and they said, “Say that while we were sleeping, his disciples came at night and stole him.”
These verses show sin’s final attempt to silence the truth. The chief priests and the elders, seeing that the resurrection is an undeniable fact, resort to deception in keeping with their manner, just as it was at the time of Jesus’ sentencing. Their “consulting together” is a new plot, now not against Jesus, but against the testimony of the resurrection. The silver, which in the story of Judas became the price of betrayal, appears again, this time as an instrument of bribery to cover up God’s work. The words, “Say that while we were sleeping…” reveal the foolish nature of the lie: if they were asleep, how could they know who stole the body? This episode shows that when a person loses the sense of truth, even his own lie becomes his own verdict. Their attempt failed, because in reality no one can, with a bribe, shut out the light of the resurrection.