Movatterモバイル変換

The Sign of Jonah
…39Jesus replied, “A wicked and adulterous generation demands a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.40ForasJonahwasthreedaysandthreenightsinthebellyof thegreat fish,sotheSonof Manwill bethreedaysandthreenightsintheheartof theearth.41The men of Nineveh will stand at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now One greater than Jonah is here.…

Treasury of Scripture

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.

as.

Jonah 1:17
Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

so.

Matthew 16:21
From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.

Matthew 17:23
And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again. And they were exceeding sorry.

Matthew 27:40,63,64
And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildestit in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross…

in the heart.

Psalm 63:9
But thosethat seek my soul, to destroyit, shall go into the lower parts of the earth.

Jonah 2:2-6
And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I,and thou heardest my voice…

BellyEarthFishGreatHeartHugeJonahJonasMonsterNightsSeaStomachThreeWhaleBellyEarthFishGreatHeartHugeJonahJonasMonsterNightsSeaStomachThreeWhale1.Jesus reproves the blindness of the Pharisees concerning the Sabbath,
3.by scripture,
9.by reason,
13.and by a miracle.
22.He heals a man possessed that was blind and mute;
24.and confronting the absurd charge of casting out demons by Beelzebub,
32.he shows that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall never be forgiven.
36.Account shall be made of idle words.
38.He rebukes the unfaithful, who seek after a sign,
46.and shows who is his brother, sister, and mother.

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish
This phrase refers to the Old Testament account of Jonah, a prophet who was swallowed by a great fish (often thought to be a whale) as a result of his disobedience to God's command to go to Nineveh. The story is found in the Book of Jonah, specificallyJonah 1:17. The "three days and three nights" is a Hebrew idiom for a period that includes parts of three days, not necessarily 72 hours. This event is a type of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, symbolizing deliverance and redemption. Jonah's experience prefigures Jesus' own death and resurrection, serving as a prophetic sign to the people of Jesus' time.

so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth
The term "Son of Man" is a messianic title that Jesus frequently used for Himself, emphasizing both His humanity and His divine authority. The "heart of the earth" refers to Jesus' burial and His descent into the grave following His crucifixion. This phrase underscores the reality of Jesus' death and His physical entombment. The parallel to Jonah highlights the miraculous nature of Jesus' resurrection, as Jonah's emergence from the fish was seen as a sign of God's power and mercy. This prophecy is fulfilled in the New Testament accounts of Jesus' resurrection on the third day, as recorded in the Gospels (e.g.,Matthew 28:1-10,Mark 16:1-8,Luke 24:1-12,John 20:1-18). The reference to "three days and three nights" aligns with the Jewish understanding of time, where any part of a day is considered a full day.

1.Jonah
A prophet from the Old Testament who was swallowed by a great fish as a result of his disobedience to God's command to preach to Nineveh. His experience is a typology of Christ's death and resurrection.

2.The Great Fish
The creature that swallowed Jonah, symbolizing the grave or death, which temporarily held Jonah as the earth would hold Jesus.

3.The Son of Man
A title Jesus frequently used for Himself, emphasizing His role as the Messiah and His identification with humanity.

4.The Heart of the Earth
A metaphorical expression referring to Jesus' burial and His time in the tomb, signifying His death and the period before His resurrection.

5.Three Days and Three Nights
A time frame that signifies completeness in Jewish tradition, used here to parallel Jonah's experience and Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection.Typology of Jonah and Jesus
Jonah's experience is a foreshadowing of Christ's death and resurrection. Understanding this typology helps us see the continuity of God's redemptive plan throughout Scripture.

Significance of the Resurrection
The resurrection is central to Christian faith. It validates Jesus' claims and assures believers of their future resurrection and eternal life.

Trust in God's Timing
The "three days and three nights" symbolize God's perfect timing. Believers are encouraged to trust in God's timing in their own lives, even when it involves waiting or enduring difficult circumstances.

Repentance and Obedience
Jonah's account is also about repentance and obedience. Believers are called to respond to God's call with obedience, learning from Jonah's initial reluctance.

