TEXT [Commentary]

P. Report of the Guard (28:11-15)

11 As the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and told the leading priests what had happened. 12 A meeting with the elders was called, and they decided to give the soldiers a large bribe. 13 They told the soldiers, “You must say, ‘Jesus’ disciples came during the night while we were sleeping, and they stole his body.’ 14 If the governor hears about it, we’ll stand up for you so you won’t get in trouble.” 15 So the guards accepted the bribe and said what they were told to say. Their story spread widely among the Jews, and they still tell it today.

NOTES

28:11-12 the guards. These were probably Roman soldiers responsible to Pilate (see note on 27:65).

guards went into the city and told the leading priests what had happened. Just how much of the happenings at Jesus’ tomb they saw is unclear, but the Gr. says that they told the priests “everything that happened.” They had fainted when they saw the angel (28:4), but eventually regained consciousness and saw that the tomb was empty.

a large bribe. After the priests met with the elders, they bribed the guards and fabricated a story to explain the resurrection. Ironically, the very guards who were supposed to prevent a potential problem became an actual problem themselves. The story of the bribery of Judas to betray Jesus is near the beginning of the passion narrative, and this story of the bribery of the guards to lie about the resurrection is near the end of the passion narrative.

28:13-15 they stole his body. The story the guards were bribed and instructed to tell was also the premise that the leaders had used to get the guards to begin with—that is, they feared the theft of Jesus’ body by the disciples (cf. John 20:1-2).

If the governor hears about it, we’ll stand up for you. The religious leaders promised to protect them from Pilate, who would no doubt be enraged at their dereliction of duty. First Judas was bribed, then the guards, and perhaps the leaders would need to bribe Pilate too. But their story is a patently false concoction—if the guards were asleep, how did they know that the disciples stole the body?

the guards accepted the bribe. The guards took the money and did as they were told.

Their story spread widely among the Jews, and they still tell it today. They spawned a hoax that continued to the time when the Gospel of Matthew was written. According to Justin Martyr, such stories were still in circulation during his lifetime (AD 100–165; cf. Dialogue 108.2).

COMMENTARY [Text]

In this passage the soldiers who were guarding Jesus’ tomb became evangelists of Jesus’ resurrection! Previously the leaders purported to need guards for fear that a resurrection hoax might occur, but those very guards later reported that a genuine resurrection had occurred. The leaders had outsmarted themselves: the very guards they secured to prevent a potential problem could now testify to an actual problem. So a “cover-up” had to be concocted, and money must change hands to ensure that everyone had the story straight.

The minds of the religious leaders were already made up about Jesus, and they did not want to be confused by the fact of his resurrection. This intensified their guilt. Perhaps they really believed that the disciples had used the occasion of an earthquake to steal the body, but most likely they made up the story with full knowledge that it was a lie. They had accused Jesus of being a deceiver (27:63-64), but now they were the ones willfully deceiving people about Jesus. They had refused to believe Jesus was the ultimate interpreter of Moses and the prophets, and they would not be persuaded even when someone was raised from the dead (Luke 16:31). However, one must never be pessimistic about the life-changing power of the gospel of Christ. The book of Acts speaks of thousands of converts in Jerusalem (Acts 2:41; 4:4), many of whom were priests (Acts 6:7).

None of the alternative explanations of the resurrection of Jesus satisfactorily explain what is recorded here. The explanation that the disciples stole the body is patently false, and other theories fare no better. Some have theorized that the women visited the wrong tomb, or that Jesus on the cross had merely swooned and later revived, or that there was so much wishful thinking on the part of the disciples that they had a collective hallucination and all thought that they saw Jesus. Only by a priori, worldview-driven assumptions that rule out supernatural events up front, can one dismiss this account outright.