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Joh_20:11-13. Mary has followed to the grave the two disciples who ran before, but does not again meet them (they must have gone back another way), and now stands weeping at the grave, and that ἔξω , for further she dares not go. Yet she bends down in the midst of her weeping, involuntarily impelled by her grief, forward into the grave (see on Joh_20:5), and beholds two angels, etc. On the question of these: τί κλαίεις , Ammonius correctly observes: ἐρωτῶσι δὲ , οὐχ ἵνα μάθωσι , ἀλλʼ ἵνα πάυσηται .
Appearances of angels, whom Schleiermacher indeed was here able to regard as persons commissioned by Joseph of Arimathaea (L. J. p. 471), are certainly, according to Scripture, not to be relegated into the mere subjective sphere; but they communicate with and render themselves visible and audible simply and solely to him for whom they are real, whilst they are not perceptible by others (comp. Joh_12:29); wherefore we are not even to ask where the angels may have been in the grave during the presence of Peter and John (Griesbach thought: in the side passages of the grave).
ἐν λευκοῖς ] Neut.: in white. That ἱμάτια are meant is a matter of course. See Winer, p. 550 [E. T. p. 739]. Wetstein in loc. Clothed in white, the pure heavenly appearances, in keeping with their nature of light, represent themselves to mortal gaze. Comp. Ewald, ad Apoc. p. 126 f.
ὅτι ᾖραν ] Because they, etc. As yet the deep feeling of grief allows no place for any other thought. Of a message from angels, already received before this, there is no trace in John. The refrain of her deeply sorrowful feeling: they have taken away my Lord, etc., as in Joh_20:2, was still unaltered and the same.
On the number and position of these angels the text offers no indications, which, accordingly, only run out into arbitrary invention and poetry, as e.g. in Luthardt: there were two in antithesis to the two joint-crucified ones; they had seated themselves because they had no occasion to contend; seated themselves at the head and at the feet, because the body from head to feet was under the protection of the Father and His servants.