The Sign of Jonah - the Days

Jesus became highly frustrated at the Temple.  The people wanted signs that He was the Messiah sent from God.  So, He gave them the Sign of Jonah.

Three days and three nights, then Jesus would rise victorious.  Christians find this exhilarating, but everyone else rolls their eyes.  Why?  Because, any way it is counted, Jesus was not entombed for three days and three nights.

In the traditional counting of days, they buried Jesus Friday before sunset (the start of the Jewish day) so that the dead would not remain hanging on the Sabbath.  He arose pre-dawn Sunday morning.  That makes two days and two nights, the very end of Friday through Saturday night.

To obtain three days and three nights, an alternate solution places Jesus’ death on a Wednesday.  This is possible since the Passover Sabbath is based on the rising of the full moon and is separate from the weekly Sabbath.  For a Wednesday death, Jesus had to have died in the year 0030 or much later in 0037.  However, this interpretation does not account for the detail stated in John 19:31, which referred to this as a “special Sabbath,” meaning the Passover Sabbath occurred on the Saturday Sabbath.  The “special Sabbath,” occurred in the year 0033.  On that night, the full moon rose in full eclipse, a blood moon (Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2:21).

Does that mean the prediction was false?  No.  It means looking at the surface details fails to illuminate the sign Jesus gave.

Prophets regularly spoke in parables.  Jesus was a prophet.  These stories taught righteousness and wisdom to young and old, to the studious and the uneducated.  They relay information more meaningful then simple facts.  Parables convict the soul to fear God and keep His ways.  However, people only learn these things if they ponder the deeper meaning within the stories (Psalm 78:2; Proverbs 1:1-7).

The people Jesus addressed looked for fault not insight, so concluding the sign must only mean “in the tomb” is myopic.  Jonah did not die.  Jesus did not mention death.  Instead, He used the idiom, “in the heart of the earth.”

Jesus explained this phrase in the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-23; Mark 4:1-20; Luke 8:1-15).  The earth represented the hearts of men in which God sowed the living word.  Therefore, three days and three nights encompasses more than physical death.  He meant the entire event where God exposed the true hearts of men.

The apostle Paul called that event the ultimate sacrifice of atonement.  Jesus became the sacrifice as well as the only high priest capable of presenting that sacrifice.  He entered the hearts of men and covered their transgressions.  (Romans 3:21-26; Hebrews 2:14-18; Hebrews 9:11-14).

Thursday, Jesus entered Jerusalem and asked His followers to remember as they shared the Passover meal.  Thursday night, He was betrayed by a kiss and solders took Jesus to the High Priest’s house.  There, as law prescribed, the first drops of sacrificial blood fell at dawn.  Then, blood splashed at the hands of governmental leaders.  His blood anointed the public all the way to Golgotha.  As Jesus hung in agony, He asked God to forgive those who committed murder and those who followed their leaders.  Before dawn of the fourth day, Jesus arose as our high priest capable of presenting His blood sacrifice in Heaven’s Holy of Holy.

“The Passion” took three days and three nights to expose the hearts of men.  Only then could anyone see Jonah as a sign that God sent Jesus.