Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Matthew 28:2 - 28:2
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Mat_28:2. It is wrong to take the aorists in a pluperfect sense (Castalio, Kuinoel, Kern, Ebrard), or to conceive of the action of the ἦλθε as not yet completed (de Wette). Matthew represents what is here recorded as taking place in presence of the women ( ἦλθε … θεωρῆσαι … καὶ ἰδού ), whose attention, however, had been so much occupied with the accompanying phenomena, that they did not observe (Mat_28:5-6) the circumstance itself of our Lord’s emerging from the grave (which, besides, must have been invisible to the outward eye owing to the nature of the body He had now assumed, comp. on Mat_28:17). The other evangelists make no mention of this (legendary) supernatural and visible rolling away of the stone; and, though differing as to the number of the angels, they agree in representing them as having appeared inside the grave. Here, if anywhere, however, amid so much that is supernatural, must we be prepared to expect divergent accounts of what took place, above all in regard to the angelic manifestations, which are matters depending on individual observation and experience (comp. on Joh_20:12), and not the objective perceptions of impartial and disinterested spectators.
γάρ ] assigning the reason for the violent earthquake which, as a divine σημεῖον , formed an appropriate accompaniment to this miraculous angelic manifestation.
κ . ἐκαθήτο , κ . τ . λ .] as the heaven-sent guardian and interpreter of the empty tomb.