If you truly want to understand Jonah’s story, Matthew 12:40 is crucial. It shines a bright light on the narrative and clears much of the possible ambiguity.
Matthew 12:40:
Jesus said, “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
The obvious question I want you all to answer is this:
Jesus himself said he would spend three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, just as Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish. Did Jesus literally do that? Three days and three nights is seventy two hours. Did he spend seventy two hours in the grave?
The answer is a capital NO.
He died on Friday at about 3 pm.
He was buried quickly before the Sabbath, sometime between 5 and 6 pm.
He rose early on Sunday, before dawn, around 4 am.
From this timeline, only Saturday qualifies as a complete twenty four hours, a full day and night.
So, literally speaking, Jesus did not spend three days and three nights in the grave. This forces us to ask a more honest question: what exactly does “three days and three nights” mean?
Here is another question.
According to Matthew 16:21, Jesus would be raised from the dead on the third day. First Corinthians 15:4 confirms the same thing, saying that Jesus was “raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.”
If Jesus knew he would rise on the third day, why did he say he would spend three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, just like Jonah? It makes no logical sense to spend three days and three nights somewhere and still leave on the third day.
If you spend three days and three nights in someone’s house, you leave on the fourth day. If you leave on the third day, then you spent either three days and two nights, or two days and three nights, or even two days and two nights, depending on the timing.
I am laying all this out so that you can see clearly that the literal meaning of three days and three nights as seventy two hours is not what Jesus meant. And it is not what the phrase means in the book of Jonah either.
With this, you can rightly conclude that Jonah did not spend seventy two hours inside “the belly of the fish.”
Ancient listeners understood this phrase differently. To them, it meant the complete experience of death, the threshold beyond hope, or being as good as dead. We see similar language in the stories of Esther, Hosea, and even Jesus himself. All of them had “three days and three nights” experiences.
So when ancient readers encountered Jonah’s three days and three nights story, the message was simple: Jonah went as far as a human being could go without actually dying. When they read that a fish swallowed Jonah, they understood it as a way of saying that he survived in the most unexplainable and unimaginable circumstances. If you focus on literal fish, that becomes your own headache.
To the ancient audience for whom this text was written, the meaning was clear and unproblematic. The real problem is us. We insist on reading a text written over two thousand five hundred years ago with the eyes of 2026, and then we congratulate ourselves for being wise.
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Finally, the fish has vomited me onto dry land. I survived it. I never imagined that I will survive it. But to be honest, the stomach of the fish is so warm, and peaceful.
The fish was so kind that after it vomited me, it said goodbye and went back to the water. For three days and three nights, I ate what the fish was eating. See how I have become fat.
Somebody praiseeeeeeeeeeeee the Lord!
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Enough of the jokes.
Dear friends, it was a good time we had exploring the story of Jonah together. I enjoyed every part of it. Thanks for your questions and feedbacks. The next question on the list is on the virgin birth.
#PurestPurity
