Luke 23

Aruch, reciting these words, saith, "It is called paradise, under the signification of the garden of Eden, which is reserved for the just. This place is in the heavens, where the souls of the just are gathered together." And the Talmudical Gloss hath it much to the same sense: "These four, by God's procurement, went up into the firmament."

While we are reading these passages, that story may easily occur to mind of St. Paul's being "caught up into paradise," 2 Corinthians 12; and perhaps the legend before us is but the ape of that story. In the story it is observable, that paradise and the 'third heaven' are one and the same thing: in the legend paradise and the highest heavens. For so the doctors comment upon the word in Psalm 68:5: "There are seven classes or degrees of just persons, who see the face of God, sit in the house of God, ascend up unto the hill of God, &c. And to every class or degree there is allotted their proper dwellingplace in paradise. There are also seven abiding places in hell. Those that dwell in paradise, they shine like the shining of the firmament, like the sun, like the moon, like the firmament, like the stars, like lightning, like the lilies, like burning lamps."

II. Our Saviour, therefore, telling the penitent thief, This day shalt thou be with me in paradise, he speaks in the common dialect, and to the capacity of the thief; viz., that he should be in heaven with Christ, and with all just persons that had left this world. Nor, indeed, would I fetch the explication of that article of our creed, He descended into hell, from any passage in the Scripture sooner than this here: adding this, that we must of necessity have recourse to the Greek tongue for the signification of the word, which they generally use to denote the state of the dead, as well the blessed as the miserable. Those who expound that passage in 1 Peter 3:19, of his going down from the cross into hell to preach to the spirits in prison there, do very little regard the scope of the apostle, and are absolute strangers to his meaning in it. For,

1. In that he shuts up the generation before the flood in an infernal prison, he falls in with the received opinion of that nation, which was, that that generation had no part in the world to come; and that they were condemned to boiling waters in hell.

2. He compares the present generation of the Jews with that generation before the flood; that Christ did of old preach even to that generation, and so he hath done to this; that that generation perished through its disobedience, and so will this. He runs much upon the same parallel in his second Epistle, chapter 3:6, &c. We must observe, that the apostle makes his transition from the crucifixion and resurrection of our Saviour directly to the generation before the flood, passing over all those generations that came between, on purpose that he might make the comparison betwixt that and the age he lived in.

53. And he took it down, and wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein never man before was laid.

[Wrapped it in linen.] "Mar Zutra saith, that out of the linen in which they wrapped up books, when it grew old they made shrouds for the dead of the precept; for this is to their disgrace." The Gloss adds, "That they do it of the linen wherein they fold up the book of the Law." Him who had suffered death by the sentence of the Sanhedrim, or magistrate, they were wont to call the dead of the precept, because he was executed according to the precept: and such a one to them was our Jesus. Now as to one that was condemned to death by the magistrate, they had an opinion that by how much the more disgracefully they dealt with him, by so much the greater atonement was made for him. Hence that expression, "They did not openly bewail him, that that very setting him at nought" (no man lamenting him) "might redound to his atonement." And from thence, perhaps, if the women at Jerusalem had bewailed any other person as they bewailed our Saviour, that other person might have said, "Ye daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, lest ye cut short my atonement": but Christ speaks to them upon a far different account. And under this notion they wrapped one that had been so executed, in some ragged, torn, old, dirty windingsheets; that this disgrace, being thrown upon him, might augment his expiation. But this good Arimathean behaves himself otherwise with Jesus, as having conceived quite another opinion concerning him.

54. And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath drew on.

[And the sabbath drew on.] The vulgar reads, the sabbath began to dawn: not ill rendered. Beza reads, and the sabbath succeeded: not properly. One would have thought it would have been more congruously said, it began to be dark towards the sabbath: for the night before the sabbath was coming on: but,

I. The sabbatical candles that were lighted in honour of the sabbath were now set up. "There are three things which it is necessary a man should warn those of his own house of on the evening of the sabbath, when night is coming on: Have you paid your tenths? Have you begun your Erubhick society? Light up your candle." "Men and women are bound to light up a candle in their houses upon the sabbath day. If a man hath not bread to eat, yet he must beg from door to door to get a little oil to set up his light." These things being noted, the evangelist may not be improperly understood thus, "The sabbath began to shine with the lights set up"; respect being had to these sabbath candles. But I do not acquiesce here.

