Matthew 28:2

Matthew 28:2 is the second verse of the twenty-eighth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. This verse is part of the resurrection narrative. Mary Magdalene and "the other Mary" were approaching Jesus' tomb after the crucifixion, when an earthquake occurred and an angel appeared.

The original Koine Greek, according to Westcott and Hort, reads:

In the King James Version of the Bible it is translated as:

The modern World English Bible translates the passage as:

For a collection of other versions see BibRef Matthew 28:2

Scholars accept that this verse is a reworking of Mark 16:5. In Mark it is implied that the "young man" is an angel or something similar, this verse makes this explicit. The verse strives to make the events as dramatic as possible. Beginning with "behold" shows that something important is about to follow. It also adds an earthquake and a dramatic descent from heaven. Beare sees this as a haggadic expansion upon Mark, and argues that no source beyond Mark is needed to explain where this passage originates.

There are many parallels in this verse to earlier events in Matthew. "Angels of the lord" play an important role in the infancy narrative, appearing at Matthew 1:20, 1:24, 2:13 and 2:19. That an angel appears again at the end of the story links it back to the opening chapters. "Coming down from heaven" parallels the wording of Matthew 3:16, the climax of the baptism scene. An earthquake had also earlier occurred at Matthew 27:51, marking the moment of Jesus' death. Jesus predicts earthquakes as a sign of the end times at Matthew 24:7, and earthquakes are also a common occurrence in Revelation. Davies and Allison thus see the earthquake in this verse also having eschatological significance. Since an earthquake marked Jesus' death, Gundry feels that this one is marking the exact moment of the resurrection.

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