New Testament Studies

How could Jesus be crucified on Friday, rise from the dead on Sunday morning and still be in the grave for three days and three nights?

By Robert C. Crowder

If we use the calendar of today and try to put that timeline into the scripture there does seem to be an issue.  For example, this year 2002, Easter was celebrated on March 31^st.  The calendar shows that “Good Friday” was March 29^th.  How could Jesus have died on the 29^th and be raised on the 31^st.  I am not a mathematician, but that is only two nights and a day, not three days and nights as Christ promised.

There are many things to consider.

Sabbath Day (Hebrew Shabbat)

The normal Sabbath day in the Jewish society is from sundown Friday evening until sundown on Saturday every seven days.

There are actually a number of Sabbath’s.

There is a Sabbath on the first day of the seventh month.

Leviticus 23:23-25 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation. Ye shall do no servile work therein: but ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD. 

Every seven years the actual land of Israel was to have a Sabbath or rest and lie fallow.

Leviticus 25:3-4 Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.

Every seven-year cycle of seven years was to be followed by a fiftieth year of Jubilee

Leviticus 25:8-11 And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years.  Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land.  And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.  A jubile shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed.

The major Jewish festivals, Passover (Unleavened Bread), Shavuot (Pentecost), Rosh Hashanah (Trumpets), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) and Sukkoth (Tabernacles) were characterized by days of rest.  Leviticus chapter 23:3 The Sabbath day is the first of the holy convocations God bestowed on the nation of Israel.

To allow the body to remain on the cross until the next day was a violation of Jewish law. 

Deuteronomy 21:22-23 And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree:  His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.

The day in which Jesus the Christ was put to death was the “day of preparation.”  In the book of John we read, “The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. John 19:31

The day of preparation was the day that all things were made ready for the Sabbath.  All chores around the house, all other work and foods were prepared so that there would be no breaking of the Sabbath day laws.  Everything was to be accomplished before the Sabbath day began. 

This particular day of preparation was made even more significant by John’s words that this was “an high day.”  In the calendar this was the highest day of all.  This was the first Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the most sacred season of the whole Jewish ecclesiastical year. 

In his fine book “The Feasts of Israel, Bruce Scott talks about the Sabbath and the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Of course, a key element in the observance of the Feast of Unleavened Bread is the bread itself. Bread eaten during the seven festival days could not contain any leavening or fermenting ingredient (Ex. 12:18-20). Furthermore, all hametz (food products containing leaven) had to be removed from the home. To accomplish this mandate, specific rituals were developed. The process is called nullification. 

The procedure for nullification begins even before the festival arrives. It starts with a thorough spring-cleaning of the home. Old dishes and cutlery are stored away, and fresh Passover ones takes their place. All food products that contain any trace of leaven are discarded. Only goods marked "Kosher for Passover" are purchased. People who have large quantities of leavened products in the home and would suffer significant financial loss by destroying them are permitted to sell them to non-Jewish people and buy them back after the holiday. 

The next step in the process of nullification takes place on the evening of the 14th of Nisan. Using the light of one candle, a search for leaven is conducted throughout the house. Any leaven found-which usually includes a few strategically placed crumbs here and there-is swept into a wooden spoon with a feather. The father then recites a prayer nullifying the leaven: "Any leaven and leavening which is in my possession and which I have neither seen, nor destroyed, nor known of, is to be as naught, and as ownerless as the dust of the earth."1 The next morning, the prayer is repeated as the feather, wooden spoon, and any leaven that turned up during the search are burned, thus ending the process of nullification. 

During the days of the Second Temple, Jewish people were instructed by the priests when to have all the hametz removed from their homes and destroyed. The priests would lay two loaves of the thank offering (Lev. 7: 13) that were no longer edible on the roof of the Temple portico for everyone to see. When they removed one loaf, the people were no longer permitted to eat anything containing leaven. When they removed the second loaf, it signaled the time for the burning of the hametz, at which time bonfires were lit all around Jerusalem. 

It is important that the leaven be removed from the home before midday on the 14th, because in Temple days the Passover sacrifice was slain in late afternoon. Since the paschal sacrifice was not to be offered with leaven (Ex. 34:25), all leaven had to be eliminated during the morning hours. 

Nullification may include either a physical destruction of the hametz or a mental renunciation. The Mishnah allows people who are away from home and are not able to return to destroy leaven in their possession to "annul it in his heart."

In Second Temple days, once the leaven had been removed from the premises, it was time to take the chosen Passover lamb to the Temple for sacrifice. (There were so many pilgrims in Jerusalem at Passover [more than two million on one occasion] that the noise of the people and their animals could be heard far away.) Before the holiday commenced, messengers were sent out to the surrounding areas to tell everyone who had flocks and herds to bring them to Jerusalem so that there would be sufficient animals available for the pilgrims to sacrifice and eat. 

As people arrived at the Temple Mount with their Passover lambs, which could range in age from eight days to one year old, they awaited the opening of the Temple courtyard doors. The priests then permitted the people to enter the courtyard and divided the crowd into three groups. As the first group entered, the gates were closed behind them and the shofar (ram's horn) was sounded. The stones of the altar and the ramp leading to the altar, as well s the Temple sanctuary itself had been whitewashed with plaster just for this occasion.  The sight of the sparkling clean Temple area must have been magnificent.[1][1]

What does Christ have to say about his death, burial and resurrection?

Jesus in order to show that he was the Messiah referred to the Old Testament story of Jonas, which every Jew knew.  He answered the scribes and Pharisees after they told him that they “would see a sign from thee.  But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:  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. Matthew 12:38-40

This doesn’t fit today’s version of Jesus dying on Friday and being raised early in the morning on Sunday.  As my dad used to say, “You just can not put ten pounds of flour in a five pound bag.”

Did Jesus really mean what He said? Was he really saying that he expected to be buried in the earth for three days and three nights? Interestingly enough, Jesus did not say, "After two nights and one day I will rise again."  He said, "After three days I will rise again." He meant three days and three nights.  Only a full 72 hours would fulfill his prophecy!

There are other teachings that support this stand.

Mark 8:31 - And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

After Christ was given into the hands of those that would crucify him, the Jewish elders remembered his promise and asked Pilate to have the tomb secured and guarded.  Matthew records the exchange as follows: 

27:62-64 Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first. 

I find it interesting that the chief priests and Pharisees were in such distress that they actually break the very law they were so righteously defending by asking for Christ’s death, to participate in this venture on the highest day (high sabbath) of the Jewish year.  These guys were taking no chances.  They would not fall under the lie of “dead on Friday, revived day after tomorrow.”

Their fear of Christ’s proclamation caused them to break the Sabbath, work an agreement with the ruling secular leadership, hold somebody else responsible to seal and watch the tomb until after the time required.  No, they were taking no chances.

Passover 2002

Passover 2002, a high day, began at sundown March 27^th and continued through sundown March 28^th.  The next Sabbath, regular Sabbath, began on March 29^th.  Hence in this week, in this year we have two Sabbath’s within the same week preceding Easter.  This is a perfect example of how the scriptures are so clearly in line with prophecy and no one has to “monkey around with the scriptures to make them fit into a nice box.”  This week is the same setup as when Christ was crucified.

 

ã 2002 bobsbiblestudies