24:3a

but when they entered: This clause introduces the fact that they did not find Jesus’ body (24:3b). That contrasts with what the women expected. Translate the contrast in a natural way in your language.

they entered: The phrase they entered implies that the women entered the tomb. Since the tomb was a cave, several women could probably enter it at the same time.

In some languages it may be necessary to make it explicit that the women entered the tomb. For example:

when they went into ⌊the tomb⌋

24:3b

they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus: This clause indicates that the women did not see Jesus’ corpse there. His body was not where the women had seen it after he died. They could not find his body in the tomb at all. It was gone.

Some other ways to translate this clause are:

they saw that the body/corpse of the Lord Jesus was not there
-or-
they looked for the body of the Lord Jesus, but it was not there

the body of the Lord Jesus: There is a textual issue here:

(1) Many Greek manuscripts include the words of the Lord Jesus. Here is another way to translate this:

they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus (Good News Translation)

(2) Some Greek manuscripts do not include the words of the Lord Jesus. For example:

they did not find the body (Revised Standard Version)

It is recommended that you follow option (1), since it has the best manuscript support. Also, nearly every English version follows this option.

© 2009, 2010, 2013 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.