would not liave been so foolish as to spend so mucli time on a superfluous matter. Why should he undo the cloths ? How could he have escaped detection if he had done so ? He would probably have spent much time in doing it, and been found out by delaying. But why did the clothes lie apart while the napkin was wrapped together by itself? That thou mayest learn that it was not the action of men in confusion or haste, the placing some in one place and some in another, and the wrapping them together."
Theophylact, as usual, follows Chrysostom ; and adds, that linen cloths wrapped round the body with myrrh, would stick to it like pitch.
The word translated " napkin," is only used four times in the Xew Testament. On one occasion, and one only, it is ren- dered " handkerchief." (Acts xix. 12.)
8. — [Then went in also that other disciple, etc.] We are here told how John at last followed Peter, and went inside the tomb. He does not seem to have gone in at first with Peter, but to have waited without, while his brother Apostle investigated and examined everything. Then, on hearing his report, he re- solved to go inside himself, and see with his own eyes. Why he hesitated at first, we are left to conjecture. Perhaps, like Mary Magdalene, he was so absorbed and overwhelmed by the fact that his Master's body was gone, that he could pay no at- tention to the minor details of the transaction. But when he did go inside the tomb, and saw with his own eyes the clear evidence of a deliberate, orderly removal of the body only, and the cloths left behind, it seems to have flashed across his mind that the Lord must have risen. For we are told that he "be- lieved."
Concerning the true meaning of this word " believed " in this place, there has been some dispute, but without good cause. It cannot of course mean that John became a true be- liever now for the first time. Such an idea is absurd. Nor yet can it only mean, I think, that John at last believed that the body of our Lord was not there. Such an interpretation seems to me cold, tame, and shallow. I hold that it can only bear one meaning, and that is, that John, when he saw the state of the tomb, believed that Christ had really risen from the dead. In short, he was the first of all our Lord's followers that believed His resurrection.
0,_[ii^6»r as yet they knew not, etc.] This parenthetical comment of the Evangelist is hardly rendered with accuracy in our Eng- lish version. It would be more literally translated, " As yet they had not known," in the pluperfect tense. The meaning obviously is, — " Uj) to this time these two disciples, like all the rest of our Lord's followers, had not fully understood the mean- ing of the Scriptures, which taught that Christ must rise again from the dead, after dying for our sina."