Jesus, being a Jew, like the Hebrews in general had little regard for burial and the grave. Among the Jews contact with the dead was considered an act of defilement that had to be soon atoned for.
From the following passage (Matthew viii. 21, 22) it is plain that Christ was no friend of interment:—
“And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury the dead.”
By the dead (i.e., spiritually dead) the Saviour, according to the best exegesis, meant the outside world, and he wanted to intimate that burial was fit work for them, but not for the Christian or disciple.
See also St. Luke ix. 59.
Christ disparaged the importance of burial more than once. Indeed, it seems that he paid little attention to the disposal of the dead. We find him, during his ministrations on earth, healing the sick, turning water into wine to make glad the hearts of guests at a wedding feast, administering to the wants of the indigent, and cheering the down-trodden; but never at funeral ceremonies. It was he who declared:—
“God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
Dr. Le Moyne says:—
“So far as we have knowledge of New Testament history, we find no command given anywhere which was a ‘thus saith the Lord’ for any mode of burial. The Christian world was left to choose a mode of burial.”
When Jesus distinguished between cave and earth burial, he considered the latter the most despicable mode of burial, to which he compared the scribes and Pharisees; for when he reproved them by rebuke and disparagement, he said (Matthew xxii. 27):—