Matthew 27:52 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Many bodies of the saints which slept arose. — It is scarcely, perhaps, surprising that a narrative so exceptional in its marvellousness, and standing, as it does, without any collateral testimony in any other part of the New Testament, should have presented to many minds difficulties which have seemed almost insuperable. They have accordingly either viewed it as a mythical addition, or, where they shrank from that extreme conclusion, have explained it as meaning simply that the bodies of the dead were exposed to view by the earthquake mentioned in the preceding verse, or have seen in it only the honest report of an over-excited imagination. On the other hand, the brevity, and in some sense simplicity, of the statement differences it very widely from such legends, more or less analogous in character, as we find, e.g., in the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, and so far excludes the mythical element which, as a rule, delights to show itself in luxuriant expansion. And this being excluded, we can hardly imagine the Evangelist as writing without having received his information from witnesses whom he thought trustworthy; and then the question rises, whether the narrative is of such a character as to be in itself incredible. On that point men, according to the point of view from which they look on the Gospel records, may naturally differ; but those who believe that when our Lord passed into Hades, the unseen world, it was to complete there what had been begun on earth, to proclaim there His victory over death and sin, will hardly think it impossible that there should have been outward tokens and witnesses of such a work. And the fact which St. Matthew records supplies, it is believed, the most natural explanation of language hardly less startling, which meets us in the Epistle, which even the most adverse critics admit to be from the hands of St. Peter. If he, or those whom he knew, had seen the saints that slept and had risen from their sleep, we can understand how deeply it would have impressed on his mind the fact that his Lord when “put to death in the flesh” had been “quickened in the spirit,” and had “preached to the spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:19), so that glad tidings were proclaimed even to the dead (1 Peter 4:6). Who they were that thus appeared, we are not told. Most commentators have followed — somewhat unhappily, I venture to believe — the lead of the Apocryphal Gospel just named, and ι have identified them with the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old Testament. It is clear, however, that St. Matthew’s statement implies that they were those who came out of the opened graves, who had been buried, that is, in the sepulchres of Jerusalem; and, remembering that the term “saints” was applied almost from the very first to the collective body of disciples (Acts 9:13; Acts 9:32; Acts 9:41), it seems more natural to see in them those who, believing in Jesus, had passed to their rest before His crucifixion. On this supposition, their appearance met the feeling, sure to arise among those who were looking for an immediate manifestation of the kingdom — as it arose afterwards at Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 4:13) — that such as had so died were shut out from their share in that kingdom; and we have thus an adequate reason for their appearance, so that friends and kindred might not sorrow for them as others who had no hope. The statement that they did not appear till after our Lord’s resurrection, is from this point of view significant. The disciples were thus taught to look on that resurrection, not as an isolated phenomenon, but as the “firstfruits” of the victory over death (1 Corinthians 15:20), in which not they themselves only, but those also whom they had loved and lost were to be sharers.