Matthew 28:8 meaning

The parallel Gospel accounts to Matthew 28:8 are Mark 16:8, Luke 24:8-11 and John 20:2-10.

As soon as the angel told the women that Jesus had risen and commanded them to go tell His disciples what had happened and remind them to see Him in Galilee (Matthew 28:5-6), they did as he said.

And they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to report it to His disciples (v 8).

The pronoun—they—in this verse refers to the women who came to anoint Jesus’s body on the morning of the first day of the week and saw that His tomb was empty (Matthew 28:5-7, Mark 16:2-5, Luke 24:1-8, John 20:1).

In many respects, Matthew’s account of the women’s resurrection report to the disciples is the most generalized and least detailed of the four Gospel accounts. It is the shortest.

And like Mark and Luke, Matthew seems to lump Mary Magdalene’s report to Peter and John (John 20:2) in with the report from the rest of the women (Matthew 28:8, Mark 16:8, Luke 24:8-11). Therefore, the pronoun—they—in Matthew 28:8 seems to generally or loosely refer to Mary Magdalene even as it mainly refers the other women mentioned in the previous verses.

Mary Magdalene likely visited Jesus’s tomb before the other women came and, consequently, she told two of the disciples about Jesus’s empty tomb before the other women reported of His resurrection to the rest of the disciples.

Recall how Mary Magdalene came alone “while it was still dark” (John 20:1) and found the stone rolled away. Mary Magdalene appears to have incorrectly assumed that the religious leaders had secretly relocated Jesus’s body (John 20:2). What she assumes and reports indicates that Mary Magdalene did not see the angel or hear what he said to the women.

The rest of the women came later to His tomb as a group “when the sun had risen” (Mark 16:2). These women saw the stone rolled away, entered His tomb, encountered the angel, and heard his message (Matthew 28:5-7, Mark 16:2-7, Luke 24:1-8).

Matthew writes that the women left the tomb quickly.

This indicates that they did not linger inside or around the tomb but left as soon as the angel finished speaking to them. It also indicates they left in a hurry and did not leisurely take their time to go find the disciples. At the end of this sentence Matthew says the women ran to report the news.

Matthew also writes that the women left with fear and great joy.

It appears that despite the angel’s assurance, “Do not be afraid” when they first encountered him, the women still were experiencing a degree of fear over the exciting news.

Mark wrote “that trembling and astonishment had gripped them” (Mark 16:8a), which suggests that the quality of fear which they were experiencing was more of a nervous wonder rather than a sense of terror or dread. The women were physically shaking with astonishment and excitement as they left the empty tomb.

The women also were experiencing great joy. The expression great joy indicates that the women were likely feeling more joy than fear.

The great joy they felt was just as Jesus predicted when He told His disciples on the night He was betrayed that:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will grieve, but your grief will be turned into joy.”
(John 16:20)

At that time, Jesus compared their grief (over His death) and joy (over His resurrection) to a woman in childbirth:

“Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world.”
(John 16:21)

Jesus then explained how great His disciples’ joy would be after they reunited after His resurrection from the dead:

“Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.”
(John 16:22)

Their joy would be not only great in intensity, but it would also be unassailable because no one will take it from them.

Matthew ends his brief account of the women’s reaction to the angel’s message by informing his readers that the women did report it to His disciples.

The pronoun—it—implies all of the following:

• the rolled away stone (Mark 16:3-4, Luke 24:2)
• the empty tomb (Mark 16:5, Luke 24:3)
• the angel and his message that Jesus has risen (Matthew 28:5-6, Mark 16:5-6, Luke 24:4-7)
• the angel’s reminder that the disciples were to meet Jesus in Galilee as He told them to meet Him (Matthew 28:7, Mark 16:7).

The women reported all of these things to Jesus’s disciples.

Mark and Luke share additional details about their report to the disciples.

Mark adds that the women “said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8b). What Mark likely means by “nothing to anyone” is that they said nothing of what they saw at the tomb or of what they heard from the angel to anyone other than His disciples. In other words, they only reported back to the disciples and no one else. They strictly followed the angel’s instructions and were afraid to tell it to anyone else. It is possible that they realized that they might be implicated to having participated in a plot to take Jesus’s body.

