Luke 24:5-7

And bowed down their faces— These words do not intimate their prostrating themselves before the angels, but a respectful and reverential declining of their heads, and looking downward, that they might not appear to gaze, which is well known to have been forbidden to the Jews upon the sight of a celestial vision. See Exodus 19:21.Judges 13:20.—Because the women were exceedinglyafraid when the first angel appeared, he spake to them with themost condescending mildness. See Matthew 28:5 but now that their terror was a little abated, and they were come down into the sepulchre, he chid them gently, for seeking the living among the dead. By which we are not to understand their coming down to the sepulchre, in obedience to his invitation; but their having brought spices to the sepulchre with an intention to do their Master an office, which belonged only to the dead; for this is a clear proof of their not entertaining the least thought of his resurrection. Accordingly, he found fault with them also for not believing the things which Jesus had spoken to them in Galilee concerning his rising from the dead on the third day: (see ch. Luke 18:31.) or rather for not remembering them, so as to have had some hopes of his revivingagain. Remember how he spake, &c. This familiar manner in which the angel speaks of what passed between them and Jesus in Galilee, seems to intimate, that he had then been present, though invisible, and heard what Jesus said. The hint suggests many agreeable reflections, which the pious reader will dwell upon at pleasure. See the note on Mark 16:7. St. Luke, having no intention to tell which of the angels spake, attributes to them both words which in the nature of the thing could be spoken only by one of them, perhaps the one mentioned by St. Matthew and St. Mark. See on Matthew 27:44. Further, as it is the custom of the sacred historians to mention one person or thing only, even in cases where more were concerned, the difficulty arising from St. Luke's speaking of two angels, and the rest but of one, would have been nothing; because we might have supposed that all the women went into the sepulchre together, as St. Luke tells us; and that when they did not find the body, they dispatched Mary Magdalene immediately into the city with an account of the matter; and that when she was gone, the angels appeared unto the rest, while they were yet in the sepulchre. But as St. Luke affirms, that they had searched the sepulchre, and were in perplexity on account of the body's being away, before the angels appeared; and as St. Matthew intimates that they were out of the sepulchre when they saw the vision that he speaks of, we are obliged to make the supposition, that the women, after missing the body, came out of the sepulchre, and searched for it up and down the garden; then went a second time, and discovered the angels as they entered; for they were still in perplexity when the heavenly messengers spoke to them, which is all that St.Luke affirms; and as there is nothing in his narration forbidding us to make this supposition, so the circumstance taken notice of by St. John, John 20:2 that Mary Magdalene told the apostles that they had taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, obliges us to make it: for if, when she entered into the sepulchre with her companions, the angel had appeared to them, and told them, that Jesus was risen, she could not have spoken in this manner to the apostles. St. Luke indeed joins the appearance of the two angels with the account which he gives of the perplexity of the women, occasioned by their not finding the body; because he did not judge it worth while to distinguish the appearance of the one angel while the women were onthe top of the stairs, from the appearance of both the angels after they were come down, as they happened in close succession. St. Matthew and St. Mark have supplied this defect, by informingus, that immediately upon their entering, the women saw an angel, who told them that Jesus was risen, and desired them to come down, and see the place where the Lord lay. Instead of Why seek ye the living among the dead, Luke 24:5. Dr. Heylin reads, Why seek ye, among the dead, Him, who is alive?