Hope in the Midst of Darkness
Just as Jonah was delivered from the fish and Jesus rose from the dead, believers can have hope that God will deliver them from their trials and bring new life from situations that seem hopeless.1.What is the meaning of Matthew 12:40?

2.How does Jonah's experience foreshadow Jesus' death and resurrection in Matthew 12:40?

3.What does "three days and three nights" signify about Jesus' time in the tomb?

4.How can Matthew 12:40 strengthen our faith in Jesus' resurrection promise?

5.What Old Testament connections enhance our understanding of Matthew 12:40's prophecy?

6.How can we apply the lessons from Jonah and Jesus to our lives?

7.How does Matthew 12:40 support the prophecy of Jesus' resurrection?

8.Why is Jonah's story significant in understanding Matthew 12:40?

9.Does Matthew 12:40 confirm the literal truth of Jonah's account?

10.What are the top 10 Lessons from Matthew 12?

11.What constitutes the heart of the earth?

12.What constitutes the heart of the earth?

13.Where was Jesus during the three days after His death?

14.Why did Jesus say He would be in the tomb for "three days and three nights" (Matthew 12:40) when He was only buried from Friday to Sunday?for as Jonah was

Jonah’s own experience sets the pattern. InJonah 1:17, “The LORD appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the fish.” Jesus points to this historical event as a real, God-directed sign.

• The Ninevites recognized Jonah’s deliverance as proof of his divine commission (Jonah 3:4–5).

• Jesus uses the same sign to confront “an evil and adulterous generation” (Matthew 12:39).

• Luke confirms this parallel: “For just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation” (Luke 11:30).

---

three days and three nights

The phrase marks a complete but limited period of time, beginning with Christ’s burial late Friday and ending with His resurrection before dawn on Sunday. Scripture counts any part of a day as inclusive of the whole (cf.Esther 4:16 with 5:1).

• Jesus foretold this same timetable repeatedly: “After three days He will rise again” (Mark 8:31).

• Paul anchors the gospel on it: “Christ died for our sins…He was buried…and He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

• By rising within the promised span, Jesus proves Himself faithful to His own word (Matthew 28:6).

---

in the belly of the great fish

Jonah’s confinement pictures both judgment and preservation.

•Jonah 2 paints the scene as a descent to “the roots of the mountains” (Jonah 2:6), echoing death’s grip, yet God kept Jonah alive.

• That mixture of death-like entombment and miraculous deliverance foreshadows Christ, who truly dies yet cannot be held (Acts 2:24).

• The fish was under divine command, showing creation’s obedience to its Creator—just as the sealed tomb would yield to the Creator made flesh (Matthew 27:60; 28:2).

---

so the Son of Man will be

“Son of Man” highlights both Jesus’ humanity and His messianic authority (Daniel 7:13-14).

• Christ identifies Himself openly with this title, embracing the prophetic mission of suffering and glory (Matthew 26:64).

• His self-comparison to Jonah underscores that His coming death and resurrection are no tragic accident but a purposeful, redemptive act (John 10:17-18).

• The certainty of fulfillment—“will be”—reassures believers that every word from His mouth stands firm (Matthew 24:35).

---

in the heart of the earth

This phrase points to the grave. Jesus truly enters the realm of the dead, yet without decay or defeat.

• Peter preachesPsalm 16:10 as fulfilled: “You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay” (Acts 2:27).

•Isaiah 53:9-11 pairs burial with triumphant life, predicting that after “His soul is given as a guilt offering…He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days.”

• The resurrection validates every promise of forgiveness and future resurrection for all who trust Him (Romans 10:9;1 Peter 1:3).

---

summary

Matthew 12:40 binds Jonah’s dramatic rescue to Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Jonah proves God’s power to deliver; Jesus embodies it perfectly. Three days and three nights in the tomb confirm both the reality of His death and the precision of God’s timing. Emerging alive, He authenticates every claim, offers salvation to repentant sinners, and assures us that even the grave bows to the Son of Man.

