The Sign of Jonah (2)
A follow-up to my previous post about the “sign of Jonah” (drawing still on Jakob van Bruggen’s Matteus):
If “the sign of Jonah” isn’t Jesus’ death and resurrection, then why does Jesus go on to talk about Jonah’s being in the belly of the sea-monster for three days and three nights and link that up with Jesus himself being “in the heart of the earth” for three days and three nights?
The answer is that Jesus is not here identifying what he means by “the sign of Jonah.” Again, as I said in the previous post, there’s no indication that anyone in Nineveh had a clue about Jonah being in the belly of the fish, so that wasn’t a sign to them at all.
But the point is rather this: Jonah tried to run away from his calling and ended up “dead’ in the belly of the fish, but that wasn’t the end of his mission. After three days and three nights, he was vomited out and his mission continued. His “death” didn’t end his mission to Nineveh. His death didn’t stop him from being a sign to them.
And neither will Jesus’ death. The scribes and Pharisees are already plotting Jesus’ death in Matthew 12, and when they do arrest him and crucify him and bury him — the three days and three nights includes everything from his arrest on — they will think that they have gotten rid of him.
But they will find that his mission continues. After three days and three nights, he will rise again, like Jonah, and continue to be a sign to them, a sign of their need to repent and trust in him before it is too late.