Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.
Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury - the mixed and pulverized myrrh and aloes shaken into the folds, and the entire body, thus swathed, wrapt in an outer covering of "clean linen cloth" (Matthew 27:59). Had the Lord's own friends had the least reason to think that the spark of life was still in Him, would they have done this? But even if one could conceive them mistaken, could anyone have lain thus enveloped for the period during which He was in the grave, and life still remained? Impossible. When, therefore, He walked forth from the tomb, we can say with the most absolute certainty, "Now is Christ risen forth the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept"! (1 Corinthians 15:20). No wonder that the learned and the barbarians alike were prepared to die for the name of the Lord Jesus; for such evidence was to the unprejudiced resistless. No mention is made of anointing in this operation. No doubt it was a hurried proceeding, for fear of interruption, and because it was close on the Sabbath. The women seem to have set the doing of this more perfectly as their proper task "as soon as the Sabbath should be past" (Mark 16:1). But as the Lord graciously held it as undesignedly anticipated by Mary at Bethany (Mark 14:8), so this was probably all the anointing, in the strict sense of it, which He received.