Matthew 27:57-66

Matthew 27:57-61 Joseph Buries the Body of Jesus

(Mk 15:42-47; Lk 23:50-56)

⁵⁷ Late in the afternoon,

a rich man from Arimathaea, named Joseph, came along.

He had in fact become a disciple of Jesus.

⁵⁸ He approached Pilate

and requested the body of Jesus.

Pilate directed that the body be handed over.

⁵⁹ Joseph took the body

and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth.

⁶⁰ He placed it in his own new vault

that he had had hollowed out of the rock face.

With evening a new day started.

Joseph of Arimathea approached Pilate for the body of Jesus, and it was given to him.

Joseph appeared nowhere else in the Gospel narrative. According to Matthew he was:

a wealthy man,
not a member of the Jewish Council,
living close to (or in) Jerusalem,
already a previously unnoticed disciple of Jesus,
who owned the vault somewhere close to Golgotha, in which he laid the dead body of Jesus.

Fittingly for Matthew, a disciple buried Jesus. He worked alone. After he had performed his role, he disappeared as silently as he had appeared.

Matthew was careful to make the point that the vault in which Jesus was buried was not an unidentified vault. There would be no possible mistake identifying the empty vault on Sunday.

Jesus’ dead body was not anointed, because the anointing had already been done by the unidentified woman at the house of Simon the leper while Jesus was still alive [26:12]. However, the body was sensitively wrapped in a clean linen cloth. (The Law’s requirement of a ritually clean cloth were important to Matthew.)

… He rolled a large rock across the entrance to the vault

and departed.

Customarily, rock tombs outside the walls of the city were closed by great stones to keep out marauding animals and unwanted humans.

⁶¹ Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary,

sitting opposite the vault.

The two Marys sat watching. They had witnessed the whole event; they knew the location of the vault.

Matthew 27:62-66 The Jewish Leadership Requests a Guard at the Tomb

The incident was Matthew’s own composition, added for the purpose of assisting his community of disciples in their ongoing disputes with mainline Jews, many of whom contested the disciples’ claims to Jesus’ resurrection:

Some opponents maintained that the tombs had been confused, and that the empty tomb was not the one in which Jesus’ body had been buried,
Others claimed that the disciples stole the body under cover of darkness.

⁶² On the following day,

that is the day after the Day of Preparation,

the chief priests and Pharisees met with Pilate,

Pharisees had been absent during the whole long account of Jesus’ arrest, trials and passion. Matthew brought them back to centre stage, largely because his own community’s ongoing conflicts with the synagogue were orchestrated by those who followed in their footsteps.

⁶³ and said, “Excellency, we recalled that that deceiver said

while he was still alive,

‘After three days I shall rise’.

⁶⁴ So give orders that the tomb be made secure

until the third day,

just in case his disciples come and steal him

and tell the people,

‘He has risen from the dead’;

and their last mistake will be worse than the first.”

⁶⁵ Pilate said to them,

“You have your guard.

Go and make it secure, as you know best.”

⁶⁶ They went off, and after they had sealed the stone,

they made the tomb secure by means of a guard.

The whole incident was ironic. Matthew wished to show how the leaders’ own machinations served only to authenticate the claim of Jesus’ resurrection:

By sealing the stone, they prevented others from opening it and stealing the body of Jesus.
By providing a guard of Roman soldiers, they ensured the presence of witnesses to observe the angel’s dramatic opening of the tomb.

Next >> Matthew 28:1-10