not forget tliat it made him a marked man, as a friend of Christ, and utterly ruined his character with Caiaphas and the high priests.
[He came therefore...took...hody...Jesus.'] The word rendered " took " here, is the same that is rendered " took away " j ust above. — Some think, as Tholuck and Ellicott, that the Roman Boldiers took the body down from the cross. But I see no cer- tain proof of this, and I think it unlikely they would take the trouble to do it, if others were willing to undertake the task. The meaning, in my opinion, is that Joseph came up to the cross, raised' and lifted from it the lifeless corpse of our Lord and took it away for burial. Whether this was done by rear- ing a ladder against the cross, as Rubens' famous picture rep- resents, and so letting down the body after drawing out the nails ; or, whether by taking up the cross out of the hole in which it was fixed, laying it on the ground, and then taking out the nails, is a question which we have no means of decid- ing. To me it seems far more probable that the latter plan would be adopted than the former, and that as the cross was most likely reared up with the body on it, so it was taken down again with the body on it. But every reader must judge for himself.
In whatever way the body was taken down, or taken off the cross, everything seems to me to indicate that Joseph was the person who did it with his own hands. This is the more re- markable, when we consider that to touch a dead body made a Jew ceremonially unclean, and that this was the afternoon pre- ceding the passover Sabbath. There seems, however, no rea- son why we should suppose that no one helped Joseph. He could hardly lift the cross, or reverently lift oif the body of a full-grown person in the prime of life, without some aid. Why should we hesitate to believe that John and Nicodemus helped him?
It is a curious coincidence, though perhaps only a coinci- dence, that it was a " Joseph," who probably first touched and received our Lord's body when He was born into the world at Bethlehem, and again a " Joseph," who was the last to hold, and lift, and handle the dead body of the same Lord, when He was buried.
39. — [And there came also Nicodemus... night.'] The fact here re- corded is quite peculiar to St. John's Gospel. For wise rea- sons, neither Matthew, Mark, nor Luke, ever mention the name of Nicodemus. John mentions him three times, — first as a se- cret inquirer (John iii, 1) ; secondly, as a timid advocate of jus- tice towards our Lord in the Jewish Council (John vii. 10); and lastly, in this place. Both here and on the second occa- sion, he emphatically inserts the explanatory comment, that it was the same Nicodemus which " at first came to Jesus by night."