Why Do You Seek the Living?
1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they and some others came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb. 3 They entered in, and didn’t find the Lord Jesus’ body. 4 While they were greatly perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling clothing. 5 Becoming terrified, they bowed their faces down to the earth. The men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? 6 He isn’t here, but is risen. Remember what he told you when he was still in Galilee, 7 saying that the Son of Man must be delivered up into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and the third day rise again?” 8 They remembered his words, 9 returned from the tomb, and told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. 10 Now they were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James. The other women with them told these things to the apostles. 11 These words seemed to them to be nonsense, and they didn’t believe them. 12 But Peter got up and ran to the tomb. Stooping and looking in, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he departed to his home, wondering what had happened.
The women bring spices to a body that is not there, and the men they tell think they are talking nonsense.
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they and some others came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared.
They come to finish a burial. The spices were made ready on Friday evening and the Sabbath intervened Luke 23:56, so this is the first hour it was possible to come — and it is worth saying plainly that nobody in this chapter expects a resurrection. They are carrying embalming supplies.
They entered in, and didn't find the Lord Jesus' body Luke 24:3. The empty tomb by itself explains nothing, and their first reaction is not joy. They were greatly perplexed Luke 24:4 — the word is for being at a complete loss.
5 Becoming terrified, they bowed their faces down to the earth. The men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? 6 He isn’t here, but is risen. Remember what he told you when he was still in Galilee,
The question is gentle and it is a rebuke of a category. They are in the right place looking for the wrong kind of thing.
6 He isn’t here, but is risen. Remember what he told you when he was still in Galilee, 7 saying that the Son of Man must be delivered up into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and the third day rise again?”
The angels do not give them new information. They tell them to remember old information, and the must is this book's word from the temple at twelve Luke 2:49 to the road to Emmaus. Everything that happened had been said in advance, in Galilee, in plain words.
They remembered his words Luke 24:8. That is the whole of what changes. The evidence had been in their hands for two years.
Now they were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James. The other women with them told these things to the apostles.
The names are given here rather than earlier, and two of them the reader has met. Mary of Magdala, from whom seven demons went out, and Joanna, wife of Herod's steward — both introduced in chapter eight as women who funded the work out of their own means Luke 8:2–3. They have been present since Galilee, they were at the cross, they watched the burial, and they are first at the tomb.
These words seemed to them to be nonsense, and they didn’t believe them.
The word is a strong one — the term for the raving of a delirious patient. The apostles' response to the first resurrection testimony is that the women are talking rubbish.
The account records it without softening, and it is worth noticing what a writer producing propaganda would have done instead. In that world a woman's testimony carried little weight in a court; inventing this scene is the last thing anyone would do. What the book reports is that the witnesses were women, that the men dismissed them, and that the men were wrong.
But Peter got up and ran to the tomb. Stooping and looking in, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he departed to his home, wondering what had happened.
He checks, and comes away with a puzzle rather than a faith. This is the man who denied him four days ago, and he is the only one who moves.
settled What this mark means