Command therefore. In consideration of the fact which we have stated, and of our apprehension of some imposture. The rulers had no power in themselves to take the measures which they required. Jesus was a state criminal, and they dared not assume the responsibility of guarding his tomb from invasion.
Until the third day. Which was all that was necessary, as Christ had promised to rise on that day—neither before nor after it; and if it passed without the predicted event, he would be proved to be an impostor.
Come by night ( νυκτο ìς). This word is absent from the best manuscripts and from the Vulgate. It seems to have been an early interpolation. And steal him away. A most unlikely hypothesis under the circumstances.
The disciples had forsaken Christ while alive, were now hiding in terror, and utterly demoralized and depressed; were they likely to incur further danger for the sake of supporting an assertion, which, unless it proved absolutely true, would only further crush their faith and hope?
The rulers seem to have had an uneasy feeling that Jesus might reappear, and they thus prepared themselves to cast discredit upon him, even if, like Lazarus, he rose from the dead. This explanation of the Resurrection has obtained among the Jews from the time of Justin Martyr, and has scarcely yet died out, though in many quarters what is called the "vision-hypothesis" has taken its place.
The people. The Pharisees were always disdainful of the vulgar herd. "This people who knoweth not the Law are cursed" (John 7:49). The last error … the first. "Error" is πλα ìνη, as they had called Christ πλα ìνος (Matthew 27:63), so the word here may be taken actively, as meaning "imposture."
The deception arising from his death and supposed resurrection would be of graver consequence than that concerned with his previous life. Morison, considering the word to have its usual meaning of "error," regards it as used by the Pharisees in a political sense, in accordance with the governor's standpoint: "If that deceiver's body should be stolen by his disciples, the fickle people will undoubtedly leap back to their old conclusion, that after all he was what he professed to be.
This conclusion would be, as we all know, an 'error;' but yet it would be most thin, ions to the interests of Caesar. There would be more political disaffection than ever." It is more simple to say that the first error, the acceptance of Christ's Messianic claims, was not of such decided and far-reaching consequence as would be the belief in his resurrection.
They do not, indeed, see all that such belief involves; but they understood enough to know that it would give supernatural importance to all the words and acts of his life.