On Resurrection Sunday a number of the women who had traveled from Galilee with Jesus to minister to His needs had arranged to go to the tomb where He was buried to further attend to His dead body that was hastily interred Thursday evening by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus as the sabbath rest required for the first day of Unleavened Bread was beginning. As two of them, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James the Less and Joseph, were arriving there was a “severe earthquake”. To a worldly-minded person that would have seemed to have been what caused the stone sealing Jesus’ tomb to roll away from the entrance. A natural man of our own day with no inkling of the spiritual realm might also have understood the bright gleaming that appeared and seemed to rest upon the stone as an “earthquake light” or ball lightning, a rare and mysterious phenomenon known to be associated with earthquakes. But to the more spiritually minded Matthew, he understood that it was actually an angel from God, whose appearance was like lightning with garments white as snow, who descended from heaven to roll away the stone, thus causing the earthquake. Considering the many Biblical descriptions of Sheol or Hades as a real place in the heart of the earth that serves not only as a prison “to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment” (2Pe 2:9, Jud 1:6), but in which was also a place of rest for the righteous saints into which Jesus descended to free them from death (Eph 4:8-9, 1Pe 3:19), should we be surprised that that escape from death in Hades was marked by a “severe earthquake”, as if it were opening not just Jesus’ tomb, but a door within the earth to Hades itself?
What does Matthew say was the effect of the angel’s sudden appearance upon both the guards and the women, though they may not have actually recognized or fully understood the true nature of the phenomenon that was happening at the time? See Mat 28:4-5. How was the fear they experienced similar to other similar appearances we find in Scripture? See Dan 10:7-8,11-12,17-19, Luk 1:12-13,30, 2:9, 24:36-37, Rev 1:17. Many people seek and / or claim angelic visions, perhaps as a sign of their greater spirituality; what does this teach us is the reality of a true encounter with God’s holy angels? Cf. 2Pe 2:10-11, Jud 1:8-10.
Considering the accounts recorded in the other gospels where the women found the stone already rolled away when they arrived and no mention of the angel sitting upon it (Mar 16:4, Luk 24:2, Joh 20:1), should we necessarily understand that it was from upon the stone that the angel spoke to the women, as Matthew’s account might at first lead us to believe, or rather, that the gleaming light upon the stone was something the soldiers saw, perhaps just before the women arrived, that frightened them so much that they became like dead men? See Mar 16:5-7 for where Mark says the angel spoke to the women. Is what Mark records that the angel spoke to the women the same thing that Matthew records, so we can be sure they are referring to the same event? See Mat 28:5-7. While it is clear from Matthew’s words in Mat 28:5 that it was the same angel that spoke to the women as appeared and frightened the guards, how does Mark describe the angel as it appeared to the women when they entered the tomb to find that it was empty? See Mar 16:5. What was it about the women that allowed them to perceive more clearly that what the guards could only see as a fearful angel of lightning was a young man wearing a white robe? Is it possible that as we spend time with Jesus and humbly serve Him in the furtherance of His kingdom as these women did that we also may develop a better spiritual perception?
Although the women were more than just “amazed” (NAS) but “affrighted” (Mar 16:5 KJV) or “alarmed” (NET, ESV, NIV), by the presence of the angel, what is clear from the different descriptions about their fear compared to that of the guards? What does this remind us about how the fear of the Lord, although felt by both believers and non-believers in the presence of His authority, has a different aspect for those who serve Him, perhaps described more in terms of reverence for wanting to please Him and less in terms of terror for our sins against Him? What did the apostle Paul later write about how women are to express that reverence for the authority structures God has established when gathered in His presence for public worship? See 1Co 11:10. Is it possible that the dismissal of the Christian woman’s head-covering by most of the Church in the western world in the past 50 years is a reflection of a similar dismissal of the reverential fear of the Lord, which as a consequence may in the time of His appearing result in a more dreadful fear of the Lord? See Jud 1:14-15 and cf. Luk 24:5.