Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to John · About this commentary
The Linen Cloths Lying There
John 20:1-10
1 Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene went early, while it was still dark, to the tomb, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. · WEB
Two men race to a tomb, and what convinces the one who gets there second is the way the wrappings are lying.
Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene went early, while it was still dark, to the tomb John 20:1.
She goes alone in this account, before dawn, and this book has not used dark carelessly since its first page. And she goes with no expectation whatever — the visit is to a grave.
"They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have laid him!" John 20:2.
Her conclusion is the reasonable one, and the we is a small confirmation that she was not the only woman there, as the other accounts say. Grave robbery was common enough to be a capital offense.
They both ran together. The other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first John 20:4.
The detail is either vanity or memory, and it reads like memory — the sort of thing two men would have argued about for the rest of their lives. He gets there first and stops at the entrance.
Stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he didn't enter in John 20:5. Awe, or the ordinary reluctance to step into a tomb, or courtesy. The account does not say.
Then Simon Peter came, following him, and entered into the tomb John 20:6.
Peter goes straight in, which is exactly what the reader of this book would predict — the man who jumped out of a boat and drew a sword in a garden.
He saw the linen cloths lying, and the cloth that had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths, but rolled up in a place by itself John 20:6–7.
This is the evidence, and the writer describes it with the precision of somebody who studied it. The wrappings are lying — undisturbed, in position — and the face cloth is separate and folded, in its own place.
What that rules out is the theory Mary arrived with. Nobody stealing a body unwraps it first; the spices had set the linen into a shell, and a thief would have carried the whole thing. And nobody in a hurry folds anything.
It also distinguishes this from the last man who came out of a tomb in this Gospel. Lazarus emerged bound hand and foot with wrappings, needing to be untied John 11:44. Here the wrappings are still there and the body is not.
So then the other disciple who came first to the tomb also entered in, and he saw and believed John 20:8.
The writer records his own believing in the third person and does not say what he believed, exactly — only that the sight of the cloths did it. No angel has spoken yet and he has seen nobody.
He is the first person in this Gospel to believe in the resurrection, and he did it in an empty room on the strength of laundry.
For as yet they didn't know the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead John 20:9.
The admission is characteristic of this book's honesty about the disciples. The understanding from the Scriptures came later — as it did with the temple saying and the entry into the city John 2:22 John 12:16 — and what happened at the tomb was a conclusion from physical evidence.
So the disciples went away again to their own homes John 20:10.
One of the strangest verses in the New Testament. Having seen it and believed it, they go home. Nobody tells anybody. The account leaves them walking away, which sets up the fact that the person who stays is the one who gets the first appearance.
settled What this mark means