Matthew 12:40 “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
Here is a question I have asked among Christian teachers as I was going through Bible College and seminary and never really received an answer that I personally found satisfactory. Why did Jesus have to spend three days in the grave? I was usually told that this question was pointless, he rose from the dead and that is all that is important.
Not to say that there has not been attempts to give an answer. Generally they will say that it was to prove he was dead. But, why not wait seven days, that is after all a Godly number, why three, why not ten days or fifteen or a month? Some said it was to fulfill prophecy per Matthew 12:40. I don’t know that seemed more of an illustration rather than a prophecy and that still does not answer the question, why three? Others will say it was to give the disciples a chance to think things through, help their faith. That still does not answer why three days, one day would be enough or maybe they needed seven days. Some point to I Peter 3:19 where Jesus needed time to preach to the spirits in prison or to go into hell and preach. The spirit world knows no time, however. One day with the Lord is as a thousand years, so one day would be sufficient.
Does it really matter? I suppose not, perhaps it is just another one of those things that an old eccentric professor would get hung up on. However, I refuse to give it up. I have examined this in the Aramaic. The word used for three in three days might offer some clue. In the Aramaic three is the word talat which means three or thirty but it is also used for one of three persons associated in any one office or position of authority, a triumvir as it was known in Roman and Greek History. Hmmm! Could it be a message of the trinity?
Still, I am not really satisfied with that. There had to be a more practical reason Jesus was raised on the third day. I was reading in the Talmud this afternoon in Sanhedrin 91a and read something very interesting. Ancient Jewish teachings instructs that when a body dies the soul lingers near the body for three days hoping that it will return to life. After three days the soul will return to God to await the time of the resurrection.
It was not unheard of in those days for someone to be declared dead and suddenly they are alive again. I mean even today with modern medical science we still argue over the point when someone is clinically dead. Is a person dead when their heart stops or when their brain ceases to function. They can keep a person breathing and the heart beating artificially, but if there is no brain function is the person dead? If we have a problem defining death today, think of the problem people faced in the first century. A person passes out or goes into a coma are they dead? The people of the first century thought so but they would allow three days to pass to be sure. Even up to the eighteenth century people were buried with a string attached to their arm just in case they are revived. If that happens they would pull the string which would then ring a bell and the graveyard attendant would know the old boy had life in him yet and would dig him up. People did not know anything about comas in those days. In fact one test of whether the person was dead or not was to yell in their ear, if no response, then he was dead. That is not what we call scientific.
We can come up with all sorts of explanations as to why Jesus waited three days to arise from the dead, but you know I think it all boils down to a very practical reason. In the Jewish mind of that day a person was not officially dead until three days after he loses consciousness. Now do keep in mind that three days and three nights is a colloquial expression in Aramaic. In fact the Talmud does teach that this expression three days and three nights are not literal three twenty four hour days as we know them but simply portions of time indicating three different days. Thus, as in Jesus’s case, three days and three nights to the first century Jew meant a portion of Friday, Saturday and a portion of Sunday. They did not measure days in hours. So Jesus’s spirit should have returned to heaven on Sunday morning, instead it re-entered his body and came to life again. This qualifies as a resurrection.
In the Jewish mind of that day you did not have an official resurrection until at least a portion of three days passed. Jesus was merely waiting out the clock so that when He appeared in a body, it could only be labeled as an official resurrection that not even the Sanhedrin could dispute. The mature disciples would have no problem believing Jesus was dead and then resurrected if Jesus came back to life the moment He was removed from the cross, but for those who were not mature in their faith God had to meet them on the level of their expectancy.
You know because we can be very immature in our faith God sometimes has to meet us on our level of expectancy. Growing up in a fundamentalist church I was taught that the way to be spiritual and experience God’s presence was to read your Bible every day and pray. So I faithfully did that and I felt the presence of God. However, one day I learned that God was merely meeting me on the level of my expectancy because one month I got lazy. I did not pray or even read my Bible for a whole month. Then one day as I was just walking to my car I suddenly felt the presence of God just like when I was reading the Bible and praying. I thought, “Wait a minute this is not supposed to happen, I am supposed to pray and read the Bible then it will happen. I mean that is what my church teaches.” I felt the Lord gently saying at that moment, “I can fill you with my presence any time I want, I was just meeting with you on the level of your expectancy. But now the time has come for you to grow up, to learn of me not necessarily as someone has taught you but as the Bible teaches you. It is time to move beyond ritual and into a relationship with me. I want to fill you with my presence when I want to, not because you perform some ritual. I want you to start praying and reading my Word not to try and get my presence as a reward, but to do it because you just love to do it.”
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