The Women Observe Jesus’ Burial

A king deserves a king’s burial, and that is exactly what Jesus received when Joseph of Arimathea took charge of making sure that the body of our Lord was honored in its interment in the grave (Luke 23:50–53). Importantly, all this took place in accord with biblical prophecy. Centuries before the death and burial of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah foresaw that the Messiah would have His grave made “with a rich man in his death” (Isa. 53:9). The burial of Jesus fulfilled Isaiah’s promise, for we know that Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man who provided a rich man’s tomb for our Lord (Matt. 27:57–60).

Evidently, the burial of Jesus took place with some haste. We may infer as much from today’s passage, where Luke mentions that even though Jesus’ body had been wrapped in linen and laid in a tomb, the women who had followed our Savior observed the proceedings and went to prepare “spices and ointments” (Luke 23:54–56). Ancient Jews anointed dead bodies with such products to mask the scent of decaying flesh and to slow the process of decomposition. The women would have had to prepare more spices and ointments because the process had not been finished before the interment of the Lord’s body, since “it was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning” (v. 54). Jesus died on a Friday, when the Jews got everything ready so that they could rest from their ordinary labor on the Sabbath. Once the Sabbath began, there could be no work except for deeds necessary to the sustenance of life (Ex. 20:8–11). It seems that there was not much time between the death of Jesus and the beginning of the Sabbath, so at least some of the work of anointing the body for burial had to cease before it was completed. As we will see, the women would return to the tomb the day after the Sabbath to finish applying the spices and ointments to Jesus, but they rested on the Sabbath (Luke 23:56–24:1).

The references to the women and their work help to confirm the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. The women were certainly not expecting Jesus to be raised from the dead; otherwise, they would not have been preparing spices to complete the burial process. So they were not planning ahead of time to make up a story about Jesus’ leaving the tomb. Also, women were not considered good witnesses in first-century Judaism. One would hardly include their testimony if one were making up the resurrection. The only reason to include their witnessing the event is if their testimony was true.