Matthew 27:60 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Laid it in his own new tomb. — The garden, or orchard, was therefore the property of Joseph (see Note on Matthew 27:33). All the first three Gospels dwell on the fact of its not being, as so many graves were, a natural cavern, but cut, and, as St. Luke’s word implies. to some extent, smoothed and polished. Like almost all Eastern graves, it was an opening made in the vertical face of the rock. Neither of the two localities which have been identified with the sepulchre (see Note as above) presents this feature, and, so far as this is not an argument against the identity of either with the actual tombs, we must assume that the rock has been so cut and shaped in the course of centuries as to lose its original form. St. John (John 19:39) notes the singularly interesting fact that Nicodemus shared with him in these reverential offices. The hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes which he brought must have been bought beforehand, and may have been stored up from the time when he knew that the leading members of the Council had resolved upon the death of Jesus. St. Luke and St. John give the reason for the speed with which the entombment was hurried on. It was now near sunset. The Sabbath was on the point of beginning, and there was no alternative but that of leaving the body on the cross for another twenty-four hours, and this, though common enough as a Roman practice (which commonly, indeed, left the corpse for birds of prey to feed on), would have shocked Jewish feeling, especially at the Paschal season, as a violation of their law (Deuteronomy 21:23).