Mark 16:13

Mark’s account of the empty tomb ends with the women hearing from a young man in white that they were to tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus was going before them into Galilee, and then fleeing from the tomb in fear (Mark 16:1–8). Verse 9 opens a fresh account of what followed, and it begins with the risen Lord himself.

The verb anístēmi means to stand up, to rise, or to be raised up again, and Scripture uses it for rising from the dead. In the Greek it is used intransitively here, so “was risen” means that Jesus rose. This is a real, bodily rising from the grave and his victory over death, and it stands at the heart of the gospel Paul preached (1 Corinthians 15:3–4).

The word for early, prōḯ, means at dawn, the day-break watch. The first day of the week is Sunday, the day after the Sabbath, and because Jesus rose on it, it became the day his church gathered for worship. A risen Lord at the dawn of a new week marks the beginning of the new creation, in which anyone who is in Christ is a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17).

For “he appeared” Mark uses phaínō, a verb that means to shine or bring to light, and also to appear or come into view, which is its sense here. Jesus came into plain sight and showed himself to a woman who knew him well. His rising was an event in this world, seen by witnesses he chose.

Mark says that Jesus appeared “first” to Mary Magdalene. Her name, Magdalēnḗ, marks her as a woman of Magdala, and Mark describes her by what Jesus had done for her: “out of whom he had cast seven devils”. The word for devils, daimónion, means an evil spirit, a demon. In Scripture seven often stands for completeness, so the phrase speaks of a severe bondage and of a deliverance just as complete. Luke names her among the women who followed Jesus and ministered to him, and he gives the same detail of the seven devils (Luke 8:1–3). Casting out devils was a sign of Jesus’ authority, and early in Mark’s Gospel the people marvelled that he commanded even the unclean spirits (Mark 1:27).

So the first person to see the risen Lord was a woman who had once been gravely afflicted, in a day that gave women and the afflicted little standing. Jesus’ grace reaches the lowly, and he gave the greatest news in history first to one he had set free and made new. Her deliverance and her meeting with him at the tomb show the same power at work: the power of the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29), who triumphed over the principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15).

John tells this meeting at length, how Mary at first failed to know him, and how Jesus sent her to the disciples (John 20:11–18). Matthew records Jesus meeting the women as they went from the tomb (Matthew 28:9–10). Because she was sent to the apostles with the news, some in the early church called Mary “the apostle to the apostles”.

The church has received and read these verses for centuries, and they stand in the vast majority of the manuscripts of Mark and in the lectionaries, the books of readings used in worship. Some of the earliest and most important Greek manuscripts, among them Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, end the Gospel at Mark 16:8, where the women flee from the tomb and keep silent for fear. For that reason Mark 16:9–20 is called the “longer ending” of Mark.

Believers differ over who wrote these verses. On one view they are Mark’s own close to his Gospel. On the other, another hand added them at an early date to a Gospel that ended at verse 8. On either view their teaching agrees with the rest of the New Testament. The appearances in this passage are the ones the other Gospels tell more fully, Mary at the tomb in John and the two on the road in Luke, and these verses go on to give Jesus’ command to preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15).

Mary went from the risen Lord to his friends. The verb for went, poreúomai, is the ordinary word for going or travelling, and the verb for told, apangéllō, means to report, announce or bring word. She was doing what Jesus had told her to do (John 20:17–18), and Matthew says the women ran from the tomb with great joy (Matthew 28:8). Mary became the first to carry the news of the resurrection.

“Them that had been with him” are his disciples, the people who had shared his ministry, his journeys and his hopes. Mary found them “as they mourned and wept”. The verb penthéō means to grieve, both the feeling and its outward show, and klaíō means to weep aloud, to sob. Mourning for the dead in that day was open and loud, with wailing and lament, and sometimes hired mourners joined in. The disciples’ grief was real and natural. Their Master had been crucified, their hopes were shattered, and John tells how they met behind shut doors for fear (John 20:19).

Into that sorrow Mary brought the news that would turn it to joy. The psalmist praises the LORD who turned his mourning into dancing (Psalm 30:11), and Mary’s report was the first word of that turning for the disciples.

