flight is easy to understand; the women have just encountered an angel, and they have seen a rolled-away rock and an empty tomb where they expected a sealed and full one. The sheer unexpectedness of these events and the impression of supernatural power at work help explain their trembling and astonishment. Their silence is more difficult to explain, though it seems to be ironically related to that which Jesus enjoined earlier in the Gospel, when the time for revelation had not yet arrived. Then,