e it was the preparation,
that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day,
(for that Sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs
might be broken, and that they might be taken away."[112] This request
was granted, but, through the interposition of Joseph, a rich man of
Arimathaea--to whom, as a member of the supreme council, the resolution
for the removal of the bodies would be known--that of Jesus escaped the
ignominious treatment to which the others were subjected. He came and
went in boldly unto Pilate and craved the body of Jesus, securing for it
an honourable burial such as the Jews had not contemplated. Pilate
"gave" the body to Joseph, and he bought fine linen, and took Him down
and wrapped Him in the linen and laid Him in a sepulchre, which was hewn
out of a rock.[113]

It was a new sepulchre, "where never man had yet lain."[114] In Joseph's
holy task there was associated with him Nicodemus, who brought costly
spices wherewith to embalm the body, "as the manner of the Jews is to
bury." The disciples of Jesus do not appear to have shared in this work,
which was watched from a distance by certain women from Galilee, who
followed and saw where He was laid. They, too, made ready spices and
ointment with which to honour the body of the Lord; but when they came
to the tomb on the morning of the first day of the week, they found it
empty, for Jesus had risen. It is not without meaning that the tomb in
which the body of Jesus was laid was a new one. It was thus impossible
to affirm that any other than He had opened a way out of its dark
recess, the conqueror of death.

Such was the wonderful combination of circumstances that led to the
fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy, "He made his grave with the wicked, and
with the rich in his death." The Jews desired that He should be buried
with the wicked. When they besought Pilate to remove the bodies, they
wished that Jesus and the malefactors should be laid together. If the
Jewish rulers had not parted with their right to dispose of the bodies,
the three who had been crucified together would have been consigned to
the burying-ground set apart for the interment of Jewish criminals; but
it was the Divine decree that Jesus should make His grave with the rich,
and therefore the event was so overruled that the bodies of Jesus and
the malefactors were at the disposal not of the Jews, but of the Roman
governor, who delivered the body of Jesus to the