Luke specifies that the women shared the news “to the eleven and all the rest” (Luke 24:9b). “The eleven” refers to the remaining eleven of Jesus’s original twelve disciples. Judas, who was one of the twelve, had already killed himself over his remorse from betraying Jesus to the religious leaders (Matthew 27:3-5). The twelve, minus Judas, were now the eleven. It is not clear if Luke means each member or the eleven disciples or if he is simply and generally referring to the core group disciples.

Luke’s expression “and all the rest” (Luke 24:9b) refers to the larger group of Jesus’s followers that extended beyond the eleven. Cleopas was a follower of Jesus who was not among the eleven. Cleopas will later encounter Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13, 18). When Luke tells the story of the road to Emmaus, he seems to imply that Cleopas was one of the individuals included in “all the rest” (Luke 24:9b) who heard the women’s report, since Cleopas has knowledge of what the women said about the empty tomb (Luke 24:22-23).

Next, Luke identifies some of the women who reported these things to His disciples.

“Now they were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James; also the other women with them were telling these things to the apostles.”
(Luke 24:10)

From Luke’s account it seems that while Mary Magdalene was still explaining the things she saw to the disciples, that the other women returned and began to deliver their report to them also.

One of the women who was telling the disciples about Jesus’s empty tomb was Mary Magdalene (Luke 24:10).

Mary Magdalene was a follower of Jesus who had seven demons cast out of her (Mark 16:9b, Luke 8:2b). Mary Magdalene was present at Jesus’s burial (Matthew 27:61), visited the tomb the night before just after the Sabbath had ended (Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:1), and had likely visited His tomb by herself earlier that morning “while it was still dark” (John 20:1). She did not report of seeing an angel nor did she go inside His tomb when she first saw it.

Luke also names Joanna as another of the women who returned to report back to the disciples (Luke 24:10). Joanna does not appear to have been a typical follower of Jesus—in so far as she was the wife of a Herodian, and not just any Herodian. She was married to Chuza, the steward of Herod (Luke 8:3a). She and her husband were apparently quite wealthy, and Joanna had personally supported Jesus and His ministry financially out of her own accounts (Luke 8:3b).

The last woman who came from the tomb whom Luke identifies was Mary the mother of James (Luke 24:10). Matthew appears to have referred to Mary the mother of James as “the other Mary” (Matthew 27:61, 28:1) as a way to distinguish her from Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus (Matthew 27:56).

Mary the mother of James seems to have been the Mary who was married to Clopas (John 19:25). If so, she was not only at Jesus’s crucifixion, she was present at His burial (Matthew 27:56) and visited the tomb on the evening after the Sabbath (Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:1) with Mary Magdalene. Now, she was returning from the tomb to tell the disciples what she and “the other women” (Luke 24:10) who were with her saw and heard there.

Finally, Luke describes how the women’s report about the empty tomb and the angel’s message to His disciples was received by these men,

“But these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them.”
(Luke 24:11)

As the women returned after they quickly ran from the tomb to report all that they had seen and heard to His disciples, they were trembling with nervous fear, bursting with great joy, and gripped by astonishment (Mark 16:8)—not to mention they were possibly out of breath. They were overflowing with excitement over this most amazing news.

In their uncontainable joy and enthusiasm, the women’s words reporting Jesus’s resurrection from the dead sounded like “nonsense” to the grief-stricken disciples.

The Greek word that is translated as “nonsense” in Luke 24:11 is λῆρος (G3026—pronounced: “lē-ros”). Hippocrates—the Greek pioneer of medicine who is most renowned for the Hippocratic oath which is taken by medical professionals—used “lēros” to describe the delirious mental state and nonsensical speech of a person suffering from a high fever (Epidemics, III.3). The English word “delirious” is derived from “lēros.” And the disciples thought the women were delirious when they first reported what they saw that morning.

