Where Did Jesus Die? — Page 13
Chapter One—Passages from the Gospels 13 Sign of Jonah the Prophet Jesus when called upon by the Jews to show them a sign said: An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 1 This saying of Jesus settles the question once and for all. The Jews sought to kill him, but he escaped death. They did all that lay in their power to put him to death but God delivered him from their hands. Thus, his escape was a sign for the Jews. The words of Jesus indicated the way in which the sign was to be shown and the manner in which he was to be delivered from the hands of his murderous foes. He was to be placed in the belly of the earth like one dead, but his case was to be like that of Jonah in the belly of the whale. The latter, while in the belly of the whale, was not dead but alive. Similarly, Jesus was to be alive, not dead in the bosom of the earth. Jesus, by comparing his case to that of Jonah, clearly indicated the way in which he was to escape. He was to enter the sepulchre alive and come out of it alive, just as Jonah had entered his living sepulchre alive and had come out of it alive. The proph- ecy of Jesus strikes a death blow to the notion that he died an ‘accursed’ death on the cross. 1. Matthew 12:39–40