SECURITY AT THE TOMB

MATTHEW 27:62–66

The chief priests and certain others of the Temple leadership had carefully planned a strategy to rid themselves of Jesus. Given the incredible popularity of Jesus, his opponents had to plan his arrest so as to avoid an open riot from his multitude of followers (Matt. 26:3–5). Once Jesus was arrested, these religious leaders decided to manipulate the situation so that the Roman governor, Pilate, would carry out the death sentence of Jesus. But even when Pilate did just that, the opponents of Jesus were still not rid of the threat Jesus presented. They demanded security for the tomb.

This security established by Jesus’s opponents had three physical components. The first was a blocking stone—a heavy stone that may have been a square stone that turned on a hinge or a round stone that rolled in a track. In either case, the stone was large enough and heavy enough to discourage entry into the tomb (Mark 16:3–4).18 The second layer of security was the seal prohibiting unauthorized persons from entering the tomb. And the final element of security involved sentries. Because certain members from the chief priests and Pharisees had gone to Pilate with a request to place a guard at the tomb, it has often been assumed that this guard was composed of Roman soldiers. But Pilate’s response was more ambiguous regarding the composition of the guard. He may well have directed the chief priests to place their own Jewish Temple guard at the tomb (Matt. 27:65).19

Monumental tomb of the priestly family of Jason.

The reason the Temple leadership asked to have the tomb of Jesus secured certainly had something to do with the general protection offered tombs by the Roman government. A twenty-four-by-fifteen-inch marble tablet first became known near Nazareth in 1878 and is referred to as the “Nazareth Inscription.”20 There is strong evidence that it dates to the first century AD, and the tablet states the Roman legal point of view on this topic: no unauthorized person was to enter or disturb any tomb. “If, however, anyone charges that another has either demolished them [tombs], or has in any other way extracted the buried, or has maliciously transferred them to other places in order to wrong them, or has displaced the sealing of other stones. . . . In the case of violation I desire that the offender be sentenced to capital punishment on charge of violation of the sepulture [burial].”21

These layers of security were to function together to achieve one purpose. The opponents of Jesus knew that he had promised to rise on the third day, so they told Pilate they were worried the disciples would steal the body and claim he had been raised from the dead (Matt. 27:63–64). Because Joseph of Arimathea—a follower of Jesus and a powerful, wealthy, and influential member of the Council—had control of Jesus’s body, the chief priests suspected an imminent plot to steal the body. The oppositional stance of the chief priests was so great that when they heard the witness of their soldiers, they bribed them to lie about what they had seen (Matt. 28:4, 12–15). But no security system of humankind could thwart God’s plan (Matt. 28:6, 11). Paradoxically, it was the security measures initiated by these enemies of Jesus that established the validity of his resurrection. The testimonies of the Temple guards provided a message that could not be held back but was propelled around the world.

Rolling-stone door used to cover a tomb.

Marble representation (AD 1572) of the resurrection of Christ.