John Bengel Commentary - Matthew 12:40 - 12:40

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John Bengel Commentary - Matthew 12:40 - 12:40


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Mat 12:40. Ἰωνὰς, Jonas) Jonas did not then die, but yet it was as much believed that he would not return from the fish, as it was that Jesus would not return from the heart of the earth; yet both of them did return.-ἐν τῇ κοιλίᾳ τοῦ κήτους, in the belly of the whale) We ought not to doubt that Jonah was in the belly of the whale, on account of the narrow throat of some animals of that kind. For there are various sorts of whales, and in these days, the bodies of men are found in their stomachs; and even if such were not the case, we must suppose that fish especially made for the occasion; see Jon 2:1.-ἔσται, shall be) A sign for the future, as in Joh 2:19; Joh 6:62; Joh 6:39.-γῆς, of the earth) From thence shall they have a sign, and not one from heaven before that, although they sought it thence; cf. Luk 11:16. No signs, except such as were exhibited from the earth, and performed for the good of men, were suitable to the Messiah’s state of humiliation. They did not know that the sign of that time was suitable to that time; see ch. Mat 16:3. Afterwards signs were shown, and shall be shown from heaven: see Act 2:19; Mat 24:30.-τρεῖς ἡμέρας καὶ τρεῖς νύκτας, three days and three nights) No one doubts that Jesus was in the heart of the earth three days.-He remained there however only two nights, as far as night signifies the darkness interposed between day and day (cf. Mar 14:30); and yet the calculation of three days, and the same number of nights, holds good if you do not interpret it with astronomical exactness, but resolve it by synecdoche. For three days and three nights are the periphrasis of a single idea, and have the force of a single word and term, if such existed, by which the remaining of Jesus in the sepulchre is expressed, as if you should say a-space-of-three-days-and-nights (triduinoctium), or three-nights-and-days (tria noctidua). Three days might have been simply expressed, but this is the idiom of the sacred style, that in indicating continuous time the intervening nights are added; see ch. Mat 4:2; Gen 7:4; 1Sa 30:12-13; Job 2:13. And then it sounds better to say[581] three days and three nights, than three days and two nights, although the Lord was buried on the actual day of the preparation, not on the night preceding and joined to it, and the space of twenty-four hours is regarded simply as a natural day without the change of darkness and light; and in fact the first night-and-day, used synecdochically,[582] was from about the tenth hour of the Friday up to the night exclusively;[583] the second and fullest, from the beginning of that night up to the end of the Sabbath and beginning of the following night; the third, strictly speaking, from the beginning of the following night up to the resurrection of the Lord, and the rising of the sun on Sunday morning. Two nights, therefore, were certainly joined with two days; nor does one night taken from one day, i.e. the first, affect the truth of the language, which denominates the thing in question from its superior part (locutionis a potiori[584] rem denominantis). In fine, there were not two nights and days, nor four; therefore there were three. The Hebrew mode of expression is agreeable to this; concerning which, see Lightfoot and Wolfe on this passage, and Michaelis on Jos 2:16. Although what I have here said may satisfy a reader who is not unreasonable, I would also further observe, that the synecdoche does not belong so much to the three-days-and-three-nights as to the actual remaining in the heart of the earth. Scripture indeed frequently defines a certain time, and expresses not the whole matter which commensurately and exactly occupied that time, but a part of the matter longer in duration than the other parts; as, for example, the four hundred and thirty years of the sojourning in Egypt, Exo 12:40; and thus passim the whole book of Judges. In this passage, therefore, the remaining in the heart of the earth, i.e. in the sepulchre, is expressed, but at the same time the whole period of the Passion is implied, certainly from the agony in Gethsemane, when Jesus fell on the earth which He was the next day to enter, and from the capture by which the Jews commenced their undertaking to destroy that Temple (as Erasmus thinks, Annot. F. 134). Nay, the glorious beginning of the three days on Thursday is clearly intimated, in Joh 13:31 [comp. Harmon. Evang. p. 310, 366], as dating from the time when the Jews bargained for the Saviour, who was to be committed to the earth. The remaining in the earth, taken in a wider signification, includes all these things; see Psa 71:20. For the Son of Man was a sign to that generation, not only in His sepulchre, but most especially in His passion; see Joh 8:28. In this manner, the three days and three nights are exactly completed from the dawn of Thursday to the dawn of Sunday. The time of the death of the two witnesses is exactly defined, Revelation 11, to be three and a half days; therefore we ought to consider that the three days and three nights of our Lord’s remaining in the middle of the earth have been also exactly defined. The middle, or heart, of the earth should not be precisely sought for; but these phrases are opposed to the earth itself, on the surface of which Christ dwelt for more than thirty years.

[581] In the original, “concinnius dicitur,” i.e. it sounds more systematic, it sounds more uniform, to say.-(I. B.)

[582] See Appendix on the figure Synecdoche.-(I. B.)

[583] The night not being included.-ED.

[584] “A potiori” implies that the whole twenty-four-hour-day (the first of the three in question) is denominated, not only from a part, but also from the superior part, viz. the part which had the daylight, and which is regarded as superior to the part during which darkness prevailed, viz. the night preceding Friday, and attached to it, according to the Jewish mode of counting.-ED.