"ON THE THIRD DAY" (I CORINTHIANS 15:3-4)

As I am writing this, Easter is approaching. So it is appropriate to consider Paul's words in I Corinthians stating “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures...”

Andrew Wilson notes that there is no problem finding Old Testament passages regarding the death of the Messiah, but not as many specific references to His resurrection on the third day. But that doesn't mean that there aren't any. Wilson states that this idea is in fact everywhere in the OT. “Seeing how and why this is can teach us how to read the Bible more attentively – which, more often than not means listening for refrains and echoes in a symphony rather than Googling phrases for an exact match.”

Well, I didn't use Google, but I did consult an analytical concordance. It indicated that there were almost exactly 100 passages in the Bible containing “the third day” or “three days,” evenly divided between the two phrases. 23 of these were New Testament references to Christ's resurrection. But what about the OT?

While not referring directly to the coming Messiah, there were still some “refrains and echoes,” to use Wilson's wording:

A. First, there are those occasions when a three-day wait is mentioned before some important event takes place. These include:

Genesis 1:12: Wilson states, “On day three, the land brings forth plants and fruit trees, and they carry seed 'according to their kinds', with the capacity to continue producing life in subsequent generations. From that point on, the rising to life of God's life-giving 'seed' on the third day becomes a pattern.”

Genesis 40:20: The wine-steward and baker wait in jail for their sentences to be pronounced, one being “resurrected” and the other executed and his body hung on a pole. The echoes here are obvious.

Genesis 42:18: Similarly, Joseph puts his brothers in prison for three days while they await their fate. Paul also waited in prison for three days while the Jewish leaders outside plotted to kill him. Fortunately, Festus protected him from being returned to Jerusalem (Acts 25:1)

In Exodus 19:11,16 Moses informs the people that God will come down on the third day. This is sort of a deliberate twist on Jesus coming up to the people on the third day.

OT characters sometimes conceal themselves from danger for three days while they wait for news. These include David in I Samuel 20:5,19-20 and the Jewish spies hiding from their pursuers (Joshua 2:16,22).

In II Kings 2:17, we read about the prophets who futilely searched for Elijah for three days, but he was in heaven with his Father. And, although by no means hiding from his parents, it took three days searching before they managed to find Jesus in the temple impressing the Jewish leaders there (Luke 2:46). And like Elijah, he was also in his “Father's house.”

Esther requests the Jews to fast for three days and nights prior to her taking her life in her hands and approaching the king with her request (Esther 4:16; 5:1). Other three-day periods of fast are recorded in the NT also (see Acts 9:9; 27:19; Matthew 15:32 // Mark 8:2).

The Jews halt for a three-day preparation period prior to crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land (Joshua 1:11; 3:2).

Ezra mentions three different three-day waits before important events taking place (see 8:15; 8:33; and 10:8-9).

Turning to the New Testament for more parallels, we find:

Three days represents the time period between Jesus calling his disciples and performing his first miracle (John 2:1).

Three days after being in a Roman jail, Paul preaches the gospel to Jews living in Rome (Acts 28:17). And this itself is an echo of Jesus preaching to the souls in hell and during his various resurrection appearances.

B. Then we have the many times in the OT that a journey of three-days is mentioned.

Most prominently, this happens as Abraham and his only son Isaac travel to the spot where he is destined to be sacrificed until God intervenes with a substitute animal. This incident has always been associated among Christian circles as a type of Christ dying on the cross in our place (Genesis 30:36).

Other three-day journeys appear during the wilderness wanderings of the Jews as they continued to escape from danger and toward the new life in the Promised Land, a foretaste of believers' future resurrection to a new life in heaven (Exodus 3:18; 5:3; 8:27; 15:22; Numbers 10:33; 33:8).

C. Three days can also represent a time of darkness. Thus, during the plagues of Egypt, the land was totally dark for three days (Exodus 10:21-23); Jonah was in utter darkness for three days while in the belly of the fish; Jesus was in the darkness of the tomb for the same time period; and Saul was struck blind for three days prior to his conversion and restoration by God (Acts 9:9).

