<p>12:40&nbsp;<em>For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth</em>- Matthew&rsquo;s Gospel doesn&rsquo;t seem to teach a literal 72 hours for Jesus in the grave. But a &lsquo;day&rsquo; can mean &lsquo;part of a day&rsquo;- as in 1 Kings 20:29; Esther 4:16-5:1. The term is surely used to highlight the connection with Jonah&rsquo;s experience.</p>
<p>As Jonah was three days in the whale and then came up out of it to preach to the Gentiles, so the Lord would be three days in the grave and then would rise- as a sign to the Jews. But how was His resurrection a sign to them, seeing they never saw His risen body? Yet the Lord&rsquo;s reasoning demands that His resurrection be a sign to them, just as tangible as the re-appearance of the drowned Jonah. But, the Jews never saw Him after the resurrection...? The resolution must be that in the preaching of the risen Jesus by those in Him, it was as if the Jews saw Him, risen and standing as a sign before them, every bit as real as the Jonah who emerged from the whale after three days.</p>