26. The Crucifixion Day
THE CRUCIFIXION DAY On what day of the week was our Lord crucified? To us it is perfectly obvious that the crucifixion was on Wednesday. The general impression that the crucifixion took place on Friday is doubtless due to the fact that it occurred on the day before the sabbath, and it has been generally assumed that the sabbath referred to was the weekly sabbath, which, of course, came on Saturday. But there were many sabbaths in the Hebrew calendar beside the fifty-two weekly sabbaths of the year; and the sabbaths by which the feast of Passover and unleavened bread was begun and ended were reckoned as peculiarly sacred sabbaths. “In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein. But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto Jehovah seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein” (Leviticus 23:7-8). The passover always fell on the 14th day of Abib (Leviticus 23:5); and of course this would be on a different day of the week each successive year. All the evidence on the subject of the day of our Lord’s crucifixion seems to lead to the conclusion that the feast began that year on Thursday—and “that sabbath day was an high day” (John 19:31)—and that the crucifixion was on the day before, which would be Wednesday. The Jewish day began at 6 P.M., instead of midnight. The body of our crucified Lord was placed in the tomb just before 6 P.M. on Wednesday, which was the beginning of Thursday. It remained there through Thursday (night and day), Friday (night and day), and Saturday (night and day), and was raised from the dead just as Sunday was beginning (Matthew 28:1), or what we now would call Saturday evening about 6 o’clock. Thus the entombment endured through three days and three nights, fulfilling our Lord’s own prediction in Matthew 12:40. No one saw the resurrection of our Lord. The record shows that when the disciples visited the tomb immediately after the weekly sabbath had ended, that is, on Saturday night, they found the tomb empty.
I have a problem which you might help me with, if you will. You stated that the crucifixion of our Lord took place on Wednesday, basing the statement onMatthew 12:40and other passages. This is reasonable, but even more often is the resurrection referred to as on the third day. Remembering that the Jews reckoned their days from evening to evening, if Christ were crucified on Wednesday, the resurrection would be on at least the fourth day after. I believe in the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, and hence believe that there must be some explanation, although I do not understand it.
It is true that the resurrection day is often referred to as the third day. But it is also referred to as “after three days” (Mark 8:31) “within three days” (Mark 14:58) “in three days” (John 2:19) and after “three days and three nights” (Matthew 12:40).
I, too, believe in the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, and our problem is to find the harmony between all these expressions. That harmony, as I believe, is to be looked for in connection with idiomatic expression. You know that there is such a thing as usage, and as some one has said, “Any usage is good usage if there be enough of it.” In our English language we fall into usage which at first seems to be entirely contrary to grammar, and yet we go on using expressions which finally find their place in our English dictionaries because the usage becomes so common.
Now, then, if it can be found that “on the third day” was an expression used among the Jews as equivalent to “within three days” or “in three days” or “after three days and three nights,” then our problem is solved. And I think there is just such a solution to be found in the Word of God itself. Please look at Esther 4:16 where Queen Esther is quoted as saying: “Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day.” Now look at the first verse of chapter 5: “Now it came to pass on the third day, that Esther put on her royal apparel, and stood in the inner court of the king’s house.” You see here the expression “on the third day” is equivalent to “after three days and three nights.”
Now look again at 2 Chronicles 10:5, where Rehoboam said: “Come again unto me after three days.” And yet in the 12th verse it reads: “So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day, as the king bade, saying, Come again to me on the third day.” Here you will see that “after three days” is the exact equivalent, according to the Hebrew usage and idiom, of “the third day.”
Now, does not this warrant us in saying that the expression in Matthew 12:40, “So shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” is to be regarded as equivalent to the language of Luke 24:21, ‘Today is the third day since these things were done”?