And that he rose again. — Better, and that He has been raised again. The burial of our Lord is dwelt upon and emphasised as the proof of the reality of His death. Similarly in the case of Lazarus, his entombment is brought out strongly as showing that it was from no trance, but from death that he arose. (See John 11)
According to the scriptures. — The reiteration with each statement that it was “according to the scriptures,” i.e., according to the Old Testament scriptures, the Gospel narratives not yet being in existence — shows how strongly the Apostle dwelt on the unity of the facts of Christ’s life and the predictive utterances of the prophets. The death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord were all parts of that providential plan which the deep spiritual insight of God’s servants of old illumined by the Holy Spirit had enabled them to foresee. The resurrection was no subsequent invention to try and explain away or mitigate the terrible shock which Christ’s death had given to his followers. (See Psalms 2:7; Psalms 16:10; Isaiah 53:9-10; Isaiah 55:3; Hosea 6:2.)