The Rejected King, the Opened Graves, and the Sealed Tomb

The night hearing is followed by a dawn session, perhaps to give the decision a daytime form. “To put him to death” names the goal, but under Roman rule the council could not carry out an execution itself; John records them telling Pilate, “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death” (John 18:31). The counsel is about how to bring Rome to do it.

An inscription found at Caesarea in 1961 names “Pontius Pilatus, prefect of Judea”, the only stone that mentions him. He governed from AD 26 to 36 and normally lived at Caesarea, coming up to Jerusalem at festivals with troops. Matthew calls him hegemon, governor, the title of 10:18: “ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake.”

“When he saw that he was condemned” leaves open what Judas expected; the text does not say he foresaw a death sentence. Acts gives a different account of his end, in which Judas buys a field and falls headlong (Acts 1:18). Matthew alone has him bring the money back.

Deuteronomy 27:25 names the deed exactly: “Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent person.” Judas’s confession is a legal one. “What is that to us?” is the answer of the men who paid the reward.

“In the temple” is naos, the sanctuary itself, not the outer courts, as if the coins were flung toward the holy place. The verb for hanging, apancho, is the one the Greek Old Testament uses of Ahithophel, David’s trusted counsellor who went over to Absalom and then hanged himself (2 Samuel 17:23).

“Treasury” is korbanas, from the Hebrew qorban, an offering dedicated to God, the “Corban” of Mark 7:11. The logic resembles Deuteronomy 23:18, which kept a harlot’s hire out of the house of the LORD. They have scruples about where the money goes, and none about what it bought.

Tradition places the field at Hakeldama, on the slope of the Hinnom valley south of the city, near where Jeremiah broke a potter’s vessel at the gate of the potsherds (Jeremiah 19:2, 10–11). Ground worked out for potter’s clay was useless for crops and could be bought cheap.

“Unto this day” shows the name was still in use when Matthew wrote. Acts 1:19 gives it in Aramaic, Aceldama, and explains it differently, as the place where Judas’s own blood was spilled. Both accounts agree the field was known by what it cost.

A few manuscripts omit the prophet’s name or read Zechariah, a sign that early copyists felt the difficulty. “The price of him that was valued” plays on time, price, and timao, to value or to honour: the one priced by the children of Israel is the one they declined to honour.

Zechariah 11:13 in Hebrew says “cast it unto the potter”, yotser; the Syriac version reads “into the treasury”, otsar, a difference of one letter. Matthew’s account uses both: the priests will not put the money in the treasury (verse 6) and buy a potter’s field with it (verse 7).

In Matthew only outsiders say “King of the Jews”: the wise men at his birth (2:2), Pilate, the soldiers, and the charge nailed over the cross. His own people’s leaders say “King of Israel” (verse 42). The title that opened the book in the mouths of Gentiles returns in theirs at the end.

“Accused” is katagoreo, to bring a charge, the verb of the courtroom. Pliny the Younger, governing Bithynia about AD 112, wrote that he executed Christians who kept refusing after being asked three times, holding that stubborn obstinacy deserved punishment whatever the charge (Letters 10.96).

“Witness against” is katamartyreo, the verb Caiaphas used in 26:62: “what is it which these witness against thee?” The high priest and the governor put almost the same question, and the same silence answers both.

“To never a word” renders an emphatic Greek phrase: not even to one word. Isaiah 52:15 in the Greek Old Testament says that many nations shall marvel at the servant and kings shall shut their mouths at him. Here a Roman governor marvels, and the prisoner’s mouth is the one shut.

No source outside the Gospels mentions a Passover amnesty. The Mishnah allows a Passover lamb to be slaughtered for someone “whom they have promised to bring out of prison” (Pesahim 8:6), which some cite as indirect evidence of releases at the feast. “Was wont” means was accustomed.

“Notable” is episemos, well known, notorious. Barabbas is Aramaic bar Abba, “son of the father”. Mark says he lay bound with rebels who had committed murder in the insurrection (Mark 15:7); Matthew gives no charge, only his fame.

