Biblion Bible Commentary
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A Tomb Where No One Had Lain
Luke 23:50-56
50 Behold, there was a man named Joseph, who was a member of the council, a good and righteous man · WEB
A council member who had voted against them asks for the body, and the women note the place and go home to keep the Sabbath.
Behold, there was a man named Joseph, who was a member of the council, a good and righteous man Luke 23:50.
The burial is told in the earlier accounts Mark 15:21–47 Matthew 27:57–61. This telling adds the detail that matters most about him.
He had not consented to their counsel and deed Luke 23:51.
There was a dissenting voice in that room. The council which condemned him was not unanimous, and one member is on record as having refused — though he refused silently, and the account does not pretend otherwise. He is called good and righteous, and he is also a man who did not speak up in time.
Who was also waiting for God's Kingdom. The phrase joins him to Simeon and Anna at the start of the book, people who were waiting Luke 2:25 Luke 2:38. The book's first and last friends are of the same kind.
This man went to Pilate, and asked for Jesus' body Luke 23:52. Asking a Roman governor for the corpse of a man executed for sedition was not a small request. Bodies were commonly left, and a man who claimed one was publicly attaching himself to it — which is exactly what he had avoided doing while it might have helped.
He took it down and wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid him in a tomb that was cut in stone, where no one had ever been laid Luke 23:53.
The details are the ones that matter later. A rock tomb, newly cut, never used — so no other body was in it, and no confusion is possible about whose it was.
It was the day of the Preparation, and the Sabbath was drawing near Luke 23:54. Everything is being done against a clock; sundown ends the possibility of work.
The women who had come with him out of Galilee followed after, and saw the tomb and how his body was laid Luke 23:55.
They watch where he is put. This account says so explicitly, and it is the answer to every later suggestion that the women went to the wrong tomb on Sunday. They stood there and looked.
They returned and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment Luke 23:56.
The last sentence of the chapter is quiet and it is doing something. Women who have watched an execution and a hurried burial go home, get the spices ready, and then stop — because it is the Sabbath, and the commandment says so. Their grief does not override it, and the account records the observance without comment.
The body they intended to anoint is in a sealed tomb, and they will be back at first light on the first day of the week.
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