15 Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai:
16 “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”
Esther 4:15, 16New International Version
On the third day Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the palace, in front of the king’s hall. The king was sitting on his royal throne in the hall, facing the entrance
Esther 5:1New International Version
Some people argue that the Lord Iesus could not have been crucified, died and buried on a Friday to be resurrected on Sunday. This is because our Lord said in Matthew 12:40,
"As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth".
To die on Friday and be resurrected on Sunday does not fulfill the three days and three nights prophecy. Yet surprisingly, we read towards the end of the Gospel of Matthew that after the Lord was buried, the chief priests and the Pharisees requested from Pontius Pilate in Matthew 27:63,64 saying
". . . we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day.
The request of the chief priests and Pharisees was for the tomb of our Lord to be sealed and guarded until the third day instead of until the fourth day. It did not include the third night. It seems to contradict what the Lord Iesus has said earlier in Matthew 12:40.
This apparent contradiction is also seen in my reading of the book of Esther this morning. In Esther 4:16, Esther asked her cousin Mordecai to gather all their fellow Jews to fast for three days and nights. Yet in the next chapter we read that Esther went to seek an audience with King Xerxes on the third day, before the three days and three nights were completed.
Is "three days and three nights" a figure of speech in Hebrew? Are the words of Esther 4:16 analogous to those of our Lord in Matthew 12:40?
Just as Esther's audience with the King on the third day fulfills her own "three days and three nights" instruction, I am persuaded that our Lord's resurrection on the third day likewise fulfills his own prophecy that he will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. As it is written in 1 Corinthians 15:3,4
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
Conclusion:
Brothers and Sisters in the Anointed One, Let us remember the Crucifixion and Resurrection of our Lord Iesus throughout the coming Holy Week leading to Easter next Sunday 05Mar2026.
