John 19:40 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Then took they the body— Those who have written upon the manners and customs of the Jews, tell us, that they sometimes embalmed their dead with an aromatic mixture of myrrh, aloes, and other gums or spices; whichthey rubbed on the body more or less profusely, according to their circumstances, and their regard to the dead. After anointing the body, they covered it with a shroud or winding-sheet, then wrapped a napkin round its head and face; others say round the forehead only, because the Egyptian mummies are observed to have it so. Last of all, they swathed the shroudround the body, as tightly as possible, with proper bandages made of linen; which are the linen clothes mentioned in this verse, different from the clean linen cloth mentioned by the other evangelists. See Matthew 27:59. At other times they covered the whole body in a heap of spices: thus it is said of Asa, 2 Chronicles 16:14. They laid him in the bed, which was filled with sweet odours, and divers kinds of spices, prepared by the apothecary's art. From the quantity of myrrh and aloes made use of by Joseph and Nicodemus, namely, an hundred pound weight, it would appear that the office performed to their Master was of this latter kind; for they had not time to embalm him properly: they seem, however, to have done all that was usual in such circumstances to persons of wealth and distinction, which, as well as the sepulchre itself, accorded with Isaiah's prophesy, Isaiah 53:9. As none of the other evangelistshadmentionedthe spices with which the body was embalmed, John might choose to observe that circumstance, the better to obviate the false report which then prevailed among the Jews, that the body of our Lord had been stolen away in the night by his disciples: for, could they have been supposed so weak, as to lose time in attempting to take off the linen, both from the body and head, it must have clung so fast by means of the viscous nature of the spices, as to have put it out of their power to do it in such a manner as it was found in the sepulchre; the napkin, which was bound about his head, lying not with the linen clothes, but wrapped in a place by itself, ch. John 20:7 as if the body had miraculously slipped out of it, which was the real fact. The other evangelists indeed take notice, that the women afterwards carried spices to the sepulchre: for as Joseph and Nicodemus doubtless embalmed the body privately, after it was carried from the cross, the women, as they were not present, might know nothing of it; and, considering the shortness of the time, they might imagine nothing of that kind had been done, and therefore were willing to do what they could themselves. And this was very proper to be mentioned by the other evangelists, as it was a proof that the women had no expectation that Christ would rise again, any more than Joseph and Nicodemus; but St. John might omit it, as unnecessary to be repeated. See the note on ch. John 11:39.