The Tomb Is Open, and the Message Goes Beyond It

The sabbath ended at sunset on Saturday, when the markets could open again, so the spices were bought that evening. “Anoint” here is the ordinary verb for rubbing oil on a body, not the word from which “Christ” comes. After a day and a half in a warm tomb, this is devotion, not preservation.

“The first day of the week” is literally “the first of the sabbaths”, the Jewish habit of counting the days onward from the sabbath. Mark pairs “very early” with “at the rising of the sun”, the edge of dawn. This day would later be called the Lord’s day (Revelation 1:10).

The verb is imperfect: they kept asking one another as they walked. A disc-shaped stone ran in a sloping channel, so rolling it down into place was far easier than rolling it back up. Joseph could close the tomb; three women could not open it.

“When they looked” is literally “looking up”, the verb Mark uses for the blind receiving sight (8:24, 10:52), and it suggests the tomb stood above them in the hillside. The clause “for it was very great” sits oddly late, explaining why the open entrance could be seen from a distance.

The “long white garment” is a stole, the same word as the scribes’ “long clothing” in 12:38, here worn by a figure of a very different kind. The right side was the side of honour. He is sitting, calmly, as if waiting for them.

“Of Nazareth” is “the Nazarene”, the provincial label the maid threw at Peter (14:67), now spoken with no contempt at all. “Which was crucified” is a perfect participle: the crucified one, a lasting description. “He is risen” is passive in Greek, he was raised, with God as the one who raised him.

The messengers commissioned first are women, in a world that discounted them as witnesses; Josephus says women’s testimony was not accepted in court. “Goeth before you” is present tense: he is already on his way, and they are to follow him north.

“Amazed” is literally ecstasy: bewilderment had seized them. The Greek of the last clause ends on the little word gar, “for”, which almost never closes a Greek sentence, let alone a book. “Neither said they any thing to any man” is a double negative, total silence.

The new section reintroduces Mary Magdalene as though she had not just appeared, and it names “the first day of the week” with a different Greek phrase from verse 2. Shifts in vocabulary of this kind are part of the case scholars weigh about these closing verses. Luke 8:2 also records the seven devils.

Jewish mourning lasted seven days after a burial, and this is only the third, so the followers are in the rawest part of it, weeping in the customary way. The report reaches them while they are weeping for the very man she says she has seen.

“Seen of her” uses theaomai, to behold, a verb found nowhere else in Mark. “Believed not” is the note these verses keep striking. At Nazareth Jesus marvelled at unbelief among his own people (6:6); now it is found among his own followers.

“In another form” uses morphe, the root of the word for his transfiguration in 9:2, where he was changed before them. Here the change seems to be one that kept him from being recognised. “Into the country” means out into the fields, away from the city.

“The residue” means the rest, a 1611 word for what remains. Luke’s fuller account has the two greeted on their return with “The Lord is risen indeed” (Luke 24:34); here they meet the same disbelief Mary did.

“Upbraided” is the verb used of the men crucified beside Jesus, who “reviled him” (15:32). The reproach he suffered from them he now aims at his own, for refusing the word of the witnesses. They are reclining at a meal, as they were when he told them one of them would betray him (14:18).

“Every creature” is literally “all the creation”, the word Mark used in 10:6 and 13:19 for “the beginning of the creation”. “Go ye” is a participle in Greek, having gone: the going is assumed, and the command is to preach.

“Damned” in 1611 meant condemned by sentence, and the Greek is the verb used when the council “condemned him to be guilty of death” (14:64). The same word that fell on Jesus in the high priest’s house now names the verdict on unbelief.

“In my name” recalls the man in 9:38 who was casting out devils in Jesus’ name and whom John tried to stop. “New tongues” is a phrase found nowhere else in the New Testament; Acts describes speaking with “other tongues” (Acts 2:4) and with tongues at Caesarea and Ephesus (10:46, 19:6).

Laying hands on the sick is what Jesus did at Nazareth (6:5), and the twelve anointed the sick with oil on their first mission (6:13). Papias, as quoted by Eusebius, told of Justus Barsabbas drinking poison and suffering no harm, a tradition from the second century.

“Received up” is the verb the Greek Old Testament uses for Elijah taken up into heaven (2 Kings 2:11). In Mark’s own narration Jesus has never before been called “the Lord”; the title appears here and in the next verse for the first time outside speech and quotation.

“Confirming” is bebaioo, a legal and commercial word for ratifying or guaranteeing, as a seller warrants the goods. “Every where” answers verse 8, where the women said nothing to anyone. The final “Amen” is a liturgical close added in later manuscripts.