Was Jesus’ body prepared with spices at his burial, or did the women bring spices afterwards to anoint it?

The passages describe two different acts of love, done by different people for different purposes. On the Friday, with sunset close and the tomb near at hand (John 19:42), Joseph and Nicodemus did what had to be done at once. Nicodemus brought myrrh, a fragrant resin, and aloes, a fragrant wood, mixed together, about a hundred Roman pounds (some 33 kilograms; the BSB has “about seventy-five pounds”), and they wound the body in linen with the spices, “as the manner of the Jews is to bury” (John 19:40). It was a lavish gift, fit for a king, but it was done in haste, and John says nothing of anointing.

The women had watched the burial and seen “how his body was laid” (Luke 23:55). What they prepared was different: spices and perfumed ointments (Greek arōmata and mura) “that they might come and anoint him” (Mark 16:1), the anointing that the hurried burial had not allowed. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown suggest that the women had set this as their own task for when the sabbath was over. Barnes adds that they may not have known what Nicodemus had done, or simply wished to honour Jesus with a gift of their own. Nothing in John says the body needed no further care, and nothing in Mark or Luke says it had received none. The women’s errand also shows that they expected to find a body in the tomb.