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Matthew 28:2. It is wrong to take the aorists in a pluperfect sense (Castalio, Kuinoel, Kern, Ebrard), or to conceive of the action of the ἦλθε as not yet completed (de Wette). Matthew represents what is here recorded as taking place in presence of the women (ἦλθε … θεωρῆσαι … καὶ ἰδού), whose attention, however, had been so much occupied with the accompanying phenomena, that they did not observe (Matthew 28:5-6) the circumstance itself of our Lord’s emerging from the grave (which, besides, must have been invisible to the outward eye owing to the nature of the body He had now assumed, comp. on Matthew 28:17). The other evangelists make no mention of this (legendary) supernatural and visible rolling away of the stone; and, though differing as to the number of the angels, they agree in representing them as having appeared inside the grave. Here, if anywhere, however, amid so much that is supernatural, must we be prepared to expect divergent accounts of what took place, above all in regard to the angelic manifestations, which are matters depending on individual observation and experience (comp. on John 20:12), and not the objective perceptions of impartial and disinterested spectators.

γάρ] assigning the reason for the violent earthquake which, as a divine σημεῖον, formed an appropriate accompaniment to this miraculous angelic manifestation.

κ. ἐκαθήτο, κ.τ.λ.] as the heaven-sent guardian and interpreter of the empty tomb.

Matthew 28:3 f. Ἡ ἰδέα αὐτοῦ] his appearance, his outward aspect, found nowhere else in the New Testament, though occurring in Daniel 1:15, 2Ma 3:16, and frequently in classical authors. On the relation of this term to εἶδος, see Stallbaum, ad Plat. Rep. p. 596 A, and Parmen. p. 128 E; and comp. Ameis on Hom. Od. ix. 508, Appendix. The appearance of the countenance is meant; see what follows. Comp. Matthew 17:2.

ὡς ἀστραπή] not: as having the form, but as shining with the brightness of lightning. Comp. Plat. Phaedr. p. 254 B: εἶδου τὴν ὄψιν ἀστράπτουσαν. For the white raiment, comp. 2Ma 11:8; Acts 1:10. The sentinels were convulsed (ἐσείσθησαν, 3 Esdr. 4:36) with error at the sight of the angel (αὐτοῦ), and became as powerless as though they had been dead. The circumstance of these latter being mentioned again at this point is in strict keeping with the connection of Matthew’s narrative.

Matthew 28:5 f. Αποκριθείς] said in view of the terrifying effect which he saw was being produced upon the women by what was taking place. Comp. on Matthew 11:25.

μὴ φοβεῖσθε ὑμεῖς] ὑμεῖς is neither to be understood as a vocative (O vos!), nor to be referred to what follows (both of which Fritzsche has suggested); but, as the simplicity of the address and a due regard to the sense require, is to be taken thus: ye should not be afraid, ὑμεῖς being thus regarded as forming a contrast to the sentinels, who are paralyzed with terror. To say that no particular emphasis ever rests upon the personal pronoun (de Wette) is to say what, as regards the whole of the New Testament, is simply not the case (instance also Mark 13:9; Acts 8:24).

οἶδα γὰρ, κ.τ.λ.] Ground of the reassuring terms in which the angel addresses them; he knows the loving purpose for which they are come, and what joyful news he has to tell them!

Matthew 28:7. Προάγει] he is in the act of going before you to Galilee; ὅτι is recitative. Bengel correctly observes: “Verba discipulis dicenda se porrigunt usque ad videbitis.” Accordingly ὑμᾶς and ὄψεσθε refer to the disciples (comp. Matthew 26:32), not to the women as well, who, in fact, saw Jesus forthwith; and see Matthew 28:10. For the meeting itself, which is here promised, see Matthew 28:16 ff.

ἐκεῖ] therefore not previously in Jerusalem or anywhere else in Judaea. Between what is here stated and the narratives of Luke and John there is a manifest and irreconcilable difference. In the Stud. u. Krit. 1869, p. 532 ff., Graf still tries in vain to make out a case in favour of assuming, as matter of course, the expiry of the festival period before the προάγει and ὄψ. Observe, moreover, the ὄψεσθε; on no earlier occasion than that of their meeting in Galilee were they to be favoured with a sight of Him.

