Daniel's Literal Translation and Commentary
The Renewed Covenant by Daniel Gregg
"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" (DLT: torahtimes.org).
three days: Using inclusive counting, the first day is the remaining part of the day after Yeshua was put in the grave. The second day is Thursday. The third day is Friday. This is a פשט (literal) level of interpretation. Inclusive counting was the standard biblical method of enumerating days.
three nights: Wednesday Night, Thursday Night, and Friday Night. Whenever day and night are coordinated like this the days and nights are counted separately. Yeshua spend most of the third night in the grave. Again, it is simply enumerated as the "third night" by the inclusive counting method.
comment: The resurrection was just before dawn at the end of the third night, i.e. Friday night, which was also the Sabbath, since the Sabbath began at sunset on Friday. Also, the order, where the days are mentioned first implies that the day leads the counting and the night ends the counting. It does not say *three nights and three days*. It has to be this way also to agree with the third day as counted for a Temple offering.
Comment: By means of a דרש, we equate "heart of the earth" with Yeshua's suffering in Jerusalem, "I am YHWH in the midst of the earth" (Exodus 8:22). Now the words "heart" לבב and "the earth" הארץ are taken from Jonah 2:3 [4] and 2:6 [7], the "heart" from "heart of the seas" and the "earth" from "the earth with her bars". In Jonah 2:3, the prophet is referring to His time of trouble before he was swallowed by the whale, and before he sank between the roots of the mountains on the sea bottom. We may justly think then that Yeshua is indicating his the whole period of his suffering by combining "heart" from vs. 3 with "three days and three nights". It is quite clear from the gospel accounts that Yeshua was detained in the morning and quite possibly first struck in the face exactly at dawn on Wednesday, Nisan 14, AD 34. (DLC: torahtimes.org)
Daniel's Literal Translation and Commentary: (http://www.torahtimes.org/translation/mat1240.html)
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