“When they had heard” uses akoúō, the common verb to hear. The disciples received Mary’s report clearly. Its message was that he was alive, záō, to live or be alive, the very opposite of the death and burial they were grieving. And she spoke as an eyewitness, for he “had been seen of her”. Among friends who knew and trusted her, that word should have carried great weight.

Their answer was “believed not”, the verb apistéō, to be unbelieving or to disbelieve, and by implication to disobey. They refused to credit what she told them. Several things stood in the way. They were deep in grief. The Pharisees looked for a general resurrection of the dead at the end of time, and one man rising in the middle of history was almost unheard of and would have sounded impossible to them. And Mary was a woman, in a society that gave a woman’s testimony less weight than a man’s, even though the Gospels name women as the first witnesses. Luke records the apostles meeting the women’s report with the same unbelief (Luke 24:10–11), and Thomas would hold out against the word of the other disciples in the same way (John 20:25).

“After that” Jesus appeared to two more of his followers. Here the verb is phaneróō, to make apparent or make manifest. Verse 9 used another verb, and the KJV renders both “appeared”. This one speaks of Jesus making himself known by his own will, to confirm his victory over death.

“In another form” joins héteros, which most often means simply other or another and sometimes different in kind, with morphḗ, shape or outward form. The two disciples saw Jesus in a shape they failed at first to know.

Mark tells this meeting in a single verse, and Luke tells the same journey at length, when two disciples walked from Jerusalem toward the village of Emmaus, about seven miles away, and the risen Jesus joined them on the road (Luke 24:13–35). “As they walked” is peripatéō, to walk or walk about, a verb that can also mean to live or conduct oneself, though here it is plain walking. “And went into the country” uses poreúomai, the same verb as Mary’s going in verse 10, with agrós, a field, the countryside or a farm hamlet. The two were heading out of the city into the villages around it. Travel in that day was on foot, and disciples often went in pairs, as Jesus had sent out the twelve two by two (Mark 6:7). Jesus came to them on an ordinary journey, in a quiet place away from the crowds.

“And they went” here is apérchomai, to go off or depart, and “told” is apangéllō, the same verb used of Mary in verse 10. The two did as Mary had done. Luke tells how they went straight back to Jerusalem and found the eleven gathered with others (Luke 24:33–35). The KJV’s “the residue” is loipoí, the rest, the remaining ones, meaning the main body of the disciples, the eleven apostles and those with them.

“Neither believed they them” joins oudé, neither or not even, to pisteúō. That verb can mean to trust and rely on a person, and it can also mean simply to believe that something is true or to credit what someone says, which is its sense here. The rest refused to credit the report of their own companions. By now Mary and the two had all borne witness, and still the disciples held to their grief.

These refusals lead straight to the next verse, where Jesus himself appears to the eleven and rebukes their “unbelief and hardness of heart” (Mark 16:14). Luke tells how he opened their understanding so that they might understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:44–45), and John tells how Thomas came to faith when he saw the Lord for himself (John 20:24–29). Eyewitness testimony is a foundation of the gospel, and here it met unbelief again and again until Jesus came in person, meeting his disciples in their doubt with more of himself.

These verses show us the patience of the risen Christ. His friends grieved, heard the news and refused it, and he kept coming to them, first through Mary, then through the two, and then in person, until their unbelief gave way. The faith they came to was his work in them, the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8–9), and in men like these God kept his promise of a new covenant in which he writes his law on the heart (Jeremiah 31:33).

He made himself known to the two through the Scriptures, as their hearts burned within them on the road (Luke 24:32), and in the breaking of bread (Luke 24:30–31). He goes on making himself known to his church through his Word and through the Spirit he sent (John 16:7).

The witnesses in this passage passed the news from one to another, Mary to the mourners and the two to the rest, and Jesus then sent his disciples to preach the gospel to every creature. Paul asks, “how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:14–15). So the news has come down to us, and the same risen Lord who met Mary in her sorrow, walked beside two grieving friends and bore with the unbelief of the eleven still meets his people, until the day when every eye shall see him (Revelation 1:7).