εἶπον ὑμῖν] I have told you it, in the sense of: take this as my intimation of the fact (see on John 6:36), thus conjoining with the announcement a hint carefully to note how certainly it will be verified by the result. It is wrong, therefore, to suppose that for εἶπον we should read εἶπεν, after Mark 16:7 (Maldonatus, Michaelis), in which case some assume an error in translation (Bolten, Eichhorn, Buslav, de ling. orig. ev. M. p. 67); others, an error on the part of the transcriber (Scholten); and others, again, an erroneous use of Mark (Schneckenburger, Holtzmann). The ἰδού, εἶπον ὑμῖν is here peculiar to Matthew.

Matthew 28:8 Μετὰ φόβου, ἐφʼ οἷς εἶδον παραδόξοις· μετὰ χαρᾶς δὲ, ἐφʼ οἷς ἤκουσαν εὐαγγελίοις, Euthymius Zigabenus.

μεγάλης] applying to both substantives. For similar instances of the mingling of fear with joy (Virg. Aen. i. 514, xi. 807, al.), consult Wetstein; Köster in the Stud. u. Krit. 1862, p. 351.

Matthew 28:9. On seeing the strange and superhuman appearance presented by the risen Lord, the women are so filled with consternation (μὴ φοβεῖσθε, Matthew 28:10) that they take hold of His feet in a suppliant attitude (ἐκράτ. αὐτοῦ τ. πόδας), and testify their submission and reverence by the act of προσκύνησις. Bengel says correctly: “Jesum ante passionem alii potius alieniores adorarunt quam discipuli.”

Matthew 28:10. Μὴ φοβεῖσθε· ὑπάγετε, ἀπαγγ.] Asyndeton, the matter being pressing, urgent.

τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς μου] He thus designates His disciples (comp. on John 20:17; Justin, c. Tr. 106), not πρὸς τιμὴν αὐτῶν (Euthymius Zigabenus), for which there was no occasion, but in view of that conception of Him as a superhuman being which had so profoundly impressed the women prostrate at His feet.

ἵνα] does not state the purport of the order involved in ἀπαγγ. (de Wette; there is nothing whatever of the nature of an order about ἀπαγ.), but the idea is: take word to my brethren (namely, about my resurrection, about your having seen me, about my having spoken to you, and what I said), in order that (as soon as they receive these tidings from you) they may proceed to Galilee, Matthew 26:32.

κἀκεῖ με ὄψονται] is not to be regarded as dependent on ἵνα, but: and there they shall see me. This repetition of the directions about going to Galilee (Matthew 28:7), to which latter our evangelist gives considerable prominence as the scene of the new reunion (Matthew 28:16 ff.), cannot be characterized as superfluous (de Wette, Bruno Bauer), or even as poor and meaningless (Keim), betraying the hand of a later editor, but is intended to be express and emphatic; comp. Steinmeyer. With the exception of John 21, the other canonical Gospels, in which, however, we cannot include the spurious conclusion of Mark, make no mention of any appearance of the risen Lord in Galilee; according to John 20, Jesus remained at least eight days in Jerusalem, as did also His disciples, to whom He there manifested Himself on two occasions, though it would appear from John 21 that the third manifestation took place in Galilee, while Luke, on the other hand (Matthew 24:49; Acts 1:4; Acts 13:31), excludes Galilee altogether, just as Matthew excludes Judaea. To harmonize these divergent accounts is impossible (Strauss, II. p. 558 ff.; Holtzmann, p. 500 f.; Keim); and, with regard to the account of Matthew in particular, it may be observed that it is so far from assuming the manifestations to the disciples in Judaea as having previously occurred (in opposition to Augustine, Olshausen, Krabbe, Ebrard, Lange), that it clearly intends the meeting with the eleven, Matthew 28:16 ff., as the first appearance to those latter, and as the one that had been promised by the angel, Matthew 28:7, and by Jesus Himself, Matthew 28:10. From those divergent accounts, however, it may be fairly inferred that the tradition regarding the appearances of the risen Lord to His disciples assumed a threefold shape: (1) the purely Galilaean, which is that adopted by Matthew; (2) the purely Judaean, which is that of Luke, and also of John with the supplementary ch. 21 left out; (3) the combined form in which the appearances both in Galilee and Judaea are embraced, which is that of John with the supplementary chapter in question included. That Jesus appeared to the disciples both in Jerusalem and in Galilee as well might be already deduced as a legitimate historical inference from the fact of a distinct Judaean and Galilaean tradition having been current; but the matter is placed beyond a doubt by John, if, as we are entitled to assume, the apostle is to be regarded as the author of ch. 21. The next step, of course, is to regard it as an ascertained historical fact that the appearances in Judaea preceded those in Galilee; though, at the same time, it should not be forgotten that Matthew’s account is not merely vague and concise (Bleek), but that it, in fact, ignores the appearances in Judaea altogether,[40] entirely excludes them as being unsuited to the connection; comp. Schleiermacher, L. J. p. 465 f. Now, as this is inconceivable in the case of Matthew the apostle, we are bound to infer from our narrative that this is another of those passages in our Gospel which show traces of other than apostolic authorship. See Introd. § 2.