II. The evening of the sabbath was called amongst the Jews light. By the light of the fourteenth day they make a search for leaven by the light of a candle. By the light of the fourteenth day; that is, on the evening, or in the night that immediately precedes that day. So Rambam upon the place, "the search for leaven is in the night of the fourteenth day, although the eating of leavened bread is not forbidden before the noon of the fourteenth day. But they instituted this because it is most convenient searching in the night time by candlelight; and at that time also all persons are at home."

"The woman that miscarries on the light [i.e. the evening] of the eighty-first day, the Shammean school absolves her from any offering: but the school of Hillel doth not." The Gloss hath it, on the light of the eighty-fist day, i.e. in the night of the eighty-first day. The question disputed there is: "The woman that had been brought to bed of a girl was bound to the purification of eighty days"; when those days were at an end, then she was bound to offer, Leviticus 12:5,6. Now therefore seeing the oblation was to be brought on the eighty-first day, the question is, What if the woman should happen to miscarry within the very night that begins the eighty-first day, must she the next day offer one or two sacrifices? one for the girl, and one for that of which she hath miscarried? The Shammean school will have but one, but the school of Hillel saith two.

Pesikta speaking concerning a vowed sacrifice, from Leviticus 7:17, hath this passage: "Perhaps it may be eaten on the light [i.e. the evening] of the third day. The text saith upon the third day; it is eaten until the third day. It is not eaten on the light [i.e. the evening, or the night] of the third day": for then the third day was actually begun. But now in this phrase they restrain the word especially to the beginning of the night, though sometimes it is taken for the whole night, as in that tradition newly quoted concerning the woman that miscarried: and so the Gloss upon Pesachin. Maimonides discoursing about putting away the leaven which ought to be on the light of the fourteenth day, i.e. on the night that begins the fourteenth day, hath this passage; "By prescription of the scribes they search for, and cast out their leaven in the night; namely, the beginning of that night that ushers in the fourteenth day." Much to the same sense the Gemarist concerning the light: "How comes twilight to be called light? From thence, because it is written, In the twilight, in the evening, of the day," Proverbs 7:9. Rambam thinks it so called by a rule of contraries; for so he in Pesachin: "The night is called light, by the same rule that they call many other things by their contraries."

But the Gemarists upon the place affirm that the evening is not improperly called light, and prove it from that expression, Psalm 148:3: Praise him all ye stars of light. However unsuitably therefore it might sound in the ears of Greeks or Latins, when they hear the evening or the beginning of the night expressed by the light of the sabbath, yet with the Jews it was a way of expression very usual: and they could readily understand the evangelist speaking in their own vulgar way, when he would tell us the night of the sabbath drew on; but expresseth it by the light of the sabbath began to shine.

56. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.

[And rested the sabbath day.] If our Saviour was taken down from the cross about sunset, as it was provided, Deuteronomy 21:23; Joshua 8:29, then had the women this interim of time to buy their spices and despatch other business before the entry of the sabbath day.

I. Between the suns. So they called that space of time that was between the setting of the sun and the appearance of any star.

II. Might they not have that space of time also that was between the first and second star? We may judge something from this passage: "In the evening of the sabbath, if he see one star and do any work, he is acquitted; but if he see two stars, let him bring his trespass-offering."

III. Might they not have some farther allowance in the case of funerals? We may judge from this passage: "they do all works necessary about the dead [on the sabbath day]; they anoint him, they wash him, provided only that they do not stir a limb of him," &c. It was not safe for those women to shew themselves too busy in preparing for his interment; especially seeing Jesus died as a malefactor, and was odious to the people: this might exasperate the people against them, and so much the more too, if they should, in the least measure, violate the sabbath day. But further, besides the honour they gave to the sabbath, it was not prudence in them to break it for a work which they thought they might as well do when the sabbath was done and over.