Appendix, Note III: “Three Days and Three Nights”

(Chap. XI. p. 147, ante.)
“THREE DayS AND THREE NIGHTs.”

Some people cannot understand how the Lord’s words that He would be “three days and three nights” in the grave could be true if He died on Friday and rose on Sunday morning. This is a notable instance of the common blunder of interpreting words and phrases otherwise than by their use. Words are but counters; they have no intrinsic value. The only practical question, therefore, is What do they stand for? And what alone concerns us here is, What meaning did the Lord’s words convey to those to whom they were addressed? To this question the Gospels afford the answer. Four-and twenty hours after His burial the Jews came to Pilate and said, “We remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days 1 will rise again; command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure umtil the third day” (Matt. xxvii. 63, 64). Compare with this 2 Chron. x. 5-12, relative to the new king and his Israelite subjects. ‘‘ He said unto them, Come again unto me after three days.... So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam oz the third day.” Or see Esther iv. 16; v. 1. The Queen’s order to her people was, “Fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink, three days, night or day.” And yet “On the third day” Esther held the banquet.

In either case the words conveyed to those who used and

heard them a meaning different from that which we attach to 271 them. Had Jeroboam not come on the third day it would have meant rebellion. Had that Easter Sunday passed leaving the seal upon the tomb unbroken, the guard would have been withdrawn, and the Pharisees would have proclaimed their triumph.

A prison chaplain would find no difficulty in explaining this to his congregation. Our civil day begins at midnight, and the law reckons any part of a day as a day. Therefore while a sentence of three days means three days of twenty-four hours, equal to seventy-two hours, a prisoner under such a committal is seldom more than forty hours in gaol; and I have known cases where the period was in fact only thirty-three hours. And this mode of reckoning and of speaking was as familiar to the Jew as it is to the Aaditués of our criminal courts. “A day and a night make an Onah, anda part of an Ona is as the whole.” Dr. Lightfoot quotes this Jewish saying in his Hore Hebraice (Matt. xii. 40); and he adds: ‘‘ Therefore Christ may truly be said to have been in his grave three Onoth.... the consent of the schools and the dialect of the nation agreeing thereunto.”

I have seen it stated that as Jonah’s imprisonment in the whale lasted three days and three nights the Lord must have laid for as long a period in the grave. But this is only another phase of the same blunder. There is no reason to suppose that Jonah’s “three days and nights” was a longer period than our Lord’s.