Make It as Secure as You Can
62 Now on the next day, which was the day after the Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees were gathered together to Pilate, 63 saying, “Sir, we remember what that deceiver said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise again.’ 64 Command therefore that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest perhaps his disciples come at night and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He is risen from the dead;’ and the last deception will be worse than the first.” 65 Pilate said to them, “You have a guard. Go, make it as secure as you can.” 66 So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone.
His enemies remember the prediction his friends forgot, and post a guard on the strength of it.
Now on the next day, which was the day after the Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees were gathered together to Pilate,
The episode is Matthew's alone. The day named is the Sabbath, and the men who took a prisoner by night to avoid a festival crowd are transacting business with a Roman governor on it.
saying, “Sir, we remember what that deceiver said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise again.’
That sentence is one of the strangest in the book. His opponents remember the prediction. His own disciples, told four times, are behind locked doors with no expectation of anything — and the women will arrive at the tomb with burial spices, which is not what you bring if you expect it to be empty.
The men who did not believe him took him at his word more carefully than the men who did.
Command therefore that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest perhaps his disciples come at night and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He is risen from the dead;’ and the last deception will be worse than the first.”
The theft they fear is the story they will later pay to have told Matthew 28:13, which means they invented it before there was anything to explain.
"And the last deception will be worse than the first." They are right about that, from where they stand. A resurrection preached would be harder to contain than a teacher tolerated.
Pilate said to them, “You have a guard. Go, make it as secure as you can.”
The governor is finished with the matter and says so in a sentence that has aged badly.
So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone.
Every precaution taken here becomes evidence later. A sealed stone, an official guard, a tomb whose location was chosen by the other side and inspected by them — the case against a stolen body was assembled, at their own expense, by the people who most needed it to be true.
settled What this mark means