TEXT [Commentary]

M. The Death of Jesus (27:45-56; cf. Mark 15:33-41; Luke 23:44-49; John 19:31-37)

45 At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock. 46 At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli,[*] lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”[*]

47 Some of the bystanders misunderstood and thought he was calling for the prophet Elijah. 48 One of them ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, holding it up to him on a reed stick so he could drink. 49 But the rest said, “Wait! Let’s see whether Elijah comes to save him.”[*]

50 Then Jesus shouted out again, and he released his spirit. 51 At that moment the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, rocks split apart, 52 and tombs opened. The bodies of many godly men and women who had died were raised from the dead. 53 They left the cemetery after Jesus’ resurrection, went into the holy city of Jerusalem, and appeared to many people.

54 The Roman officer[*] and the other soldiers at the crucifixion were terrified by the earthquake and all that had happened. They said, “This man truly was the Son of God!”

55 And many women who had come from Galilee with Jesus to care for him were watching from a distance. 56 Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James and Joseph), and the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee.

NOTES

27:45 At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock. Jesus had evidently been put on the cross around the middle of the morning. His death occurred at the end of a providential darkness that prevailed during what is normally the brightest part of the day, from noon to 3 p.m. (lit. “from the sixth to the ninth hour;” cf. Mark 15:33-41; Luke 23:44-49; John 19:28-37). This darkness (24:29) was appropriate, given the horrible suffering and divine abandonment (27:46) experienced by Jesus during these epochal hours (cf. Exod 10:22; Deut 28:29; Joel 2:2, 31; Amos 8:9).

27:46-47 Jesus called out. Jesus had evidently not spoken since his brief response to Pilate in 27:11, and when he broke his silence it was not to respond to his mockers but to cry out mournfully to God.

Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani. Jesus loudly cried these words from Ps 22:1 that expressed his deep awareness of and anguish over his loss of intimate communion with the Father: “Why have you abandoned me?”

thought he was calling for the prophet Elijah. In Heb. “my God” (transliterated in Gr. as ēli [TG2241, ZG2458]) sounds like the first two syllables of the name “Elijah,” and some of the bystanders misunderstood, taking Jesus’ quotation of Ps 22:1 as an attempt to summon Elijah. Preoccupation with Elijah was part of first-century Jewish eschatological speculation based on Mal 4:5-6 (cf. Matt 11:14; 16:14; 17:3, 10-13).

27:48 sour wine. Evidently the offer of sour wine (Ps 69:21; cf. Num 6:3; Ruth 2:14) was an act of kindness not appreciated by those who wished to see whether Elijah would come to rescue Jesus. Why the offer of wine was made after the misinterpreted cry of Jesus is not clear.

27:50 Jesus shouted out again, and he released his spirit. It seems surprising that one who had undergone the agonies experienced by Jesus would be able to muster a loud shout, but that is how Matthew reports Jesus died. The expression “released his spirit” is sometimes understood to mean that Jesus decided when he would die (Davies and Allison 1997:628; Hendriksen 1973:973), but this may be only an idiomatic expression for death (cf. Gen 35:18; 1 Esdr 4:21; Josephus Antiquities 1.218; 5.147; 12.430; 14.369).

27:51 the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two. The curtain that was torn was probably not the one between the Court of Israel and the Court of the Gentiles (Blomberg 1992:421) but either the inner one that separated the holy of holies from the holy place (Exod 26:31-35; Lev 16:2; 2 Chr 3:14) or the outer one in front of the holy place (Exod 26:37; 38:18; Num 3:26). The tearing of the curtain from top to bottom is taken by some scholars as symbolizing God’s judgment on the Temple and its resulting obsolescence (e.g., Blomberg 1992:421; Hagner 1995:849, who seems to read too much of Hebrews into Matthew). But one wonders whether the AD 70 destruction necessarily requires the final obsolescence. Others view the tearing of the curtain as a vindication of Jesus as one who is greater than the Temple and its corrupt leaders (12:6; Gundry 1994:575). Davies and Allison (1997:632) point out that any judgment on the Temple, such as the tearing of the curtain, is first of all a judgment against the priests who were the custodians of the Temple. Since Matthew presents Jesus to his Christian Jewish community not as one who destroys but as one who fulfills the Torah (5:17ff), it is not likely that he thought in terms of the absolute end of the Temple, even though he had predicted its destruction in 24:2.

The earth shook, rocks split apart. The extraordinary phenomena accompanying Jesus’ death were due to an earthquake (24:7; 28:2; cf. Isa 24:19; 29:6; Jer 10:10; Amos 8:8; Nah 1:5-6; Zech 14:4). The earthquake, like the darkening of the sun, was a providential event signifying God’s epochal redemptive action.

27:52-53 godly men and women who had died were raised from the dead. Lit., “holy ones who had fallen asleep were raised.”