[40] Rud. Hofmann (de Berg Galiläa, 1856), following certain early expositors, has attempted to explain the discrepancies between the various narratives by maintaining that ἡ Γαλιλαία, Matthew 28, is not the country, but a mountain of this name, namely, the northmost of the three peaks of the Mount of Olives. But nowhere in the New Testament do we find such a designation applied to any locality but the well-known province of that name; nor, if we interpret fairly the passages quoted by Hofmann from Tertullian (Apol. 21), Lactantius (iv. 19), and Chrysostom, are we able to find in them any allusion to a mountain called Galilee; and surely it is not to be presumed that anything of a trustworthy nature can be learnt as to the existence of such a mountain from the confusions of a certain corrupt part of the text in the Evang, Nicod. 14; see already, Thilo, ad Cod, Apocr. I. p. 620 f.

REMARK.

It is evident from 1 Corinthians 15:5 ff. that, even taking the narratives of all the evangelists together, we would have but an imperfect enumeration of the appearances of Jesus subsequent to His resurrection, Matthew’s account being the most deficient of any. With regard to the appearances themselves, modern criticism, discarding the idea that the death was only apparent (see on Matthew 27:50), has treated them partly as subjective creations, either of the intellect (Strauss, Scholten), in its efforts to reconcile the Messianic prophecies and the belief in the Messiah with the fact of His death, or of ecstatic vision (Baur, Strauss, 1864; Holsten, Ewald), and therefore as mere mental phenomena which came to be embodied in certain objective incidents. There are those again who, attributing the appearances in question to some objective influence emanating from Christ Himself, have felt constrained to regard them as real manifestations of His person in the glorified form (Schenkel) in which it emerged from out of death (not from the grave),—a view in which Weisse, Keim, Schweizer substantially concur, inasmuch as Keim, in particular, lays stress on the necessity of “such a telegram from heaven” after the extinction of Christ’s earthly nature, though he considers the question as to whether our Lord also communicated the form of the vision directly or only indirectly, as of but secondary consequence. But all these attempts to treat what has been recorded as an actual fact as though it were based merely on mental phenomena are in opposition in general to the explicit and unhesitating view of all the evangelists and apostles as well as in particular to the uniform reference to the empty grave, and no less uniform use of the expression third day, all classical testimonies which can never be silenced. If, in addition to all this, it be borne in mind that the apostles found in the resurrection of their Lord a living and unfailing source of courage and hope, and of that cheerfulness with which they bore suffering and death,—that the apostolic church generally saw in it the foundation on which its own existence was based,—that Paul, in particular, insists upon it as incontrovertible evidence for, and as an ἀπαρχή of the resurrection of the body (1 Corinthians 15:23; Romans 8:11), and as constituting an essential factor in man’s justification (Romans 4:25; Php 3:10), though he is fond of speaking of being buried and raised up with Christ as descriptive of what is essential to the moral standing of the Christian (Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12), and can only conceive of the glorified body of the Lord, to which those of believers will one day be conformed (Php 3:21), as no other than that which came forth from the grave and was taken up to heaven,—if, we say, this be borne in mind, not the shadow of an exegetical pretext will be left for construing the resurrection from the grave of one whose body was exempted from corruption (Acts 2:31; Acts 10:41) into something or other which might be more appropriately described as a resurrection from the cross, and which would therefore require us to suppose that all the apostles and the whole church from the very beginning had been the victims of a delusion. See, in answer to Keim, Schmidt in the Jahrb. f. D. Theol. 1872, p. 413 ff. If this view of the resurrection were adopted, then, in opposition once more to New Testament authority, we should have to identify it with the ascension (comp. on Luke 24:51, Remark); while, on the other hand, it would be necessary to give up the Descensus Christi ad inferos as a second error arising out of that which has just been referred to.

Matthew 28:11 Πορευομ. δὲ αὐτ.] but while they were going away, to convey the intelligence to the disciples, Matthew 28:10. While, therefore, the women are still on their way, the soldiers in question repair to the city and report to the high priests what had happened.