Berean Standard Bible
But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; He has risen, just as He said! Come, see the place where He lay.
King James Version
And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.
About this verse
Listen to the angel's logic: "He is not here; He has risen, just as He said!" Just as He said — the resurrection is announced not as a surprise but as a kept appointment. Jesus had predicted it repeatedly; the angel almost sounds as if the empty tomb should have been expected. And then comes the invitation to verify: "Come, see the place where He lay." The first Easter sermon includes an evidence inspection.
The words are spoken at dawn on the first day of the week, outside Jerusalem, to women who had come to tend a corpse — Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. That detail is historically striking: in that culture a woman's testimony carried little legal weight, so no one inventing a resurrection story would have chosen women as its first witnesses. The Gospels record it anyway, because that is evidently how it happened.
Everything else Christians believe leans on this announcement — Paul later said that without the resurrection the faith is futile. Which makes the angel's opening words the right ones for every reader since: "Do not be afraid." It is the first application of the empty tomb, and it has not expired. If the tomb is empty, fear has lost its final argument.
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