Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (817 page)

Meanwhile, this expedient is not at all needful, so far as any insurmountable difficulty in the words
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is concerned. As the number 3 is used proverbially, not only in connexion with 2 or 4 (Prov. xxx. 15, 18, 21, 29 ; Wis. xxiii. 21, xxvi. 25), but also by itself (Wis. xxv. 1, 3) ; so the expression,
in three days,
if it were once, in combination with the second and first day, become common as an indefinite statement of time, might probably at length be applied in the same sense when standing alone. Whether the expression should signify a long or a short period would then depend on the connexion : here, in opposition to the construction of a great and elaborate building, to the real, natural erection of which, as the Jews directly remark, a long series of years was required, the expression can only be understood as denoting the shortest time.‡

* Kern says, indeed, that a similar doubleness of meaning is found elsewhere in significant discourse; but he refrains from adducipg an example.

† Probab., p. 23 ff.

‡ Comp. Neander, s. 396, Anm.A prediction, or even a mere intimation of the resurrection, is therefore not contained in these words.

As, here, Jesus is said to have intimated his resurrection beforehand, by the image of the destroying and rebuilding of the temple, so, on another occasion, he is supposed to have quoted the type of the prophet Jonah wIth the same intention (Matt. xii. 39 ff., comp. xvi. 4; Luke xi 29 ff.). When the scribes and Pharisees desired to see a sign from him, Jesus is said to have repulsed their demand by the reply, that to so evil a
generation )
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no sign shall be given, but
the sign of the prophet Jonah,
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which, in the first passage of Matthew, Jesus himself explains thus : as Jonah was three days and three nights
in the belly of the whale,
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so also the Son of man will pass three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth,
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In the second passage, in which Matthew attributes this declaration to Jesus, he does not repeat the above interpretation; while Luke, in the parallel passage, explains it simply thus :
For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation.
Now against the possibilityof Jesus having himself given the interpretation of the sign of Jonah which Matthew puts into his mouth, v. 40, a variety of objections may be urged. It is indeed scarcely a tenable argument, that Jesus cannot have spoken of three days and three nights, which he would pass in the heart of the earth, because he only lay in the grave one day and two nights:* since the phraseology of the New Testament decidedly has the peculiarity of designating the abode of Jesus in the grave as of three days’ duration, because it touched upon the evening of the day before the Sabbath, and the morning of the day after it; and if this one day, together with two nights, were once taken for three whole days, it would only be a round way of expressing this completeness, to add to the days the nights also, which, besides, would naturally follow in the comparison with the three days and three nights of Jonah.† But if Jesus gave the explanation of the sign of Jonah which Matthew attributes to him, this would have been so clear a prediction of his resurrection, that for the same reasons which, according to the above observations, are opposed to the literal predictions of that event, we must conclude that Jesus cannot have given this explanation. At all events it must have led the disciples who, according to v. 49, were present, to question Jesus, and in that case it is not to be understood why he did not make the subject perfectly clear, and thus announce his resurrection in plain words. But if he cannot have done this, because then the disciples could not have acted after his death as they are said to have done in the evangelical accounts: neither can he, by that comparison of the fate which awaited him with that of Jonah, have called forth from his disciples a question, which, if proposed to him, he must have answered; but which, judging from the sequel, he cannot have answered.

* Paulus, exeg. Handb. in loc.

† Comp. Fritzsche and Olshausen, in loc.On these grounds, modern critics have pronounced the explanation of the
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in Matthew to be an interpretation made
post eventum
by the Evangelist, and by him falsely attributed to Jesus.* According to them, Jesus indeed directed the attention of the Pharisees to the
sign of Jonah,
but only in the sense in which Luke makes him explain it: namely, that as Jonah himself, by his mere appearance and preaching of repentance, without miracles, had sufficed as a sign from God to the Ninevites; so his own cotemporaries, instead of craving for miracles, should be satisfied with his person and preaching. This interpretation is the only one which accords with the tenor of the discourse of Jesus — even in Matthew, and more particularly with the parallel between the relation of the Ninevites to Jonah, and that of the queen of the south to Solomon. As it was the
wisdom of Solomon,
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, by which the latter felt herself attracted from the ends of the earth: so, in Jonah, even according to the expression of Matthew, it was solely his
preaching
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which brought the Ninevites to repentance. It might be supposed that the future tense in Luke:
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, So shall also the Son of Man be to this generation (a sign),
cannot be referred to Jesus and his preaching as manifested at that moment, but only to something future, as his resurrection: but this in reality points either to the future
judgment
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in which it will be made manifest, that as Jonah was reckoned a sign to the Ninevites, so was the Son of Man to the Jews then living; or to the fact that when Jesus spoke these words, his appearance had not yet attained its consummation, and many of its stages lay yet in futurity. Nevertheless, it must have been at an early period, as we see from the first gospel, that the fate of Jonah was placed in a typical relation to the death and resurrection of Jesus, since the primitive church anxiously searched through the Old Testament for types and prophecies of the offensive catastrophe which befel their Messiah.

There are still some expressions of Jesus in the fourth gospel, which have been understood as latent prophecies of the resurrection. The discourse on the
corn of wheat,
xii. 24, it is true, too obviously relates to the work of Jesus as likely to be furthered by his death, to be here taken into further consideration. But in the farewell discourses in John there are some declarations, which many are still inclined to refer to the resurrection. When Jesus says :
I will not leave you comfortless, I will come unto you;
yet a little time, and the world sees me no more, but ye see me
,
a little while, and ye shall not see me, and again a little while and ye shall see me,
etc. (xiv. 18 ff., xvi. 16 ff.) ; many believe that these expressions — with the relation between
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, a little while, and again a little while;
the opposition between
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, manifest to you (the disciples) and not to the world;
the words
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* Paulus, exeg. Handb. 2, s. 97 ff. Schulz, über das Abendm., s. 317 f.
I shall see you again, and ye shall see,
which appear to indicate a strictly personal interview — can be referred to nothing else than the resurrection, which was precisely such a reappearance after a short removal, and moreover a personal reappearance granted to the friends of Jesus alone.* But this promised reappearance is at the same time described by Jesus in a manner which will not suit the days of the resurrection. If the words
because I live,
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(xiv. 19), denote his resurrection, we are at a loss to know what can be meant by the succeeding clause,
ye shall live also,
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Again, Jesus says that on that reappearance his disciples will know his relation to the Father, and will no more need to ask anything of him (xiv. 20, xvi. 23): yet even on the very last day of their intercourse with him after the resurrection, they ask a question of him (Acts i. 6), and one which from the point of view of the fourth gospel is altogether senseless. Lastly, when he promises that to him who loves him, he and the Father will come, and make their abode with him, it is perfectly clear that Jesus here speaks not of a corporeal return, but of his spiritual return, through the
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† Nevertheless, even this explanation has its difficulties, since, on the other hand, the expressions
ye shall see me,
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and
I shall see you,
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will not entirely suit that purely spiritual return : hence we must defer the solution of this apparent contradiction until we can give a more complete elucidation of the discourses in which these expressions occur. In the meantime we merely observe, that the farewell discourses in John, being admitted, even by the friends of the fourth gospel, to contain an intermixture of the Evangelist’s own thoughts, are the last source from which to obtain a proof on this subject.