Was Jesus in the Tomb for Three Days and Three Nights?

Jesus continually reminded the disciples that He would die and rise again after “three days” (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; John 2:19 and 21).¹ The Lord also made statements about dying and resurrecting on the “third day” (Matt. 16:21; 17:23; 20:18-19; Luke 9:22; 18:31-33). The Scriptures also indicate that Christ burial took place on Friday prior to the start of the Sabbath (Mark 15:42-47; Luke 23:50-56; John 19:31-42), and that the empty tomb was discovered after the Sabbath ended (Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:1) on Sunday, the first day of the week (Matt. 28:1; Mark. 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1). However, on a certain occasion, the Lord said. “Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40; cf. Jonah 1-2).

What did Jesus mean by saying the Son of Man would be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights or seventy-two hours? How does that square with a Friday burial and Sunday resurrection?

A wooden literalistic understanding of “three days and three nights,” i.e. exactly “seventy-two hours,” really ends in absurdity. If Jesus had to be in the grave exactly seventy-two hours, it would be impossible for Him to have risen on the “third day.” Rather, remaining in the grave for that amount of time means the resurrection would be on the “fourth day.” Not even the employment of creative theological storytelling to move the crucifixion back to Wednesday or Thursday actually resolves the problem. Gleason Archer explains:

It is perfectly true that a Friday Crucifixion will not yield three full twenty-four-hour days. But neither will a Thursday afternoon Crucifixion, nor a Wednesday afternoon Crucifixion either. This results from the fact that Jesus died at 3:00 p.m. and rose at or about 6:00 a.m. The only way you can come out with three twenty-four-hour days is if he rose at the same hour (three days later, of course) that He was crucified, namely, 3:00 p.m. Actually, however, He rose “on the third day” (1 Cor. 15:4), Obviously, if He rose the on the third day, He could not already have been buried for three whole nights and three whole days. That would require His resurrection to be at the beginning of the fourth day.²

It is better to take the “three days and three nights” as a figure of speech. Hank Hanegraaff indicates that “three days and three nights” is an idiomatic expression wherein “any part of a day counted as a day-night unit.”³ Likewise, Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah, who lived around AD 100, points out: “A day and a night make an ‘onah, and the portion of an ‘onah is reckoned as a complete ‘onah” (j. Sabbath 9.12a).⁴ The crucifixion and burial on Friday and the resurrection on Sunday constitute “three days and three nights,” since a portion of an ‘onah is reckoned as a complete ‘onah.

The figurative use of “three days and three nights” is even employed in Esther 4-5. Esther instructs Mordecai, “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish” (4:16). Later we are told “on the third day Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the king’s palace, in front of the king’s quarters, while the king was sitting on his royal throne inside the throne room opposite the entrance to the palace” (5:1). Esther enters the royal court on the third day as opposed to literally after three days and three nights of prayer and fasting.

What we have in Matthew 12:40 is Jesus constructing “a simple analogy based on the historical account of Jonah to illustrate what is going to happen to him. In doing so, he naturally adopts scriptural language, especially since the verse that he cites forms such an apt summary of what happened to Jonah.”⁵ The three days and three nights the Son of Man would be under the earth is never to be taken as a wooden literal seventy-two hours. Rather, this serves as a way expressing that Christ burial occurred on Friday before the Sabbath and His resurrection on Sunday after the Sabbath.

Each year Christians observe Good Friday, which commemorates the crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus Christ. Afterwards, they gather to worship on Resurrection Sunday, celebrating the Lord’s victory over the grave. Resurrection Sunday is also called Easter or Pascha. All things considered, what is the epic over-the-top amazing thing about Matthew 12:40 is the Lord not only predicted His death but also His resurrection within three days. Has anyone else ever done such a feat? Not! The resurrection demonstrated that Jesus truly deserved to bear the messianic title of Son of Man and displayed His own divine prerogative to reverse the curse of sin and death. To this I say, “Amen!”

— WGN

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1. All Scripture cited from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), unless noted.
2. Gleason Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1982), 328.
3. Hank Hanegraaff, The Complete Bible Answer Book Collector’s Edition Revised and Updated (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2016), 234. Read full entry here. Similarly, in Hard Sayings of the Bible, indicates, “We may be assuming that first-century Jews thought about time in the same way that we do. In fact they did not. Any part of a day could be counted as if it were a full day, much as in Canada and the U.S.A. a child is deductible for income-tax purposes at the full year rate even if he or she was born at 11 p.m. on December 31. The “three days and three nights,” then, may simply refer to three twenty-four-hour days (sunset to sunset periods), and Jesus was in fact in the tomb parts of three different days” (Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Peter H. Davids, F. F. Bruce and Manfred T. Brauch, Hard Sayings of the Bible [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996], 381)
4. As cited in H.L. Ellison, Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 7, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1985), 375.
5. Craig L. Blomberg, “Matthew,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI;  Nottingham, UK: Baker Academic;  Apollos, 2007), 45.