They left the cemetery after Jesus’ resurrection, went into the holy city of Jerusalem, and appeared to many people. The opening of the tombs (Ezek 37:13) is here associated with Jesus’ death, but the appearance of the saints in the holy city evidently did not occur until after Jesus’ resurrection (27:53). There are many questions as to the timing and nature of this rather bizarre event (Hagner 1995:849-852), but it is not ultimately helpful to view it as non-historical. As a preview of the ultimate resurrection of humanity (Gundry 1994:577), it is important that one recognize that this resurrection was as real as that of Jesus. Only then can this resurrection be appropriately contextualized as an effect of Jesus’ resurrection and an augur of the final resurrection. Matthew said nothing about the ultimate end of those raised. One wonders whether their “resurrection” was a temporary resuscitation to physical life, after which they died. In this case, these saints would be like Lazarus in John 11. If the resurrection involved a transformation of the body like that of Jesus, one wonders whether these saints ascended with Jesus to heaven. Matthew supplies no answers to such questions, and for this reason many scholars view 27:52-53 as more of a symbolic theological tale than an actual historical narrative.

27:54 Roman officer. Lit., “centurion,” a commander of a hundred soldiers; cf. 8:5, 8, 13.

This man truly was the Son of God! The confession of the centurion and the other soldiers is crucial, not only as a foil to all the invectives hurled at Jesus since 27:27, but also as a cardinal example of Matthew’s theme of mission to the Gentiles. These soldiers acknowledged what all the others refused to see, and Matthew used their words to echo a main theme in the first Gospel, that Jesus is the Son of God. What the soldiers themselves meant by “Son of God” probably does not approach Matthew’s high Christology. They were probably terrified by the mid-day darkness and the earthquake accompanying Jesus’ death and came to the conclusion that Jesus was in some sense a supernatural being.

27:55-56 many women . . . were watching from a distance. These women figure prominently in the narrative by standing closer to Jesus than the inner circle of his disciples (cf. 26:7; 27:61; 28:1, 5).

had come from Galilee. Some of these women had been disciples since the days of the Galilean ministry.

Mary Magdalene. Cf. Luke 8:2.

Mary (the mother of James and Joseph). This is the mother of Jesus; James and Joseph were his half-brothers.

the mother of James and John. Zebedee’s wife had previously envisioned her sons sitting on both sides of Jesus’ throne (20:20-21), but now she saw Jesus’ cross with revolutionaries crucified on both sides of him. The two Marys mentioned here will appear again in 27:61; 28:1ff. Their presence forms the literary hinge between the burial and resurrection of Jesus.

COMMENTARY [Text]

The death of Jesus is the event that all of Matthew’s narrative has been pointing to. There is a sense in which Matthew 1–25 is the introduction to the passion narrative in Matthew 26–28, and the centerpiece of the passion narrative is the death of Jesus. Matthew’s narration of Jesus’ death is much like his preceding material on the crucifixion. He spared the details of the event itself and stresses instead the actions of others, which are full of irony and Old Testament allusions. Jesus’ death is attended by darkness and results in a rock-splitting earthquake. Nature itself thus testifies to the ominous, epochal significance of this event. The direct taunting of Jesus ceases at 27:46, and Jesus’ desolate cry in 27:46 pierces the darkness with some of the most profound words in the entire Bible. How one who was uniquely God’s Son in terms of such passages as 1:23; 3:17; 11:27; 16:16; and 17:5 could be forsaken by God “is one of the most impenetrable mysteries of the entire Gospel narrative” (Hagner 1995:845). This is not a loss of faith on Jesus’ part but the expression of the deepest imaginable pain at being abandoned by his Father. Yet the abandonment sensed by Jesus was only temporary, and his vindication was coming soon.

Jesus’ cry of dereliction was misunderstood by those watching to the very end (27:47-49). Unaware of the true significance of what had transpired, they imagined that Jesus was calling for Elijah. Although they had been mocking Jesus previously, some of them appeared half-seriously to expect Elijah to come miraculously to Jesus’ rescue. But Jesus had to drink the dregs of the cup of suffering the Father had placed before him. His death amounts to the sacrificial pouring out of his blood as a ransom which saves his people from their sins (1:21; 20:28; 26:28).

The earthquake at Jesus’ death (27:51ff) ripped the Temple veil and even the very rocks, so that tombs were opened and people are raised from the dead. The tearing of the veil vindicated Jesus, demonstrating that he was indeed one greater than the Temple (12:6). The splitting of the rocks and resulting opening of tombs was evidently a preview of the final resurrection, guaranteed by the imminent resurrection of Jesus (cf. 1 Cor 15:20, 23; Rev 1:5). Despite the rejection of Jesus by the leaders of Israel, and his abandonment, albeit temporary, by his own disciples, there were sympathetic witnesses to his death. The Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus were transformed into believers of a sort when they witnessed the manner of Jesus’ death and its results. They may not have grasped all that Matthew conveys elsewhere in the title “Son of God,” but their words indicate a positive response to the “light” they had and openness to further witness by Jesus’ disciples. It is likely that some of them became disciples. Another largely unsung group watched the death of Jesus, no doubt in horror over the pain and taunting but in awe over the subsequent earthquake. These were the women mentioned in 27:55-56, who in days to come were the first to learn of the resurrection of Jesus, meet the resurrected Jesus himself, and, finally, tell the disciples about it. The preeminence of these faithful women in the account of the death of Jesus, taken alongside the shameful absence of the disciples, is a powerful warning against chauvinism in the community of Jesus’ disciples (cf. 23:8-12; Gal 3:28). (For further reflection on the death of Jesus the Messiah, see the commentary on 27:27-44.)