Why was Jesus in the tomb only two nights, unlike the sign of Jonah's three days and three nights?
Robert Sungenis answers that the Hebrews counted part of a day as a whole day, so part of Friday, all of Saturday and part of Sunday make three days in their reckoning. He treats the three days and three nights of Matthew 12:40 as the one difficulty, reading the phrase as usable both literally and figuratively, and says he devotes about ten pages to it in his Matthew commentary.
A viewer asks why Jesus was in the tomb only two days and two nights, given the sign of the prophet Jonah (three days and three nights).
Answer
The Hebrews counted a half day as a whole day, so as not to confuse dates in commerce and record-keeping. So you get the half day of Friday, the whole day of Saturday, and the half day of Sunday, and that is three days in the Hebrew reckoning. The only difficulty is Matthew 12:40, which says three days and three nights, and I wrote about ten pages on that in my Matthew commentary. It turns out that the phrase three days and three nights can be used both literally and figuratively, and that is what is going on in Matthew 12:40. But from Friday to Sunday would be three literal days in the Hebrew way of counting.