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

If, as is usually thought, Jesus was crucified on Friday and raised on Sunday, then he was in the tomb for (part of) three days and two nights.

Some extreme literalists have revised the chronology of Holy Week accordingly, making the crucifixion on the Wednesday or Thursday.

Others suppose that there is a real discrepancy here.  So Hagner (WBC). Barclay (DSB) thinks that ‘Matthew understood wrongly the point of what Jesus said.’  Spong (Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, p154) opines that ‘counting seems to have been a problem for Matthew’s Jesus.’  In this latter case, we judge the author to be as guilty of literalistic thinking as the ‘fundamentalists’ he so despises.

Many commentators, however, agree that in Semitic idiom, this is a ’rounded-up’ expression which is consistent with the fact that Jesus rose ‘on the third day’, Mt 16:21.  Cf. Gen 42:17–18; 1 Sam 30:12–13; Esth 4:16-5:1.  So Blomberg (NAC), Wilkins (HAC), Osborne (ZECNT) and others.  Carson says that ‘according to Jewish tradition, a day and a night make an onah, and a part of an onah is as the whole. Thus, “three days and three nights” need mean no more than “three days” or the combination of any part of three days.’

Esther 4:16-5:1 is relevant here.  The young Queen asks for a fast to be held on her behalf, which will last for three whole days.  ‘Then we read that on the third day Esther put on her royal robes, signalling the end of the fast.  Only two nights had elapsed, but in Jewish thinking three days and three nights would have been crossed off the calendar.’ (Bewes, The Top 100 Questions, p258)

It is, of course, a minor problem anyway, except for some inerrantists and sceptics.  But we can, in the light of this idiomatic way of thinking, say with confidence that our Lord rose ‘on the third day’.

See this by Andreas Kostenberger.