Joseph of Arimathea’s Tomb

Yeshua died at the ninth hour, about 3 p.m., in the daytime of the thirteenth. The preparation day was not yet over, but it was drawing toward its close. Within a few hours the evening would come on, and with that evening the fourteenth would begin: the Passover.

This chapter follows the last hours of the thirteenth and the evening that then began the fourteenth. It asks what was done with the body of the Messiah, and when.

The Day Was Running Out

Luke states the pressure of the hour in one sentence, which we read in Chapter 3: “It was the day of preparation, and the sabbaton σάββατον sab'-bat-on(referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23) was about to begin” (Luke 23:54). The day of preparation was the thirteenth. The sabbaton about to begin was the fourteenth, the Passover. The YLV’s note on the word points to the appointed times of Leviticus 23, and the Passover that opened the fourteenth stands among them (Leviticus 23:5). John calls it by the same word and adds, “for that sabbaton(referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23) was a high day” (John 19:31). What that phrase means, and how it fits with the days that followed, is the subject of Chapter 34.

For now it is enough to see what Luke and John both say: the burial was finished in the daytime of the preparation day, while the sabbaton was still about to begin.

Joseph of Arimathea

Matthew names the man who took up that work.

Matthew 27:57-60 When it was opsia(the latter part of the day, afternoon~early evening), there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Yeshua. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Yeshua. Then Pilate ordered it to be given over. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the entrance of the tomb and went away.

“When it was opsia(the latter part of the day, afternoon~early evening), there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph.” The YLV gloss on opsia describes this time well: the latter part of the day, from the afternoon to the turning of evening. It was the late afternoon of the thirteenth, the latter part of the preparation day, and the burial was finished before the evening of the fourteenth. Mark adds that Joseph “gathered up courage and went in before Pilate” (Mark 15:43), and that Pilate first made sure from the centurion that Yeshua was already dead before granting the body (Mark 15:44-45).

John tells us who came with Joseph.

John 19:38-42 After these things Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Yeshua, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Yeshua; and Pilate granted permission; so he came and took away His body. Nicodemus, who had first come to Him by nyx νύξ noox(night), also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight. So they took the body of Yeshua and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. Therefore because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was nearby, they laid Yeshua there.

Nicodemus, “who had first come to Him by nyx(night),” came now in the daylight, bringing “a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight.” John gives the reason they chose that tomb: “because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was nearby.” There was no time to carry the body far. The evening was coming.

Matthew adds that Joseph “rolled a large stone against the entrance of the tomb and went away,” and that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, “sitting opposite the grave” (Matthew 27:60-61). Luke says the women who had come with Him out of Galilee “saw the tomb and how His body was laid” (Luke 23:55).

In the Latter Part of the Day

Recall what Chapter 3 showed about the biblical day: when the daytime ends and evening comes, the new day has begun, and whatever must be ready for that evening is done in the daytime before.

Read the burial with that in mind. Joseph asked Pilate for the body in the afternoon of the thirteenth. With Nicodemus and the spices, he took the body, wrapped it, and laid it in the tomb in opsia, the latter part of the day. Whether earlier or later in the afternoon, it was still daytime, not after the sun had gone down. The great feast would begin at early evening, and everything had to be done before it came. Luke’s words fit this exactly: while they worked, the sabbaton “was about to begin.”

So the body of the Messiah was laid to rest before the evening that begins the fourteenth came. When that evening came and the Passover began, He was already in the tomb.

The Passover Evening

Consider what that evening was in Jerusalem. It was the evening of the Passover, “the appointed time (moed מוֹעֵד mo-ade') of your coming forth out of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 16:6). It was the evening in which the whole assembly offered the Passover to the LORD “between the evenings” (Exodus 12:6), and ate it with unleavened bread (Exodus 12:8). Households sat down to remember the night when the LORD saw the blood on their doorposts and passed over them (Exodus 12:13).

In that same evening, in a garden near the place where He was crucified, the body of the One whom Paul calls “Messiah our Passover” lay in the tomb. When the households ate the Passover that evening, the true Passover sacrifice had already been offered.

The First Night

This evening also marks the first night of the sign of Jonah.

The first daytime was the daytime of the thirteenth, because in it He entered death. The first night is the night of the fourteenth, which began when the evening came, with His body already in the tomb. From here the count goes on in the order of the biblical day, each night followed by its daytime: the daytime of the fourteenth, then the night of the fifteenth, and so on to first light on the sixteenth. Chapter 43 will lay the whole count out.

What the Burial Shows

It is easy to read the burial as a hurried postscript to the cross. The Gospels do not treat it that way. All four tell it, and each adds something: Matthew the stone and the watching women, Mark the courage of Joseph and the centurion’s word, Luke the coming sabbaton, John the spices, the garden, and the nearby tomb. Together they fix the moment. He was laid in the tomb in the afternoon of the preparation day, and all was finished by late afternoon, before the thirteenth turned into the fourteenth and the Passover evening came.

From the hour of His death to the late afternoon of His burial, nothing in the Gospels’ order of events is out of place on the Bible’s own calendar.

One question remains for Part Four. Why does it matter that the Passover, the great sabbath of Unleavened Bread, and the day of the first sheaf fell exactly where they did, one after another, while He lay in the tomb and rose? The next chapter answers with two words that Scripture itself uses: shadow and substance.