The Death of Jesus

Study notes

At the heart of this account lies the tension between Jesus’ experience of forsakenness, voiced in the cry from Psalm 22, and the immediate effects that follow his death. The darkness that precedes the cry gives way to a second loud utterance and the yielding of the spirit, at which point the temple curtain tears, the earth shakes, and tombs open. These signs elicit a direct confession from the Roman centurion and his men, while the women who had ministered to Jesus remain at a distance as witnesses. The unit therefore presents the death as the point at which covenant barriers are removed and resurrection power is released, yet it leaves the full meaning of these events open for the different observers present.

What is The Death of Jesus about?

The passage begins at midday when darkness falls across the land and lasts until the ninth hour. At that point Jesus cries out in a loud voice the words of Psalm 22, asking why God has forsaken him. Bystanders interpret the cry as a call to Elijah and offer him vinegar on a reed while they wait to see whether any rescue will come. Jesus then cries out once more and yields up his spirit. Immediately the temple curtain tears from top to bottom, the earth shakes, rocks split, and tombs open. After the resurrection many of the raised saints enter the holy city and appear to many people. A centurion and the soldiers keeping watch declare that Jesus was truly the Son of God. Several women who had followed him from Galilee and ministered to him stand watching at a distance, among them Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

This unit records the moment of Jesus’ death and the immediate consequences that accompany it. The darkness and the torn curtain mark the boundary between the hours of mockery and the instant when Jesus’ spirit leaves his body. The centurion’s statement supplies the first direct confession from a Gentile observer, while the women’s presence establishes eyewitness continuity with the burial that follows. These elements sit at the hinge between the crucifixion proper and the burial narrative, showing how the death itself produces both cosmic disruption and human recognition without yet explaining their full meaning.

Where does this passage sit in Matthew?

This unit sits at the exact center of Matthew’s passion sequence, immediately after the sustained mockery that ends at verse 44 and directly before the burial account that begins at verse 57. The darkness that opens the pericope marks a decisive shift from the daylight hours of public derision to a three-hour period of withdrawal and then to the decisive moment of death. Where the preceding scene records repeated taunts that Jesus cannot save himself, the present passage records the single cry that names God’s apparent absence and the second cry that ends his life. The temple curtain’s tearing, the earthquake, and the opened tombs follow at once, so that the moment of yielding the spirit becomes the hinge on which the temple’s inner barrier is removed and the dead are released.

The placement also creates a sharp contrast with the units on either side. The soldiers and bystanders in 27:32–44 act entirely within the realm of visible scorn and political control; the centurion and his companions in verse 54 respond to the same events with an acknowledgment that reaches beyond what their eyes have seen. Likewise, the women named in verses 55–56 stand at a measured distance, their earlier service to Jesus now reduced to watching, while the raised saints in verse 53 enter the city and appear to many. These juxtapositions underscore how the death itself generates divided responses rather than a single, uniform reaction.

Within the larger design of the Gospel, the passage gathers threads that have run through the narrative since the temple cleansing and the Olivet discourse. The rending of the curtain from top to bottom answers the earlier prediction of the temple’s destruction, yet it does so at the moment of Jesus’ death rather than through any human assault. The earthquake and the opening of tombs echo earlier signs that accompanied Jesus’ ministry, now intensified at its close. The centurion’s confession, moreover, stands in deliberate counterpoint to the earlier demands for a sign; here the sign is given not to opponents but to those keeping watch over the execution. The women’s presence, finally, prepares for their role at the tomb without yet advancing the story, leaving the reader suspended between the cosmic upheaval at the cross and the quiet arrangements for burial that follow.

How is the passage structured?

The unit opens with a fixed temporal frame that suspends action: darkness covers the land from the sixth hour until the ninth. This interval receives no further narration until the ninth hour itself, when a single loud cry breaks the silence. The cry is quoted directly, then immediately glossed by bystanders who mishear it as an appeal to Elijah. Their mishearing triggers a brief sequence of movement and speech: one person fetches vinegar on a reed, while the rest voice a conditional expectation that Elijah might yet intervene. The offer is extended but left unresolved; the group’s second statement functions as a deliberate pause rather than a resolution.

A second loud cry follows without intervening dialogue, and the death itself is reported in a single clause. At that instant the narrative accelerates through a chain of simultaneous events: the temple curtain tears, the earth shakes, rocks split, and tombs open. The raising of the saints is stated, yet their emergence is postponed until after the resurrection, creating an explicit temporal gap between the moment of death and the moment of their appearance in the city. The centurion’s declaration then registers the cumulative effect of the earthquake and the preceding signs, shifting the focus from cosmic disruption to human recognition. The final verses place a group of women at a measured distance, their presence noted without speech or movement, so that the unit ends on sustained observation rather than further action or speech.