D. After a three-day period, people are healed in I Samuel 30:12 and II Kings 20:5,8. These prefigure Jesus' resurrection as well as Saul's conversion.

“Three days” also figures in stories where bad news is shared. Jacob had escaped from Laban three days earlier before the latter was told of it (Genesis 31:22); David hears of Saul's death after a three-day period; and the guards inform the chief priests of Jesus' “escape” from the tomb three days after his death had occurred (Matthew 28:11).

Some of the above themes come together in the two closest OT passages looking forward to Jesus' resurrection:

The Book of Jonah

Most obviously, the prophet spent three days and three nights in the belly of the fish (Jonah 1:17), a passage quoted in Matthew 12:40 as predicting what happened to Jesus. The other passages in the NT talking about the resurrection simply say that it occurred “on the third day,” expressing the literal truth. But the phrase “three days and three nights” has caused commentators trouble since the Gospels appear to only account for a few hours on Friday, all of Saturday, and a very short time on Sunday morning. This “discrepancy” is generally explained as due to the common Jewish practice of considering even a small part of a day as the whole day instead.

“Three days” also appears in Jonah 3:3, where the text says that it took him a three-day journey to walk through all of Nineveh. It was a popular understanding in ancient times that the soul of a dead person had to undergo a three-day journey in order to reach the land of the dead.

Hosea 6:2

This poetic passage has also often been cited as a veiled prophecy of Jesus' time in the tomb. It reads, “After two days he will revive us;

on the third day he will raise us up that we may live before him.”

If we were to read this as prose, then it might be wrongly interpreted to say that either (1) the prophet can't seem to make up his mind how many days it takes or (2) it will be a two-step resurrection with “reviving” being the first step only.

In fact, as Hebrew poetry, this verse shares two characteristics of that genre. Both lines express basically the same thing, and it is a form of numerical poetry of the type “x, x+1.” Other examples of this latter poetry are found in Proverbs 30:15-31 and Amos 1:3-2:8. In all these cases, it is the last number which is the one in mind by the poet, with the first number merely preparing for it. We might think of rocket countdowns from 10 to “blast-off,” or the ditty “One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to “go.”

As Anderson and Freedman put it, “Explicit hope for resurrection of the body can hardly be denied in this passage, but commentators have been reluctant to admit it [tending instead to feel the passage refers to a communal or national renewal instead]. The sequence 'two days...on the third day' is an artistic turn, not a time schedule, though it may reflect the widespread belief that there was a three-day period after death before the final separation of the soul from the body.”

Dearman notes that the verb pair “revive and raise up” is also found in Isaiah 26:14 and 26:19, and Paul may have the Hosea passage in mind in I Corinthians 15:4, but “Tertullian appears to be the first Christian writer to cite Hos. 6:2 explicitly as scriptural proof of Christ's resurrection. However, Davies adds that “this understanding of it may well go back to the earliest Christian communities.”

Wilson concludes his short essay with the words, “So when Hosea talks about Israel being raised up on the third day, he is not plucking a random number out of nowhere. He is reflecting a well-established theme originating in the Bible's first chapter.”

I Kings 3:18

There is this one remaining mention of “three days” in the Bible, which has some of the same elements associated later with Jesus' death and resurrection. It is the story of Solomon's judgment regarding the two prostitutes who had babies at the same time. But after three days, the child of woman #1 died at night. So that woman secretly switched babies with her roommate's baby and falsely claimed that it was her own. Solomon's judgment was that the baby be cut in two so that both of the woman could share. Only woman #2 objected to this arrangement and agreed to let #1 keep the baby. At that point, Solomon knew who the true mother was.

Thus we have the death of an innocent person, the time frame of three days, a substitution of one life for another, the selfless giving of one person to ensure the life of another, and a “final judgment” by the king. The problem is that these elements are jumbled together to the point where it is hard to tell if there is any relationship whatsoever intended with later NT events. I will leave that to you as a homework assignment to see if I am on the right track here or not.