conceding nothing. “What I have written, I have written.” And nothing through the centuries has been able to alter it. Jesus must be king of the Jews one day. This was Pilate’s unwitting prophecy. Luke uses the word grammata, which in 2 Tim. 3 :15 means “the Scriptures.” It ranks with his earlier prophecies: “Behold, the man,” and “Behold your King,” and with that of Caiaphas when he said: “It is expedient that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.”

Variant readings

Much discussion has raged over the fact that whilst all four gospels record the inscription, no two records read exactly alike. Explanation can be sought, maybe, in the added detail that it was written in Greek, Latin and Hebrew (Aramaic, the language of Palestine). According to this, Matthew, Mark and Luke each quote the inscription as it appeared in the language of the people they were writting for—Matthew in Aramaic, Mark in Latin, and Luke in Greek-whilst John combines them all. A small difficulty still remains in the addition by John of the words “of Nazareth.” It would be a mistake to overlook this, for here is a reminder of how the early days of Jesus in Nazareth were themselves an indirect fulfilment of the words of the prophets: “He shall be called a Nazarene” (Mt. 2 :23). Nazareth means “Branch”. In his crucifixion Jesus was the Branch of David grafted on to the dead wood of human nature, making it a Tree of Life. Isaiah had foretold (11 :1) that Jesus would be “the Branch out of the stem of Jesse,” the King-Priest who, filled with the spirit of the Lord, will diffuse the knowledge of God everywhere, and (after his resurrection) rally the Gentiles to himself.

The three languages also proclaim the universality of the gospel of the Cross: “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me” (Jn. 12 :32) —not all without exception, but all without distinction of race or station, the true Catholicism (cp.Jn. 11:52).

“Nigh to the city”

This witness of Pilate’s to the kingship of Jesus had the widest possible publicity, “for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city.” What John may have meant here, even more emphatically, is: “for the Place (i.e. the Holy Place, the Temple) of the city . . . was nigh at hand” (so RVm). In other words, few out of those massive crowds going to the Temple on Passover day could miss seeing and knowing about Jesus of Nazareth.

More than this, by “the Place . . . nigh at hand” John is steering his readers yet again to Moses’ law about a man found murdered (Dt. 21:3). In that scripture, except they be washed, elders, judges, and priests were accounted responsible.