The Timetable from Cross to Dawn

At the beginning of this book we read the one sign Yeshua gave to those who asked Him for a sign. Since then we have looked at the biblical day, the name He was given, the supper before the Passover, the hour of His death, the three sabbatons that followed it, and the words the Gospels use for the morning He rose. Now everything can be put in one place and counted.

Here is the sign again, in His own words:

Matthew 12:40 For just as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.

He pointed to Jonah 2:1 (YLV, Masoretic verse order), which we read in Chapter 2. There the Hebrew says shloshah yamim u-shloshah leilot שְׁלֹשָׁה יָמִים וּשְׁלֹשָׁה לֵילוֹת shaw-loshe', three daytimes and three nights, and it names the daytimes first. Yeshua used the same order. He did not say “about three days,” or “parts of three days.” He named a number of daytimes and a number of nights, and He made the sign stand on that number.

The Whole Timetable

The table below follows the biblical day, in which a new day begins when the daytime ends and evening comes. Beside each biblical date stands its civil date in AD 33, calculated as Chapter 36 explained. Read it from top to bottom, and keep an eye on the last column.

Counting the Daytimes

Begin with the daytimes, since the sign begins with them.

The first daytime is the daytime of Nisan 13. On that day Yeshua was nailed to the cross at the third hour, there was darkness from the sixth hour, and at the ninth hour He died. It was the day of preparation for the Passover, the daytime in which He gave up His life, and because He entered death in that daytime, it is the first daytime of the sign.

The second daytime is the daytime of Nisan 14, the Passover. All through it He lay in the tomb.

The third daytime is the daytime of Nisan 15, the great sabbath of Unleavened Bread. All through it, too, He lay in the tomb.

Three daytimes: the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th.

The Hours Are Written Down

The first daytime is not left vague. The Gospels mark its hours one by one, in the verses we read in Chapter 31 (Mark 15:25; Matthew 27:45-50). The third hour, about 9 a.m., is when they crucified Him. The sixth hour, about noon, is when darkness fell upon all the land. The ninth hour, about 3 p.m., is when He cried out with a loud voice and “gave up His pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit).” These are the hours of the daytime of Nisan 13, and the count of the first daytime rests on these verses, not on a guess.

Counting the Nights

Now the nights. In the biblical day the night belongs to the day that has just begun, so each night is counted with the date it opens.

The first night is the night of Nisan 14. By late afternoon of the thirteenth the burial was finished, and when that daytime ended and evening came, the Passover began. That night was His first night in the heart of the earth.

Someone may ask why the first night does not wait for the sun to go down. The answer lies in the biblical day itself, as we saw in Chapters 3 and 29. When the daytime ends and evening comes, the new day has begun, and the whole evening, before, during, and after the going down of the sun, belongs to that new day. Joseph of Arimathea asked for the body in the afternoon, and with Nicodemus he finished the burial by late afternoon, in the daytime of the preparation day, before the evening that opened the Passover.

The second night is the night of Nisan 15, the night that opened the great sabbath of Unleavened Bread.

The third night is the night of Nisan 16. It began with the evening after the great sabbath, and it ran on until the first light of the day of the first sheaf.

Three nights: the 14th, the 15th, and the 16th.

And at the close of the third night, very early on the sixteenth, at first light, Yeshua rose.

Daytime First, Then Night

The count falls in a clear order. It does not begin with a night. It begins with the daytime of the 13th, then comes the night of the 14th, then the daytime of the 14th, and so on, a daytime and then a night, three times over. That is the order of Jonah 2:1, yamim before leilot, and the order of Matthew 12:40, “three days and three nights.” His death came in the daytime of the 13th, and His burial came in the same daytime, in opsia, the latter part of the day, earlier or later in the afternoon but not after the sun had gone down. In His death and in His burial alike, the daytime comes first.

Nothing has been stretched to make the numbers fit, and no night has been counted twice. The count comes out exactly at three and three, and it ends at the very point where the Gospels place the resurrection: in the early dawn, while the third night was giving way to the light.

The Traditional Count Beside It

It is worth setting the familiar scheme beside this table one more time, fairly and without scorn. Many Christians have been taught that Yeshua ate the Last Supper on Thursday evening, died on Friday afternoon, and rose on Sunday morning. Those who teach it love the cross and the resurrection, and they hold the scheme because it is what they received.

But laid against the sign, that scheme cannot reach the number. From a death in the afternoon of one day to a resurrection at dawn two days later, there is only about a day and a half, and even if every part of a day is counted as a whole day, there are only two nights. The sign Yeshua gave was three daytimes and three nights. The timetable that follows the biblical day, John’s time markers, and the appointed times of Leviticus 23 gives exactly that.

What the Count Shows

The count is not a puzzle solved for its own sake. Yeshua chose this sign Himself, and He chose it when He was asked for proof. He gave a number, and the number was kept to the last daytime and the last night. The daytime of His death, the Passover, the great sabbath, and the night before the first sheaf each took their place, and at first light on the sixteenth the sign was complete.

The count is complete. Yet for many centuries most English readers have met the morning that completed it under another name, “the first day of the week.” That rendering came from faith and bore fruit, and the next chapter gives it its due.