Third day in the Bible

The expression third day (occasionally, three days) appears in several narratives in the Bible. Some biblical interpreters have thought that some of these third day motifs have significance by signifying a certain divine principle, and a few interpreters have thought that they are cryptic in meaning. Why? Interestingly, these narratives record some of the most important events in the history of Israel. And surprisingly, except for the Bible’s mention of the third day, the seventh day, and its account of creation in Genesis 1, the Bible rarely mentions the other days of the week.
Computer database expert A. Colin Day, in his reference book Roget’s Thesaurus of the Bible (1992), categorizes by subject matter much of the biblical text. On pp. 77-78 of this resource, it has fourteen lines of entry for the expressions “three days” and “third day” in the Bible and eighteen lines of entry for “seven days” and “seventh day” in the Bible. But it has only one line of entry for “two days” and “second day,” one line for “four days” and “fourth day,” no lines for “five days” and “fifth day,” two lines for “six days” and “sixth day,” and one line for “eight days” and “eighth day.” Many Bible readers find this disparity startling.
The Bible’s repeated mention of the seventh day is understandable. Since time immemorial, days have been measured by a week, consisting of seven days. This practice can be traced back to the Bible’s account of creation. Furthermore, seven days and the seventh day have prominent, repeated roles in the many regulations for Israel’s seven religious festivals which Moses instituted under God’s direction and that are recorded in the Bible. So, the seventh day figures prominently in the Jewish cultic milieu.
Third day motifs in the Old Testament/Jewish Bible
But some commentators insist that the Bible's many occurrences of a third day motif, especially those in the Old Testament/Jewish Bible, represent a peculiar phenomenon. Those that scholars generally have regarded as most important are as follows in the New Revised Standard Version:
*The book of Genesis relates that God called Abraham to take a journey to a certain place and offer his son Isaac there as a burnt sacrifice. The text reports concerning this journey, “On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance” where he was supposed to perform this ritual (Genesis 22:4). But just as Abraham drew the knife to slay his son Isaac, who was lying on the altar Abraham had made, God stopped his hand and provided a ram caught in a nearby thicket with which to perform the sacrificial ritual.
*Joseph, as Prime Minister of Egypt, imprisoned his eleven brothers. Then we read, “On the third day Joseph said to them, ‘Do this and you will live’” (Genesis 42:18).
*Moses led the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt to Mount Sinai. Under God’s direction Moses then said to the people, “Prepare for the third day because on the third day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai” to meet with them (Exodus 19.11). This third day motif in mentioned four times in this episode (vv. 11, 16). Jews have regarded this Sinai experience as preeminent in Israel's religious history. And it is thought that repetition in biblical narratives divinely indicates their paramount importance.
*As Joshua prepared the Israelites to take the Promised Land, he said, “Prepare your provisions; for in three days you are to cross over the Jordan” River (Joshua 1:11).
*“On the third day Jewess Queen Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the king” (Esther 5:1). When she made her request to the king, her husband, it saved all Jews from annihilation throughout the entire Persian Empire. Ever since, Jews have celebrated this story of deliverance by observing their popular Feast of Purim.
*King Hezekiah of Judah was sick unto death. But God said to him through Isaiah the prophet, “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; indeed, I will heal you; on the third day you shall go up to the house of the LORD,” that is, the temple at Jerusalem (2 Kings 20:5).
*Hosea the prophet predicted that, seemingly during the future eschaton, a Jewish remnant will say of God, “After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him” (Hosea 6:2).
Jewish explanation of third day motifs
Jewish sages, ever since antiquity, have recognized this phenomenon concerning the third day in their scriptures and have sought to understand its significance. Their Talmud and Midrash literature reveals that many of these sages concluded that this scriptural phenomenon reveals a divine principle: God will rescue Israel, or a righteous person, on the third day of some great crisis. Indeed, that is often the case in the narratives cited above. And Jewish Midrash shows that many rabbis interpreted Hosea 6:2 as a reference to the anticipated resurrection at the end of the age.
Third day motifs in the New Testament
The New Testament also contains several third day motifs. Some of them are about God resurrecting Jesus on the third day following his death. The traditional day of Jesus’ crucifixion and death in the Roman Catholic faith is Friday, called “Good Friday.” And the New Testament states that Jesus was resurrected on the following first day of the week, it being early Sunday morning. By counting Friday as the first day, and Sunday as the third day, most Christians can reconcile the biblical record with the belief that Jesus was literally resurrected from the dead on the third day. The first-century Jewish Christians also set aside Sunday as their special day of the week to worship in commemoration of their belief that God raised Jesus from the dead on this day of the week.
But the New Testament gospels also relate that Jesus had repeatedly predicted privately to his disciples that he would be killed and then raised from the dead on the third day. And he sometimes said the same thing to the multitudes, though cryptically. At least twice he cited the Old Testament story of the prophet Jonah being swallowed by a big fish and being spewed out alive unto dry land as a “sign” (type) of his own impending death and resurrection. He said, “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). But "three days and three nights" does not allow for a Friday crucifixion, since by counting backward from Sunday (that is, "the first day of the week") by the "three days and three nights" prophesied by Jonah (and affirmed by Jesus himself) one can see that the day of the crucifixion was not on Friday. Thus, the meaning of the term "third day" as it applies to the resurrection is quite specific.
