(see ver. 45), but especially the Land of Israel and the vicinity of Jerusalem.1 — ai nerpai, x.r.X., the rocks, etc.) Travellers re late that rents in the rocks, the opposite sides of which corres pond to each other, are still to be seen.
52. Tuv xexoiwAtvuv cc-yluv, of the saints that had slept) The name saints belongs equally to the living and the dead ; yea, in the mention of the dead, the determining clause is added, " who had slept." And these saints are reckoned such, not by human, but Divine Canon. Of the Saints, who had died either a long while before the birth of Christ, or not much after (see Gnomon on John xi. 25), from all tribes no doubt. The ancients appear to have considered Job to have been one of these ; for, at the end of his book, the LXX. and Theodotion add ytypaKrai 8s avrw TaX/i/ avaarfjasffdat {&£& uv o xvpiog aviarriGiv, but it is written that he shall rise again with those whom the Lord raises.
53. 'E^fXtfwrtCj having come out) i.e. the saints whose bodies had been resuscitated, in stately procession. — {tiro. Trtv 'iyspaiv Airou, after His resurrection} This clause refers to the verb ty'spAri, were raised, to which the verbal noun lyepeis (the act of being raised), which does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament, is fitted in this passage ; and yet this same clause is placed between the egress of the saints from the tombs, and their ingress into the city. This intermingling of the words admirably corresponds with the facts. Immediately on our Lord's death, the veil was rent in twain, the earth shook, the rocks were rent; and St Matthew has woven together the other circumstances with these prodigies. From which we are able to gather that there was one continual earthquake from the death to the resurrec tion of our Lord, which first aroused the living (ver. 54), and afterwards the dead. There cannot be assigned any noticeable interval between the resurrection of the bodies of the saints, and
God was the same to the soul of Jesus, as to die was to His body : the former was signified by the darkness, the latter by the rending of the veil. His quickening in the Spirit followed immediately after He had drunk the cup of death to the uttermost (1 Pet. iii. 18), and that quickening pro duced the greatest effects upon things visible and invisible alike. — Harm., p. 57G.
1 Those great commotions in created things went on, in continuous suc cession, from the moment of Christ's death to His resurrection, exerting their influence especially in the kingdom of things invisible. — Harm., I. c.