(40)As Jonas was three days and three nights.--To understand the words rightly, we have to remember the prominence which our Lord gives to the history of Jonah, and to the repentance of the men of Nineveh, in this and in the parallel passage ofLuke 11:29, and in answer to another demand for a sign inMatthew 16:4. In the other passages "the sign of the prophet Jonas" appears with a vague mysteriousness, unexplained. Not a few critics have accordingly inferred from this difference that the explanation given by St. Matthew was an addition to the words actually spoken by our Lord, and that "the sign of the prophet Jonas" was sufficiently fulfilled by His preaching repentance to the wicked and adulterous generation as Jonah had done to the Ninevites. Against this view, however, it may be urged:--(1) That Jonah's work as a preacher was not a "sign" in any sense, and that nothing in his history had this character, except the two narratives of the whale (Jonah 1:17) and the gourd (Jonah 4:6-10). Any reference to the latter is, of course, out of the question; and it remains therefore, in any case, that we must look to the former as that to which our Lord alluded. (2) That the very difficulty presented by the prediction of "three days and three nights" as compared with the six-and-thirty hours (two nights and one day) of the actual history of the Resurrection, is against the probability of the verse having been inserted as a prophecy after the event. (3) That if we believe that our Lord had a distinct prevision of His resurrection, and foretold it, sometimes plainly and sometimes in dark sayings--and of this the Gospels leave no room for doubt (Matthew 16:21;Matthew 26:32;John 2:19)--then the history of Jonah presented an analogy which it was natural that He should notice. It does not necessarily follow that this use of the history as a prophetic symbol of the Resurrection requires us to accept it in the very letter of its details. It was enough, for the purposes of the illustration, that it was familiar and generally accepted. The purely chronological difficulty is explained by the common mode of speech among the Jews, according to which, any part of a day, though it were but a single hour, was for legal purposes considered as a whole. An instance of this mode of speech is found in1Samuel 30:12-13, and it is possible that in the history of Jonah itself the measurement of time is to be taken with the same laxity. . . .Verse 40. - Matthew only.For as Jonas (Jonah, Revised Version)was three days and three nights in the whale's belly. Verbally from the LXX. ofJonah 1:17 (2:1).So shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Since, so far as the balance of evidence goes (cf., however, Bishop Westcott, 'Introduction,' p. 344, edit. 1872), the Crucifixion was on Friday and the Resurrection on Sunday, the actual time between them was only one clear day and two parts of days (which might fairly be called three days) and two whole nights. The reckoning, therefore, here is, strictly speaking, inaccurate. The words are perhaps a mere adaptation of the phrase in Jonah, and are here used only to roughly mark the time of our Lord's stay in the grave. Observe, however, that the addition of" nights" tends to emphasize the reality of our Lord's stay there. It was a matter of days and nights; he spent both kinds of earthly time "in the heart of the earth" (cf.Matthew 4:2, note). It will be noticed that the inaccuracy of the wording would, if modern Western habits were alone to be considered, make it most unlikely that the phrase is a later addition; but in view of the early Christian and Jewish method of illustrating events by passages of Scripture which do not apply in all respects, the improbability is not so great as would at first sight appear. However, upon our present information, we must say that the phrase was spoken by our Lord himself, and that although the exact time of his stay in the grave was well known to the early believers, they continued to repeat the saying in the form in which the Lord left it. Inthe heart of the earth. The form of the expression is derived fromJonah 2:3 (4), "in the heart of the seas" (cf.Exodus 15:8), and would therefore appear to mean some deeper place than the rock-hewn sepulchre. Hence many commentators, beginning with Irenaeus ('Adv. Haer.,' V. 31.) and Tertullian ('De Anima,' Iv.), understand it as directly denoting the place of departed spirits.Ephesians 4:9 ("the lower parts of the earth"), on the contrary, probably refers to the earth as such in contrast to heaven.

Parallel Commentaries ...


For
γὰρ(gar)
Conjunction
Strong's 1063:For. A primary particle; properly, assigning a reason.

just as
ὥσπερ(hōsper)
Adverb
Strong's 5618:Just as, as, even as. From hos and per; just as, i.e. Exactly like.