This saying of Jesus about the "three days and three nights" of Jonah's sign has caused confusion for some Bible readers. The New Testament never states categorically on what day of the week Jesus was crucified and died, though it affirms that both events occurred on the Day of Preparation before the Passover Feast. Yet simply by counting backward from the resurrection (which occurred before dawn on the first day of the week, Sunday) by the "three days and three nights" of Jonah's sign, some Christians have come to believe that the Roman Catholic tradition of Jesus being both crucified and dead on Good Friday conflicts with Jesus’ affirmation of the “three days and three nights” of Jonah's sign, and have concluded instead that Jesus died on a Thursday (and even a few have proposed Wednesday, although to do so unduly stretches the biblical record). In fact, if one does count backwards from Jesus' resurrection on the first day of the week by the "three days and three nights" of Jonah's sign (Jonah 1:17) then the night of the first day of the week plus the previous day of the weekly Sabbath constitutes the third day/night; the night of the weekly Sabbath plus the previous day of the Passover Sabbath constitutes the second day/night; and the night of the Passover Sabbath plus the previous day of the Day of Preparation when the Paschal lambs were slain constitutes the first day/night. By simply counting three days and three nights (Sunday/Saturday; Saturday/Friday; Friday/Thursday) it is easy to see that Jesus was crucified on Thursday, and more specifically, that he died during the afternoon of the Day of Preparation before the Passover Sabbath began at sunset. (Thus the so-called "Last Supper" could not have been a Passover Seder.) This accounting understands the Gospel narrative to say that Jesus' resurrection on the "third day" was a literal fulfillment of Jonah's sign.
However, some biblical scholars have attempted to solve the artificial dilemma which Roman Catholic tradition poses for the chronology of the week in which Jesus was crucified by explaining that the expression, “three days (and three nights),” represents a Semitic idiom meaning “third day.” This explanation appears to have support in the Bible, as both expressions are used interchangeably in Esther 4:16 and 5:1 and in Matthew 27:63-64. Also, Josephus uses these two expressions synonymously in his Antiquities of the Jews, 7.11,6; 8.8,1-2. But these explanations leave some doubt as to why a seemingly clear and literal prophetic statement in Jonah 1:17 would have been met by an idiomatical fulfillment in the Gospel accounts. It would seem, rather, that a literal "sign" would require a literal fulfillment; and that an approximate "fulfillment" would not do.
Moreover, Jesus often taught in parables and riddles. Distinguished New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias acknowledges, as do other scholars, that one of the most difficult sayings of Jesus to comprehend is one that contains a third day motif. In it Jesus had said, “I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way” (Luke 13:32-33). This particular third day motif cannot refer to his resurrection on the third day, but rather may be an idiomatic way of expressing the notion of "completion."
The Bible contains only one account about Jesus’ life between the time of his birth and his public ministry, and it contains a third day motif as well. It is the endearing story about when Jesus’ family attended a festival at Jerusalem. Afterwards, they began returning home to Nazareth, located sixty-five miles north in the Galilee. At the end of the first day of their journey they discovered that their twelve-year-old son, Jesus, was absent from their party. When they went back to Jerusalem, we read, “After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (Luke 2:46). So, after they returned to Jerusalem to seek their missing son, Joseph and Mary found the precocious Jesus in the Temple, and in this context the phrase, "after three days," does appear to connote "the third day."
Christian explanations of the third day motifs in the Bible
Throughout the history of Christianity, biblical scholars have not written much about this repeated third day motif in the Bible. In recent times, German biblical scholar Karl Lehmann wrote a book that was published in 1969, but only in German, which has two excellent sections devoted to this subject. Edward Lynn Bode has a chapter about it, entitled “Resurrection on the Third Day and the Empty Tomb,” in his book (1970), pp. 105-26. Harvey K. McArthur has a brief but helpful journal article, entitled “On the Third Day,” in New Testament Studies 18 (1971-72), pp. 81-86. And W.L. Craig, an authority on Jesus' resurrection, discusses the subject briefly in his journal article, “The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus,” in New Testament Studies 31 (1985), pp. 42-49. These scholars affirm the Jewish interpretation of these Old Testament third day motifs—that God delivers on the third day of crisis—and they suggest that some of them point to Jesus’ resurrection on the third day.
Lay biblical scholar Kermit Zarley, a former PGA Tour professional golfer, has written what may be the first book devoted entirely to a thorough examination of these third day motifs in the Bible. Entitled The Third Day Bible Code (2006), in it he claims that many of the Old Testament narratives that contain a third day motif are types, like Jonah in the fish, which point to Jesus. And he applies a principle to them gleaned from 2 Peter 3:8 (cf. Psalm 90:4), that “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” For instance, he says many Christians have believed that the Abraham-Isaac saga is a type that depicts God sending Jesus to the cross (p. 124). He then claims that the third day motif of this story forecasts that Jesus would live and be put to death just over 2,000 years later (pp. 128-31). A conservative view of biblical chronology does indeed place this historical event just over 2,000 years prior to Jesus' birth. Concerning the other third day motifs, Zarley offers the provocative interpretation that Jesus' expected second coming will occur during the early part of the third millennium following his departure, between the years 2070 and 2250. The author insists that by applying what he calls the “Thousand Year-Day Principle” of 2 Peter 3:8/Psalm 90:4 to these third day motifs in the Bible, it “serves as a hidden code that unlocks God’s timetable for salvation history” (p. xiv), thus the title of his book.
Now that we have entered the third millennium since the birth of Jesus, a church movement called is emerging. It is happening especially in the U.S. among Charismatics/Pentecostals as well as some Protestants and Independents who identify with the emerging church movement. Although these Third Day Churches derive their name from the combination of Jesus’ supposed resurrection on the third day and 2 Peter 3:8 and Psalm 90:4, their emphasis is not on the third day motifs in scripture but a new way in which to live and “do church” as they often put it. One of them, Pastor Sammy Rodriguez, has written a book about it entitled (2000). And some televangelists, such as Paula White, are preaching that we are "in the third day."

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