What is the historical background?

The passage measures time according to the Roman system that divided daylight into twelve variable hours counted from sunrise. The sixth hour therefore fell near midday and the ninth hour near three in the afternoon, the very stretch when sunlight would normally have been strongest. Observers would have registered the darkness as an interruption of ordinary celestial order rather than a routine weather change.

The sour drink extended on a reed belonged to the standard kit of Roman soldiers on duty. They carried a cheap, vinegary wine ration called posca that could be soaked into a sponge and lifted to a man fixed on a crossbeam. The reed served as a simple pole long enough to reach the height of the execution without requiring the soldier to mount the cross itself.

Bystanders who mistook the cry for an appeal to Elijah were drawing on a strand of Jewish expectation that the prophet would return to rescue the faithful in their final distress. That hope rested on texts such as Malachi 4:5 yet was here voiced by people who remained at the foot of the cross rather than among Jesus’ own circle.

The curtain in view is the inner veil that screened the holy of holies inside the Jerusalem temple, the chamber entered only by the high priest on the Day of Atonement. Its location inside the city walls meant that any report of its tearing would have reached the execution site only through later witnesses, underscoring that the event was understood as an action originating from within the sanctuary rather than from human hands below.

Women who had traveled with Jesus from Galilee stood at a distance because social custom discouraged female relatives from crowding the immediate area of a public execution. Their presence at the margins still allowed them to fulfill the role of loyal followers who had earlier supplied practical care during his ministry. The centurion and his detachment, by contrast, belonged to the Roman garrison charged with carrying out crucifixions; their daily work made them familiar with the usual sequence of nailing, guarding, and confirming death, so that the accompanying earthquake stood out against that routine.

What does this passage teach about God?

The cry at the ninth hour places the weight of the moment on Jesus’ address to God as the one who has withdrawn. By quoting the opening of Psalm 22 in the supplied wording, the text presents the abandonment not as a rhetorical flourish but as the actual experience of forsakenness that belongs to the death he undergoes. That experience is framed as the necessary path by which his mission reaches its end; the second loud cry and the yielding up of his spirit follow immediately, showing that the forsakenness is not reversed before death but is endured to its conclusion.

The immediate effects registered in the temple and the created order indicate what this death accomplishes. The curtain torn from top to bottom occurs without human agency and from the direction of God’s presence outward, signaling that the barrier previously maintained by the sanctuary has been removed by divine action. The earthquake and the splitting of rocks extend the same disruption into the ground itself, while the opening of tombs and the raising of the saints who had fallen asleep locate the event within the sphere of resurrection power already at work. These signs together portray the death as the moment when covenant separation is ended and the power of death is breached, not by decree alone but by what has taken place on the cross.

The centurion and those keeping watch respond to the earthquake and the things that accompanied it by declaring that Jesus was truly the Son of God. Their confession arises from observation of the cosmic disturbance rather than from prior instruction, and it stands in contrast to the earlier mockery that had challenged Jesus to prove his identity by coming down from the cross. The women who had followed from Galilee and ministered to him remain at a distance as witnesses; their presence after the death, listed by name, anchors the testimony of what occurred in those who had continued with him to the end. The passage therefore presents the death as the point at which divine judgment on sin, the removal of cultic separation, and the recognition of Jesus’ sonship converge in a single set of events witnessed by both Gentile soldiers and faithful women from Galilee.

What are the interpretive difficulties?

The cry recorded at the ninth hour raises a pointed question about its force. Jesus speaks the opening line of Psalm 22 in Aramaic, yet the bystanders immediately treat the words as a summons to Elijah rather than a scriptural lament. Their reaction shows how easily the same utterance can be heard as either a plea for rescue or a final collapse, and the text supplies no further comment on which hearing is correct. The offer of vinegar follows at once, framed as a test to see whether Elijah will intervene, so the moment leaves the reader with two incompatible expectations hanging in the air.

A second silence concerns the timing of the raised saints. The narrative states that they came out of the tombs after his resurrection and appeared to many in the holy city. Nothing is said about where they remained during the intervening hours or what their appearance accomplished beyond the bare fact of being seen. The detail sits between the earthquake and the centurion’s confession without being woven into either event, so its precise contribution to the scene remains open.

The centurion’s declaration that Jesus was truly the Son of God is prompted by the earthquake and the things that took place, yet the text does not indicate whether he connects this title to the earlier mockery about the temple or to the cry of forsakenness. The women who had ministered to Jesus stand at a distance and are named without any recorded word or action, leaving their understanding of the same events unstated. These gaps keep the passage from settling the full meaning of the death for every witness present.

Notes accompany the Anselm Project Bible, an AI translation from the original languages. Tap any verse above for the committee's word-level decisions.