Jonah
Ἰωνᾶς(Iōnas)
Noun - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 2495:(Hebrew), Jonah, the Hebrew prophet. Of Hebrew origin; Jonas, the name of two Israelites.

was
ἦν(ēn)
Verb - Imperfect Indicative Active - 3rd Person Singular
Strong's 1510:I am, exist. The first person singular present indicative; a prolonged form of a primary and defective verb; I exist.

three
τρεῖς(treis)
Adjective - Accusative Feminine Plural
Strong's 5140:Three. Or neuter tria a primary number; 'three'.

days
ἡμέρας(hēmeras)
Noun - Accusative Feminine Plural
Strong's 2250:A day, the period from sunrise to sunset.

and
καὶ(kai)
Conjunction
Strong's 2532:And, even, also, namely.

three
τρεῖς(treis)
Adjective - Accusative Feminine Plural
Strong's 5140:Three. Or neuter tria a primary number; 'three'.

nights
νύκτας(nyktas)
Noun - Accusative Feminine Plural
Strong's 3571:The night, night-time. A primary word; 'night'.

in
ἐν(en)
Preposition
Strong's 1722:In, on, among. A primary preposition denoting position, and instrumentality, i.e. A relation of rest; 'in, ' at, on, by, etc.

the
τῇ(tē)
Article - Dative Feminine Singular
Strong's 3588:The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the.

belly
κοιλίᾳ(koilia)
Noun - Dative Feminine Singular
Strong's 2836:From koilos; a cavity, i.e. the abdomen; by implication, the matrix; figuratively, the heart.

of the
τοῦ(tou)
Article - Genitive Neuter Singular
Strong's 3588:The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the.

great fish,
κήτους(kētous)
Noun - Genitive Neuter Singular
Strong's 2785:A sea monster, huge sea fish, whale. Probably from the base of chasma; a huge fish.

so
οὕτως(houtōs)
Adverb
Strong's 3779:Thus, so, in this manner. Or (referring to what precedes or follows).

the
ὁ(ho)
Article - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 3588:The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the.

Son
Υἱὸς(Huios)
Noun - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 5207:A son, descendent. Apparently a primary word; a 'son', used very widely of immediate, remote or figuratively, kinship.

of Man
ἀνθρώπου(anthrōpou)
Noun - Genitive Masculine Singular
Strong's 444:A man, one of the human race. From aner and ops; man-faced, i.e. A human being.

will be
ἔσται(estai)
Verb - Future Indicative Middle - 3rd Person Singular
Strong's 1510:I am, exist. The first person singular present indicative; a prolonged form of a primary and defective verb; I exist.

three
τρεῖς(treis)
Adjective - Accusative Feminine Plural
Strong's 5140:Three. Or neuter tria a primary number; 'three'.

days
ἡμέρας(hēmeras)
Noun - Accusative Feminine Plural
Strong's 2250:A day, the period from sunrise to sunset.

and
καὶ(kai)
Conjunction
Strong's 2532:And, even, also, namely.

three
τρεῖς(treis)
Adjective - Accusative Feminine Plural
Strong's 5140:Three. Or neuter tria a primary number; 'three'.

nights
νύκτας(nyktas)
Noun - Accusative Feminine Plural
Strong's 3571:The night, night-time. A primary word; 'night'.

in
ἐν(en)
Preposition
Strong's 1722:In, on, among. A primary preposition denoting position, and instrumentality, i.e. A relation of rest; 'in, ' at, on, by, etc.

the
τῇ(tē)
Article - Dative Feminine Singular
Strong's 3588:The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the.

heart
καρδίᾳ(kardia)
Noun - Dative Feminine Singular
Strong's 2588:Prolonged from a primary kar; the heart, i.e. the thoughts or feelings; also the middle.

of the
τῆς(tēs)
Article - Genitive Feminine Singular
Strong's 3588:The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the.

earth.
γῆς(gēs)
Noun - Genitive Feminine Singular
Strong's 1093:Contracted from a primary word; soil; by extension a region, or the solid part or the whole of the terrene globe.


Matthew 12:40 NIV
Matthew 12:40 NLT
Matthew 12:40 ESV
Matthew 12:40 NASB
Matthew 12:40 KJV

Matthew 12:40 BibleApps.com
Matthew 12:40 Biblia Paralela
Matthew 12:40 Chinese Bible
Matthew 12:40 French Bible
Matthew 12:40 Catholic Bible

NT Gospels: Matthew 12:40 For as Jonah was three days (Matt. Mat Mt)