And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed.
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Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock. S. John adds ( John 19:41) that it was in a garden. It was "a new tomb," lest any one else who had there been buried should be supposed (says S. Chrysostom) or pretended (S. Jerome) to have risen again. S. Augustine says,
Mystically: As no one either before or after Him was conceived in the Virgin"s womb, so no one either before or after Him was buried in this tomb.
In the rock. "For had it been built of many stones, and the foundations had fallen in, it might have been said that the body had been stolen away," says S. Jerome. Bede, on Mark xv, describes fully its shape, "That it was so high that a man could hardly touch the top. Its entrance was on the east. On the north was the place where the Lord lay, raised up above the rest of the floor, and open on the south." Adrichomius also describes it, and adds "that Joseph gave up his own tomb to Christ, who was thus buried in the grave of a stranger." "He who had no hom...
And Joseph laid it in his own new monument, . hewed or cut out in a rock, where no one had ever been laid: and rolled a great stone against the entrance, that no one might go in, or take away the body. But Mary Magdalene, and other women that had accompanied Jesus from Galilee, followed at a distance, to mark the place, having a design to come afterwards, and again embalm the body. (Witham)
It was the custom of that country, to excavate a tomb from the hard rock, for all persons of great distinction. (Bible de Vence)
From the unadorned tomb of a Man-God, we are taught to despise the grandeur of this perishable world, and fear the example of those who, even in their sepulchres, manifest to the world how grieved they were to leave their wealth, since they carried it with them to their tombs, ornamenting them with every costly decoration human ingenuity could devise. (St. Jerome)