Some manuscripts, and copies known to Origen, read “Jesus Barabbas” in verses 16 and 17, so that Pilate asks: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus called Christ? “Jesus which is called Christ” is the phrase of the genealogy (1:16), and Pilate uses it twice (verses 17, 22).

“Envy” is phthonos. Philo, a contemporary, describes Pilate as inflexible, stubborn and cruel, and lists his briberies, insults and executions without trial (Embassy to Gaius 301–302). Matthew’s Pilate reads motives well and still yields.

The “judgment seat” is the bema, a raised tribunal platform. There are six dreams in Matthew: five guide Joseph and the wise men around the child’s birth (1:20; 2:12, 13, 19, 22), and the last comes to a Gentile woman at his death. Later tradition named her Procula and honoured her as a saint.

“Destroy” is apollymi, the verb used when Herod sought “the young child to destroy him” (2:13) and when the Pharisees first took counsel “how they might destroy him” (12:14). The plot begun in 12:14 reaches its aim through a persuaded crowd.

The choice is put as a straight either or, and the answer comes back in one word. Mark says Barabbas was held among rebels who had committed murder in the insurrection (Mark 15:7): a real insurgent against Rome is preferred to the man accused of claiming a crown.

“Let him be crucified” is one word in Greek, staurotheto. Crucifixion was Rome’s punishment for slaves and rebels, so the demand asks the governor to treat Jesus as an enemy of the state. Pilate’s question hands the crowd the verdict that belonged to him.

“Cried out the more” is the pattern of the two blind men at Jericho, who “cried the more” when rebuked (20:31). They shouted for mercy; this crowd shouts for a cross. Pilate’s question about what evil he has done goes unanswered: no one names a crime.

Hand washing to disclaim blood guilt was a Jewish rite. Deuteronomy 21:6–7 has the elders of a town wash their hands over a heifer and say, “Our hands have not shed this blood”; Psalm 26:6 says, “I will wash mine hands in innocency.” Pilate performs, before a Jewish crowd, a gesture they would recognise.

“His blood be on us” uses an Old Testament formula for accepting liability for a death (2 Samuel 1:16; Joshua 2:19). Jeremiah on trial warned his judges that killing him would bring “innocent blood upon yourselves, and upon this city” (Jeremiah 26:15). The words are the crowd’s, spoken in this courtyard, not a sentence pronounced by God or by Jesus.

“Scourged” is phragelloo, a loanword from the Latin flagellum, a whip of leather thongs weighted with bone or metal. Roman flogging before crucifixion had no set limit; Josephus tells of another Jesus, son of Ananias, flayed to the bone before the governor Albinus (War 6.304).

The “common hall” is the praetorium, the governor’s headquarters in Jerusalem, likely Herod’s palace. The “band” is a speira, a cohort, nominally six hundred men; the auxiliaries in Judea were recruited largely from non-Jewish towns such as Caesarea and Sebaste, men with no love for Jewish claimants to kingship.

A soldier’s cloak, chlamys, dyed red, stands in for royal purple; Mark and John call it purple. Stripping him first is part of the humiliation, done before a whole cohort.

“Platted” means plaited. A wreath of thorns may have mimicked the radiate crowns of rulers on coins, spikes pointing outward like rays. “Bowed the knee” is gonypeteo, the posture of the father who knelt to Jesus to beg for his son (17:14); here it is done as a joke.

The soldiers repeat what the council members did in 26:67; the spitting crosses the line between Jew and Gentile. Jesus had predicted it exactly: delivered “to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge” (20:19). “Smote” is imperfect: they kept hitting.

Condemned men were often led out naked; putting his own clothes back on him may reflect a concession to Jewish feeling about nakedness, though the text gives no reason. The clothes matter to the account for another reason: within hours they will be divided by lot (verse 35).

Cyrene in Libya had a large Jewish community, and Jerusalem had a synagogue of Cyrenians (Acts 6:9). Mark names Simon’s sons, Alexander and Rufus (Mark 15:21), apparently known to his readers; Matthew drops them. “Compelled” is angareuo, the soldier’s right to press a civilian into service (5:41).

