Matthew 27:62 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

The next day, that followed the day of the preparation. — The narrative that follows is peculiar to St. Matthew, and, like the report of the rending of the veil of the Temple, may, perhaps, be traced to the converted priests of Acts 6:7. This was, as we find from what follows, the Sabbath. The “preparation” (Paraskeuè) was a technical term, not, as is sometimes said, in reference to preparing for the Passover, but, as in Mark 15:42, to a preparation for the Sabbath (Jos. Ant. xvi. 6, § 2, is decisive on this point), and the use of the term here leaves the question whether the Last Supper or the Crucifixion coincided with the Passover, still an open one. It may be noted that the Jewish use of the term passed into the Christian Church, and that at least as early as Clement of Alexandria (Strom. vii. § 76) it was the received name for the Dies Veneris, or Friday, the anniversary of the Crucifixion being the “great” or “holy” Paraskeue. On either view, however, there is something strange in the way in which St. Matthew describes the day as coming, “after the preparation,” instead of saying simply, “the Sabbath.” It is a possible solution of the difficulty thus presented, on the assumption that the Last Supper was a true Passover, that the day of the Crucifixion as being on the Passover, was itself technically a Sabbath (Leviticus 23:7; Leviticus 23:24). Two Sabbaths therefore came together, and this may have led the Evangelist to avoid the commoner phrase, and to describe the second as being “the day that followed the preparation,” i.e. the ordinary weekly Sabbath. The precise time at which the priests went to Pilate is not stated; probably it was early on the morning of the Sabbath when they had heard from the Roman soldiers of the burial by Joseph of Arimathæa. The fact that the body was under the care of one who was secretly a disciple aroused their suspicions, and they would naturally take the first opportunity, even at the risk of infringing on the Sabbath rest, of guarding against the fraud which they suspected.