16:1: When the Sabbath was over, they bought … spices in order to …
anoint him.
1. The anointing סוּךְ
of a dead person was not forbidden on the Sabbath. Mishnah Šabbat 23.5: (On the
Sabbath) one is permitted to do everything that is necessary for the dead. This
includes applying ointment and washing him סכין ומדיחין אותו, so long as they do not move any of the corpse’s limbs.—These
words, however, apply only to work done on the corpse itself. The making of a
coffin or the making of the tomb on the Sabbath was forbidden. On this, see m.
Šabb 23.4.—Lightfoot applies a passage from y. Šabb 9.12B.1, which in his
opinion forbids the anointing of a dead person on the Sabbath: Quidnam est illud quod quoad viventem
permittitur, [Sabbato] quoad mortuum vero non? Est unctio. However, that
passage is not about the Sabbath, but is about the second tithe. As such, it
deals with what the living man may deny himself, but not for a dead man, out of
the money for tithing. The answer is סִיכָה,
the anointing (cf. b. Yebam. 74A).—When the women in Mark 16:1 let the Sabbath
pass by to anoint Jesus’ body afterward, the reason for this is not that
anointing was forbidden on the Sabbath but that shopping for the ἀρώματα necessary for the anointing was not
permitted on the Sabbath. On this see the excursus “The Day of Jesus’ Death,”
C, #4.
2. Corpses were anointed with oil and, as the NT shows, were buried
with spices (ἀρώματα
= בְּשָׂמִים Mark 16:1; Luke 24:1), especially myrrh
and aloes (John 19:39). From the rabbinic literature, we did not find any
evidence of the use of spices for this purpose.—Embalming the corpses, which
was the custom of the Egyptians, was not customary among the Jews. King Herod
is once said to have kept the body of his wife in honey for seven years (see b.
B. Bat. 3B at § Matt 2:16, #2), and b. Taʿan. 5B speaks of embalming Jacob’s
corpse: R. Isaac (ca. 300) said, “Thus says R. Yohanan († 279), ‘Our father
Abraham did not die.’ Rab Nahman († 320) replied to him, ‘Did mourners lament
him, and did embalmers embalm חנטו חנטייא
him, and the gravediggers burry him for no reason?!’ ” (Hermann
L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, A Commentary on the New Testament from the
Talmud and Midrash, ed. Jacob N. Cerone, 4 vols. [trans. Andrew Bowden and
Joseph Longarino; Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Press, 2022], 2:59-60)
