John11chapter 11

Burial happened the same day, because a body decays fast in that climate. The corpse was washed, packed with aromatic spices, and wrapped in strips of linen with a separate cloth binding the jaw closed, then laid on a shelf inside a rock-cut tomb sealed with a heavy stone. There was no embalming; the spices masked the smell.

The four days are mentioned deliberately. A common belief of the period held that the soul hovered near the body for three days and departed on the fourth, when the face became unrecognisable. By naming the fourth day and having Martha say there will be an odour, John removes any possibility of a swoon or a mistake.

Mourning was loud and professional. Even a poor family hired wailing women and flute players, and the neighbours came out from Jerusalem — two miles was a short walk — so the scene at the tomb has a crowd in it, which is why so many witnesses are reported.

The council meeting that follows is politics of the coldest kind. Caiaphas, high priest that year, argues that it is expedient that one man die for the people rather than that the whole nation perish, and the fear he names is specific: if this movement grows, the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. Within forty years they did exactly that.