About an hundred pound weight.— The author of the Observations has the following remark: "What Joseph and Nicodemus did with the mixture ofmyrrh and aloes, doth not appear: Dr. Lardner supposes, that they might possibly form a bed of spices. But with respect to the quantity, which he tells us, from Bishop Kidder, a modern Jew has made an objection against the history of the New Testament, affirming that it was enough for two hundred dead bodies, (which is, saying in other words, that half a pound of these drugs is sufficient to embalm a single body) I would observe, that our English surgeons require a much larger quantity of drugs for embalming; and in a recipe, which I have seen, of a very eminent one, the weight of the drugs employed, is above one third of the weight brought by Nicodemus. Much less indeed would be wanted where the body is not embowelled; but even the cerate, or drugsused externally in our embalmings, is, I find, one seventh of the weight of the myrrh and aloes bought for embalming our Lord. However, be this as it may, as it appears from what Josephus says of the funeral of Aristobulus, the last of the high priests of the family of the Maccabees, that 'the larger the quantity of spices used in their interments, the greater honour was thought to be done to the dead;' we may easily account for the quantity which Nicodemus brought, in general, though we may not be able to tell, with the precision that could be wished, how it was disposed of. Dr. Lardner does not appear to have mentioned this passage, but it entirely answers the objection of this Jew."
Related Commentaries of John 19:39
John 19:39
39 And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.