It is now the morning of the weekly Sabbath. Yeshua has been in the tomb for three nights and this is the third day. His resurrection will happen sometime this evening. (The tomb won’t be open until morning, but that’s a story for tomorrow.) The women have carried His passion since His crucifixion. They were there at the cross watching Him die, at the tomb watching Joseph and Nicodemus, and they bought spices to anoint His body. They were only waiting for this Sabbath to be over so they could go to the tomb with the spices.
The traditional teaching of the Church is that Jesus died on Friday (Good Friday) and was raised on Sunday (Easter) morning. The problem with this is the counting of hours. Jesus would have been buried just before sundown Friday night and been in the tomb that night, Saturday morning, and Saturday night, raising at daybreak Sunday morning. That only totals 36 hours, at best. That’s only a day and a half. Some reconcile this by saying that Yeshua asked in John 11:9, “Are there not 12 hours in a day?” Therefore, 36 divided by 12 equals the 3 days that Jesus was in the tomb. However, in Matthew chapter 12, some Pharisees asked to see a miraculous sign from Yeshua. His response is that the only sign they would see would be the sign of Jonah. As Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so would the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. That totals more than 36 hours. If Yeshua rose from the dead on the day following the Sabbath, He had to be crucified on Wednesday to get three days and three nights. Hence, at the beginning of this journey, we said that John’s account stated that ‘six days before the Passover’ had to be on Thursday because the sign of Jonah places the crucifixion on Wednesday afternoon. And, yes, I know about how the counting of partial day is the same as a full 12 hour period. I’m just not buying it because of everything else we’ve seen this week. And the arguments that are used to prove that the burial didn’t last a full 72 hour period are lacking at best.
One of the “proofs” that the burial was only partial days is from the story of Jonah itself. It has been claimed that Jonah was spit out on dry land on the third day. Therefore, he wasn’t in the fish for a full three days and three nights. But the text doesn’t say that. It just says that God caused the fish to spit out Jonah on dry land (Jonah 2:10). It doesn’t say anything about the third day. Jonah 1:17 says, “And YHWH appoints a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah is in the bowels of the fish three days and three nights.” There is nothing in the book of Jonah to say it is not a 72-hour period. That idea comes from the pretext that the burial was not a full 72-hours. And since the belief that the burial is a shortened time, then the sign of Jonah must mean that Jonah’s time in the fish is also shortened. You can’t make the text of Jonah say something that it doesn’t just to prove a preconceived notion.
Another argument for the shortened burial period also comes from Jonah. NeverThristy.org has an article on this where J. Vernon McGee claims that the sign of Jonah is actually that he rose from the dead. Jonah offers a prayer while in the belly of the fish. This is in chapter two. Jonah 2:1 says, “And Jonah prays to his God YHWH from the bowels of the fish.” So Jonah is praying from inside of the fish. The article says that verse 6 of the prays shows that Jonah died in the fish. “To the cuttings of mountains I have come down, the earth, her bars [are] behind me for all time. And You bring my life up from the pit, O YHWH my God.” The claim is that the word pit means grave, so Jonah died and God raised him up again. That’s the sign of Jonah, that Yeshua died and rose again just like Jonah. But verse one said that Jonah was praying from the belly of the fish. Can dead men pray? It sounds like a stretch to me, and like it comes from the pretext that the burial was not 72 hours, so Jonah’s time in the fish had to be less than 72 hours. Again, you can’t make the text say something it doesn’t. And I don’t believe that Jonah died. Hebrews 9:27 says that “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” Jonah was swallowed by the fish because of his disobedience to God. That means he would have died in his sin. But we’re to believe that God raise him up for a second chance? That’s not what the Bible teaches. If Jonah died in his sins, then his next step would be to face judgment.
To be fair, I’ll include a link to the article from NeverThirsty.org here so you can read it yourself. The article also brings up Esther, which is the other popular argument for the shortened burial.
In Esther chapter 4, she tells Mordecai to tell all of the Jews to fast for three days and three nights and then she will go into see the king (4:16). The first verse of chapter five says that on the third day, she went in to see the king. The “proof” is that the fast was not a full three days and three nights since Esther went into see the king on the third day. But the text doesn’t say the fast was less than three days and three nights. It’s another pretext to prove a shortened burial time. There is nothing in the text to say that their fast was over just because she went in to see the king. We don’t see anyone breaking the fast before Esther went to the king. We don’t see Esther eating anything before going in. It just says that she invited the king and Haman to a feast that evening. She told Mordecai to fast for three days, night and day. The first night and day is day one and the same for the second day. The next evening would be the third night and she went to the king on the third day. If she didn’t eat anything until that evening at the feast she prepared, she fulfilled the full three days and three nights of fasting. The story of Esther is not proof that the burial was shortened.
To be clear, all of the posts this week could be wrong and the traditional belief of a Friday crucifixion could be correct. I’m just saying, you cannot use Jonah and Esther as proof texts to verify that it happend on Friday. That is dishonest and a misuse of the texts. I still hold to a Wednesday crucifixtion because the evidence leans heavily in that direction. And, in trying to reconcile all of the Gospel accounts, I don’t see how anything but a Wednesday crucifixion could line everything up. However, there is still one more thing that needs to be reconciled, but it doesn’t happen until the first day of the week; tomorrow.
We’re almost to the end of Passion Week, but we know the ending. Remember, the Disciples are still in dispair over what transpired on Wednesday. The don’t seem to have understood any of the times the Messiah told them that He would be put to death and rise again. And the women seem prepared to go to the tomb in the morning to annoint Him because His burial was quick and they want to do a more complete preparation for burial before His body stinks. They have no idea what the morning will bring.
His Passion appears to be fading away.