Ep. 142: The Burial of Jesus
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MATTHEW 27:57-61, MARK 15:42-47, LUKE 23:50-56, JOHN 19:38-42
One other scene remains to be recorded. A strange application came to Pilate. It was from one apparently well known, a man not only of wealth and standing, whose noble bearing corresponded to his social condition and who was known as a just and a good man. Joseph of Arimathea was a Sanhedrist, but he had not consented either to the decision or the deed of his colleagues. It must have been generally known that he was one of those ‘who waited for the Kingdom of God.’
But he had advanced beyond what that expression implies. Secretly, for fear of the Jews. He was a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Joseph, now no longer a secret disciple, but bold in his reverent love, would show the greatest respect to the dead body of his Master. And the Divinely ordered sequence of circumstances not only aided his purpose but invested all with deepest symbolic significance. It was Friday afternoon, and the Sabbath was drawing near. No time, therefore, was to be lost, if due honour were to be paid to the Body.
Pilate gave it to Joseph of Arimathea. Such was within his power, and a favour not infrequently accorded in like circumstances. But two things must have powerfully impressed the Roman Governor and deepened his former thoughts about Jesus; first, that the death on the cross had taken place so rapidly, a circumstance on which he personally questioned the Centurion and then the bold appearance and request of such a man as Joseph of Arimathea.
The proximity of the holy Sabbath and the consequent need of haste may have suggested or determined the proposal of Joseph to lay the Body of Jesus in his own unused rock-hewn tomb. Joseph, with those who attended him, wrapped the sacred Body in a clean linen cloth and rapidly carried It to the rock-hewn tomb in the garden close by.
Such a tomb (Meartha) had niches (Kukhin), where the dead were laid. It will be remembered that at the entrance there was ‘a court,’ nine feet square, where ordinarily the bier was deposited, and its bearers gathered to do the last offices for the dead. There we suppose Joseph to have carried the body and then the last scene to have taken place. For now, another had come. The same boldness, which had brought Joseph to open confession, also motivated that other Sanhedrist, Nicodemus. He now came, bringing ‘a roll’ of myrrh and aloes, in the fragrant mixture well known to the Jews for the purposes of anointing or burying.
It was in ‘the court’ of the tomb that the hasty embalmment took place. None of Jesus’ former disciples seems to have taken part in the burial. John may have withdrawn to bring tidings to and to comfort Mary; the others also, that had stood afar off, beholding, appear to have left. Only a few faithful ones, notably among them Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, the mother of Joses, stood over against the tomb, watching at some distance where and how the body of Jesus was laid. It would scarcely have been following Jewish manners if these women had mingled more closely with the two Sanhedrists and their attendants. From where they stood, they could only have had a dim view of what passed within the court and this may explain how, on their return, they prepared spices and ointments for honouring Jesus after the Sabbath was past.
For, it is of the greatest importance to remember that haste characterised all that was done. It seems as if the ‘clean linen cloth’ in which the body had been wrapped, was now torn into swathes, into which the body, limb by limb, was now bound, no doubt, between layers of myrrh and aloes, with the head wrapped in a napkin. And so they laid him to rest in the niche of the rock-hewn new tomb.
And as they went out, they rolled, as was the custom, a ‘great stone’ - the Golel - to close the entrance to the tomb, probably leaning against it for support, as was the practice, a smaller stone, the so-called Dopheq. It would be where the one stone was laid against the other, that on the next day, Sabbath though it was, the Jewish authorities would have affixed the seal, so that the slightest disturbance might become apparent.
This is an extract from the book, Jesus : Life and Times, available for £12 here (Finalist for Academic Book of the year at 2023 CRT awards)