What did Jesus mean by a “day”? He once spoke of the day having 12 hours (John 11:9), referring obviously to the daytime as opposed to the night. This was literally true as Jesus meant it, for when He lived on earth the time between sunrise and sunset was divided into 12 equal parts, or “hours,” that varied in length according to the season. The fact that today we use clock hours of uniform length, in which sunrise and sunset are more or less than 12 sixty-minute hours apart most of the time, does not make Jesus’ statement incorrect. Similarly, His phrase “three days” must be interpreted according to what those words meant then to those people, not what they mean to us today.
Although “day” was, and is, sometimes used to mean the daylight hours, nevertheless the word, when used in counting a series of days, means in both ancient and modern usage a period including a day and a night. The Greek language, in which the NT was written, had a word for “night-day,” nychthēmeron (2 Cor. 11:25); and Genesis enumerated each successive day of creation as composed of “evening” and “morning.” Jesus’ “three days and three nights” are merely “three [calendar] days,” as then understood.
This is clear from the fact that He refers at different times to the same period—the interval between His death and His resurrection—as “in three days,” “after three days,” on “the third day.” Once, because He is quoting from Jonah 1:17, He uses the phrase “three days and three nights” (Matt. 12:40). Unless we accuse Jesus of contradicting Himself, we must accept all these phrases as meaning the same period of time. Even the priests and Pharisees who quoted Jesus as predicting His resurrection “after three days,” asked Pilate to have the tomb guarded “until the third day” (Matt. 27:64), not “until after the third day.” Obviously, “after three days” meant “the third day”.
The following texts mention this three-day period:
“In three days” “After three days” “The third day”
Matt. 26:61; 27:40 27:63; 12:40 (and 3 nights) 16:21; 17:23;
20:19; 27:64
Mark 14:58 (within) 8:31
9:31; 10:34
Luke 9:22; 18:33; 24:7, 21, 46
John 2:19-21
The question of how long Jesus was in the tomb rose from a modern misunderstanding of inclusive reckoning, the common ancient method of counting. It included both the day (or year) on which any period of time began and also that on which it ended, no matter how small a fraction of the beginning or ending day (or year) was involved. One example of this method is the period when Shalmaneser besieged Samaria. This period was said to have begun in the fourth year of Hezekiah and the seventh year of Hoshea, and to have ended in the sixth year of Hezekiah and the ninth of Hoshea. At the same time, this siege is said to have come to its conclusion “at the end of three years” (2 Kings 18:9-10) despite the fact that six minus four and nine minus seven are both two, which, in modern reckoning, would lead one to say the siege lasted only two years. However, the length of the siege was evidently counted thus: 4-5-6 of Hezekiah’s reign, three years, inclusive.
Take another example. We say that a child is not one year old until after the child has lived 12 full months from the date of birth. The child becomes 1 year old as he or she enters the second year of life, and becomes 2 years old after the second year is completed. Thus, a child is called “10 years old” all through the eleventh year, and becomes 11 only after the end of 11 full years. Not so in the Bible. Noah was, literally, “a son of 600 years” “in the six hundredth year” of his life (Gen. 7:6, 11). Although his 600 years were not reckoned inclusively, these verses show that in his six-hundredth year his age was considered 600, not 599. A Hebrew baby was circumcised when he was “eight days old” (Gen. 17:12), “the eighth day” (Lev. 12:3; Luke 1:59), or “when eight days were completed” (Luke 2:21). The Bible lists several periods of “three days” that ended during, not after, the third day, and thus covered less than three full 24-hours days (Gen. 42:17-19; cf. 1 Kings 12:5, 12; 2 Chron. 10:5, 12).
Not only among the Hebrews, but also among other ancient peoples, we have examples of inclusive reckoning. It was common in Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
Since the common custom of inclusive reckoning is well attested for the Hebrews as well as for other ancient nations, it seems wholly unreasonable to understand Jesus’ words about a three-day period in terms of our modern Western mathematical method of reckoning. By common usage His hearers would count the three days successively as:
1. The day of the crucifixion.
2. The day after that event.
3. The “third” day after (by modern count, the second day after).
We cannot insist that when Jesus once said that He would rise after three days (Mark 8:31) He meant after the end of the third full day, or 72 hours. For that He would have said “on the fourth day.” (For the phrase “four days ago” meaning three full days, or at least 72 hours, see Acts 10:30.)