But the women were not speaking nonsense and they were not crazy. They were telling the truth. But it seems that the disciples were too full of grief and doubt to believe the women’s incredible claims.

It has been noted that when the disciples initially heard the message of Jesus’s resurrection, they were the first skeptics. Before they took His gospel message throughout Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth, His disciples first had to be convinced of its central claim, which they initially dismissed as delirium and nonsense.

It seems it was only after further consideration of what Mary Magdalene and the other women had to say that Peter and John decided to investigate the tomb for themselves (Luke 24:12, John 2:3-10).

The disciples’ initial dismissiveness of the women’s report concerning the resurrection brings us to two important points about the authenticity and reliability of the Gospels.

First, this is another unflattering example of the disciples’ failures. Writers who fabricate historical accounts tend to tell or retell their narratives in such a way as to make themselves look better. This can be done by falsely presenting the writer as being more heroic than he was. It can also be done by avoiding details that might embarrass the writer.

The Gospels consistently portray the disciples with their flaws and shortcomings. Some of the disciples’ cringier moments include:

• Angling and arguing over which one of them is the greatest
  (Matthew 18:1-4, 20:20-28, Mark 9:33-37, Luke 9:46-48, 22:24-27)

• Repeatedly falling asleep in Gethsemane instead of praying with Jesus
  (Matthew 26:40, 43, 45, Mark 14:37, 40-41, Luke 22:45-46)

• Abandoning Jesus after promising to stick with Him
  (Matthew 26:35, 56, Mark 14:31, 50)

• Peter’s denial that he knows Jesus with oaths and curses
  (Matthew 26:69-75, Mark 14:66-72, Luke 22:54-62, John 18:15-18, 25-27)

The disciples’ initial skepticism of Jesus’s resurrection and their dismissive attitude toward the women who first reported it is another unflattering example of their pattern of failure.

Moreover, their failure at the climax of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection further demonstrates the credibility and authenticity of their narratives. And it suggests that the authors or sponsors were committed to recording the resurrection events as they happened rather than creating idealized accounts of it.

A second, and perhaps more significant point that authenticates the reliability of the Gospels is the fact that they record that women were the first witnesses to testify of Jesus’s empty tomb. (A woman would also be the first to encounter the resurrected Jesus—Mary Magdalene, see: Mark 16:9, John 20:11-18; and then a group of women, see: Matthew 28:9-10).

In ancient Jewish culture, women were not considered to be credible witnesses.

For instance, the Mishnah, the oral tradition of the Jews, asserts that a woman’s testimony about having given birth to a child can be accepted, but her testimony regarding the sex of the child she has just birthed is not to be accepted:

“A woman is believed to say, 'I have given birth' or 'I have not given birth,' but she is not believed to say, ‘It is a boy’ or ‘It is a girl.’”
(Mishnah. Niddah 5:9)

And the Mishnah largely forbids women’s testimonies from being considered valid evidence in the court of law:

“Women, slaves, and minors are believed in regard to the collection of the tithe, but their testimony is not accepted in other matters."
(Mishnah. Shevi’it 10:8)

“A woman may not bring her own get; she must have a representative or a witness, who must be male.”
(Mishnah. Tosefta Gittin 1:2)

“All are qualified to testify in capital cases except for the following: a woman, a slave, one of defective character, a deaf-mute, a fool, and a minor.”
(Mishnah Eduyot 3:6)

Luke portrays the disciples as having a similarly dismissive attitude toward the women who reported the empty tomb and the angel’s message. Recall how the women’s “words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them” (Luke 24:11).

If the Gospel writers were fabricating the resurrection, it would not make sense for them to rely on female testimony to validate it, given that women had almost no credibility in ancient Jewish culture. Instead, all four Gospels report that women were the first to learn and testify of Jesus’s resurrection because that was the way it happened. The most essential claim of the Gospel—the resurrection of Jesus—is first established by the women’s accounts.

The Gospels’ reliance upon the testimony of females, which was widely discounted in its immediate cultural context, and the unflattering self-reporting of the gospel’s authors, further validates the authenticity of their historical record of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.