Golgotha is Aramaic gulgulta, skull; the Latin calvaria gave English “Calvary”. The traditional site, under the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, lay then just outside the city wall in a disused quarry, near tombs cut into the rock face.

The Greek behind the King James has oxos, vinegar; the oldest manuscripts read oinos, wine. Either way the words recall Psalm 69:21: “They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” He tastes it, so he knows what it is, and declines.

The quotation of Psalm 22:18 is missing from the oldest manuscripts of Matthew and appears to have been added from John 19:24; the King James text carries it. Roman law later recognised an executioner’s claim to the condemned man’s clothing. These garments were the last things Jesus owned.

“Watched” is tereo, to keep guard. The same verb describes the centurion “watching Jesus” in verse 54 and the guards at the tomb, the “keepers”, in 28:4. From the cross to the grave, Jesus is under guard.

“Accusation” is aitia, the charge. Suetonius describes a placard giving the cause of punishment carried before a condemned man to his execution (Caligula 32). Each Gospel gives the wording slightly differently; Matthew’s alone begins “THIS IS JESUS”.

Isaiah 53:12 said the servant “was numbered with the transgressors”; the King James text of Mark 15:28 cites it at this point. It is an inference, but a reasonable one, that these two bandits were from the same rising as Barabbas, whose place Jesus has taken.

“Reviled” is blasphemeo, the verb from which “blasphemy” comes. The charge on which the council condemned him (26:65) is now committed against him by passers by. “Wagging their heads” is Psalm 22:7: “they shoot out the lip, they shake the head.”

“Save thyself” mocks his name. Jesus is Yeshua, “the LORD saves”, and the angel explained it at his birth: “thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” (1:21). The passers by demand a salvation for one man only, himself.

Elders, chief priests and scribes are the three groups named in the first passion prediction: he must “suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed” (16:21). Every name on that list is now standing at the cross.

“We will believe him” is really “believe upon him”, a condition set on a sign. The Pharisees had asked for a sign twice (12:38; 16:1) and been promised only the sign of Jonah, three days in the heart of the earth. They are offered it, and do not wait.

The Wisdom of Solomon has the ungodly plot against the just man in almost these terms: “if the just man be the son of God, he will help him, and deliver him from the hand of his enemies... let us condemn him with a shameful death” (Wisdom 2:18, 20). “If he will have him” means if he delights in him, as in Psalm 22:8.

“Cast the same in his teeth” was 1611 English for reproached him. The verb is oneidizo, used in the beatitude, “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you” (5:11). Luke tells of one of the two taking Jesus’ side (Luke 23:40–43); in Matthew both join in.

Noon to three in the afternoon. A solar eclipse is impossible at Passover, which falls at full moon, a point Christian writers such as Julius Africanus were already making. Amos had foretold a day when God would “cause the sun to go down at noon” and darken the earth in the clear day (Amos 8:9).

Mark gives the cry in Aramaic, “Eloi”; Matthew writes “Eli”, the Hebrew of Psalm 22:1, while “sabachthani” is Aramaic (the Hebrew psalm has azavtani). Matthew’s “Eli” makes the bystanders’ mistake in the next verse easier to understand.

“Eli” sounds like Eliyahu, Elijah. Jewish piety held that Elijah comes to the help of the righteous in trouble. On the way down from the mountain, Jesus had told the disciples that Elijah had already come, and they had done to him whatever they wished (17:12).

The vinegar is oxos, the cheap sour wine Roman soldiers drank, perhaps from a jar kept at the site for the guards. “Reed” is kalamos, the same word as the reed the soldiers put in his hand as a sceptre and then beat him with (verses 29–30).

“Let be” means wait, leave him. Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus add a sentence here: another took a spear and pierced his side, and water and blood came out. It seems to have been copied in from John 19:34, where the piercing comes after death; here it would come before.

“Ghost” in 1611 meant spirit, as in Holy Ghost. Mark writes that Jesus “gave up the ghost” with exepneusen, he breathed out (Mark 15:37). Matthew writes apheken to pneuma, he let go his spirit, using the verb of release and forgiveness, as in “forgive us our debts” (6:12).

