³ tn Grk “from the tomb.”

² tn Grk “and came first to the tomb.”

³ tn Heb “will not go to the tomb of your fathers.”

¹ tn Grk “went out and were coming to the tomb.”

¹ sn What they found was not what they expected – an empty tomb.

⁴ tn Grk “he had already had four days in the tomb” (an idiom).

⁴ tn Or “been there” (in the tomb – see John 11:17).

¹ tn Heb “Therefore, look, I am gathering you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your tomb in peace.”

¹ tn Heb “Therefore, behold, I am gathering you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your tomb in peace.”

² tn These are disciples as they know about the empty tomb and do not know what to make of it all.

¹ sn This is the standard poetic expression for death. The bones would be buried, often with the bones of relatives in the same tomb, giving rise to the expression.

⁴ sn The Moabites apparently desecrated the tomb of an Edomite king and burned his bones into a calcined substance which they then used as plaster (cf. Deut 27:2, 4). See S. M. Paul, Amos (Hermeneia), 72. Receiving a proper burial was very important in this culture. Desecrating a tomb or a deceased individual’s bones was considered an especially heinous act.

⁵ tc Codex Bezae (D), with some support from 070, one Itala ms, and the Sahidic version, adds the words, “And after he [Jesus] was laid [in the tomb], he [Joseph of Arimathea] put a stone over the tomb which scarcely twenty men could roll.” Although this addition is certainly not part of the original text of Luke, it does show how interested the early scribes were in the details of the burial and may even reflect a very primitive tradition. Matt 27:60 and Mark 15:46 record the positioning of a large stone at the door of the tomb.

⁴ tn Heb “house” (so KJV, ASV), but in this context a tomb is in view. Note the verb “lie down” in the preceding line and the reference to a “grave” in the next line.

¹ tn Heb “he enters peace, they rest on their beds, the one who walks straight ahead of himself.” The tomb is here viewed in a fairly positive way as a place where the dead are at peace and sleep undisturbed.

¹ sn While the others dismissed the report of the women, Peter got up and ran to the tomb, for he had learned to believe in what the Lord had said.

² sn The tomb was nearby. The Passover and the Sabbath would begin at 6 p.m., so those who had come to prepare and bury the body could not afford to waste time.

² sn Presumably by the time the beloved disciple reached the tomb there was enough light to penetrate the low opening and illuminate the interior of the tomb sufficiently for him to see the strips of linen cloth lying there. The author does not state exactly where the linen wrappings were lying. Sometimes the phrase has been translated “lying on the ground,” but the implication is that the wrappings were lying where the body had been. The most probable configuration for a tomb of this sort would be to have a niche carved in the wall where the body would be laid lengthwise, or a low shelf like a bench running along one side of the tomb, across the back or around all three sides in a U-shape facing the entrance. Thus the graveclothes would have been lying on this shelf or in the niche where the body had been.

² sn Luke tells the story of the empty tomb with little drama. He simply notes that when they arrived the stone had been rolled away in a position where the tomb could be entered. This large stone was often placed in a channel so that it could be easily moved by rolling it aside. The other possibility is that it was merely placed over the opening in a position from which it had now been moved.

¹ sn Many have wondered how Lazarus got out of the tomb if his hands and feet were still tied up with strips of cloth. The author does not tell, and with a miracle of this magnitude, this is not an important fact to know. If Lazarus’ decomposing body was brought back to life by the power of God, then it could certainly have been moved out of the tomb by that same power. Others have suggested that the legs were bound separately, which would remove the difficulty, but the account gives no indication of this. What may be of more significance for the author is the comparison which this picture naturally evokes with the resurrection of Jesus, where the graveclothes stayed in the tomb neatly folded (20:6-7). Jesus, unlike Lazarus, would never need graveclothes again.