■would not have been done if the Jews had not asked. — The verse supplies a wonderful example of the way in which God can make the wickedest men unconsciously carry out His pur- poses, and promote His glory. If the Jews had not interfered this Friday afternoon, for anything we can see, Pilate would have allowed our Lord's body to hang upon the cross till Sun- day or Monday, and perhaps to see corruption. The Jews pro- cured our Lord's burial the very day that He died, and thus se- cured the fulfilment of His famous prophecy : " Destroy this temple of my body, and in three days I will raise it up." (John ii. 19.) If He had not been buried till Sunday or Monday, He could not have risen again the third day after His death. As it was, the Jews managed things so that our Lord was laid in the grave before the evening of Friday, and was thus enabled to fulfil the famous type of Jonah, and give the sign He had promised to give of His Messiahship, by lying three days in the earth, and then rising again the third day after He died. All this could not have happened if the Jews had not interfer- ed, and got Him taken from the cross and buried on Friday afternoon ! — How true it is that the wickedest enemies of God are only axes and saws and hammers in His hands, and are ig- norantly His instruments for doing His work in the world. The restless, busy, meddling of Caiaphas and his companions, was actually one of the causes that Christ rose the third day after death, and His Messiahship was proved. Pilate was their tool : but they were God's tools ! The Romans, in all probabil- ity, would have left our Lord's body hanging on the cross till sun and rain had putrefied and consumed it, had such a thing been possible. Bishop Pearson says it was a common rule of Roman law not to permit sepulture to the body of a crucified person. The burial, therefore, was entirely owing to the re- quest of the Jews. The providence of God ordered things so that they who interceded for His crucifixion interceded for His burial. And by so doing they actually paved the way for the crowning miracle of His resurrection !
Let us mark the miserable scrupulosity that is sometimes compatible with the utmost deadness of conscience. Thus we see men making ado about a dead body remaining on the cross on the Sabbath, at the very time when they had just murdered an innocent living person with the most flagrant injustice and monstrous cruelty. It is a specimen of " straining out a gnat, and swallowing a camel."
82. — {^Then came the soldiers, etc.'] Pilate having given his con- sent to the request of the Jews, the Roman soldiers proceeded to break the legs of the criminals, and began with the two thieves. Why they began with them is by no means clear. If the three crosses were all in a row, it is hard to see why the two outer criminals of the three should have their legs broken first, and the one in the centre be left to the last. We must suppose one ©f three things in order to explain this.