The temple had two great curtains, one at the entrance to the Holy Place and one before the Holy of Holies; Matthew does not say which. Josephus describes the outer one as a Babylonian tapestry embroidered with a panorama of the heavens (War 5.212–214). “Rent” is schizo, the same verb for veil and rocks.

“Slept” is the Bible’s common word for the dead, as in Daniel 12:2: “many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake.” Ezekiel 37:12 had God say, “I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves.” Only Matthew records this.

“The holy city” is Matthew’s name for Jerusalem, used when the devil set Jesus on the pinnacle of the temple (4:5); no other Gospel calls it that. The city that has just executed Jesus still carries the title, and its dead are the first to walk into it.

The centurion commanded about eighty men. His words have no article in Greek, “truly this was God’s son” or “a son of God”. On the coins he was paid with, the emperor Tiberius was styled “son of the divine Augustus”. A Roman officer gives the title to a crucified man.

“Ministering” is diakoneo, the verb Jesus used of his own mission in 20:28, “not to be ministered unto, but to minister”. The women have been doing, all the way from Galilee, what the Son of man came to do. “Afar off” recalls Psalm 38:11: “my kinsmen stand afar off.”

This is Mary Magdalene’s first appearance in Matthew. Magdala was a fishing town on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee. James and Joses are also the names of two of Jesus’ brothers in 13:55; whether this Mary is their mother is debated. Zebedee’s wife asked for her sons’ thrones in 20:20 and now stands at the cross.

The law required that a hanged man’s body not remain overnight (Deuteronomy 21:22–23), and the sabbath was near. Arimathaea is probably Ramathaim, Samuel’s birthplace (1 Samuel 1:1). “Was Jesus’ disciple” is the verb matheteuo, to be made a disciple, which returns in the last command, “teach all nations” (28:19).

Rome often left crucified bodies on the cross as a warning. In 1968 an ossuary found at Giv‘at ha-Mivtar in Jerusalem held the bones of a crucified man named Yehohanan, a nail still through his heel bone, showing that a crucified man could receive family burial. Pilate grants the body to a disciple on request.

“Linen cloth” is sindon, fine linen, and “clean” means fresh, unused. A later rabbinic tradition says Rabban Gamaliel asked to be buried in plain linen so that funeral costs would stop ruining families (Ketubot 8b). Joseph’s linen is both costly and simple.

Most tombs of the period were closed with a squared block; a rolling disc stone, a golel, was rare and marked a wealthy family’s tomb. Joseph’s tomb is newly cut, so no other body had lain there. He rolls the stone himself and leaves.

“The other Mary” is Matthew’s shorthand for Mary the mother of James and Joses from verse 56, and he uses it again at the tomb (28:1). “Sitting over against the sepulchre” is the mourner’s posture, facing the grave, like Job’s friends who sat with him in silence (Job 2:13).

“The preparation”, paraskeue, was the day of getting ready for the sabbath, and in modern Greek the word still names Friday. So “the next day” is the sabbath itself, though Matthew does not call it that: chief priests and Pharisees go to a Gentile governor on the holy day.

“Sir” is kyrie, lord, their address to Pilate. “That deceiver” is planos, from planao, the verb Jesus used for the false Christs who “shall deceive many” (24:5). “After three days” matches the sign of Jonah, “three days and three nights” (12:40), which was said in their hearing.

“The last error shall be worse than the first” echoes Jesus’ saying about the unclean spirit that returns: “the last state of that man is worse than the first” (12:45). “Error” is plane, from the same root as “deceiver”. “Made sure” is asphalizo, to secure.

“Watch” is koustodia, a Latin loanword, custodia, the usual term for a Roman military guard, which suggests soldiers, and 28:14 speaks of the matter reaching the governor’s ears. “Make it as sure as ye can” may carry a dry edge: secure it as well as you know how.

A seal was a cord across the stone fixed at both ends with clay or wax stamped with an official mark. Darius sealed the stone over Daniel’s den with his own signet, “that the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel” (Daniel 6:17). Daniel came out alive the next morning.