Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 27:51

"And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake; and the rocks were rent;" — Matthew 27:51 (ASV)

The veil of the temple was torn in two—or better, the veil of the sanctuary. We must remember that this refers to the veil that divided the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies. This fact, which the high priests would naturally have wished to conceal and which by its nature could not have been seen by anyone except the sons of Aaron, may have been reported by the “great multitude of the priests” who “became obedient to the faith” (Acts 6:7).

The Evangelist’s record of this event is all the more significant because he does not comment on—and therefore apparently did not understand—its symbolic meaning. We learn this meaning indirectly from the Epistle to the Hebrews. The priests had, as far as they had power, destroyed the true Temple , and in doing so, they had robbed their own sanctuary of all that made it holy.

The true veil that shrouded the divine glory from human eyes was His own flesh. Through that veil, He passed as the forerunner for all who trust in Him, entering the sanctuary not made with hands, eternal in the heavens (Hebrews 10:20–21). All who fulfilled that condition could now enter that holiest place, but the visible sanctuary was made common and unclean, and there too all could enter without profanation.

The earth quaked, and the rocks split.—We should remember that Jerusalem was situated in a zone of earthquakes, and one very memorable convulsion is recorded or alluded to in the Old Testament (Isaiah 24:19; Amos 1:1; Zechariah 14:5). In this case, though the shock startled people at the time, there was no widespread ruin that would have led to it being chronicled by contemporary historians.