The difference, if such it may be called, in the names of the women, who at early morn went to the Tomb, scarce requires elaborate discussion. It may have been, that there were two parties, starting from different places to meet at the Tomb, and that this also accounts for the slight difference in the details of what they saw and heard at the Grave. At any rate, the mention of the two Marys and Joanna is supplemented in St. Luke [6243] by that of the other women with them,' while, if St. John speaks only of Mary Magdalene, [6244] her report to Peter and John: We know not where they have laid Him,' implies, that she had not gone alone to the Tomb. It was the first day of the week [6245] - according to Jewish reckoning the third day from His Death. [6246] The narrative leaves the impression that the Sabbath's rest had delayed their visit to the Tomb; but it is at least a curious coincidence that the relatives and friends of the deceased were in the habit of going to the grave up to the third day (when presumably corruption was supposed to begin), so as to make sure that those laid there were really dead. [6247] Commenting on this, that Abraham described Mount Moriah on the third day, [6248] the Rabbis insist on the importance of the third day' in various events connected with Israel, and specially speak of it in connection with the resurrection of the dead, referring in proof to Hos. vi. 2. [6249] In another place, appealing to the same prophetic saying, they infer from Gen. xxii. 7, that God never leaves the just more than three days in anguish. [6250] In mourning also the third day formed a sort of period, because it was thought that the soul hovered round the body till the third day, when it finally parted from its tabernacle. [6251]
Although these things are here mentioned, we need scarcely say that no such thoughts were present with the holy mourners who, in the grey of that Sunday-morning, [6252] went to the Tomb. Whether or not there were two groups of women who started from different places to meet at the Tomb, the most prominent figure among them was Mary Magdalene [6253] - as prominent among the pious women as Peter was among the Apostles. She seems to have reached the Grave, [6254] and, seeing the great stone that had covered its entrance rolled away, hastily judged that the Body of the Lord had been removed. Without waiting for further inquiry, she ran back to inform Peter and John of the fact. The Evangelist here explains, that there had been a great earthquake, and that the Angel of the Lord, to human sight as lightning and in brilliant white garment, had rolled back the stone, and sat upon it, when the guard, affrighted by what they heard and saw, and especially by the look and attitude of heavenly power in the Angel, had been seized with mortal faintness. Remembering the events connected with the Crucifixion, which had no doubt been talked about among the soldiery, and bearing in mind the impression of such a sight on such minds, we could readily understand the effect on the two sentries who that long night had kept guard over the solitary Tomb. The event itself (we mean: as regards the rolling away of the stone), we suppose to have taken place after the Resurrection of Christ, in the early dawn, while the holy women were on their way to the Tomb. The earth-quake cannot have been one in the ordinary sense, but a shaking of the place, when the Lord of Life burst the gates of Hades to re-tenant His Glorified Body, and the lightning-like Angel descended from heaven to roll away the stone. To have left it there, when the Tomb was empty, would have implied what was no longer true. But there is a sublime irony in the contrast between man's elaborate precautions and the ease with which the Divine Hand can sweep them aside, and which, as throughout the history of Christ and of His Church, recalls the prophetic declaration: He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh at them.'