The Sign of Jonah???

 Matthew 12:39-40 “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

There are few Old Testament prophecies that are explicit about the Messiah dying and rising from the dead.  Isaiah 53:10-11 though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin…After he has suffered, he will see the light of life[d] and be satisfied; by his knowledge my  righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.”  The [d] footnote says Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls does not read “will see the light of life” but “He will see the fruit of his suffering and will be satisfied.”  Quite a bit less clear.

Jesus specifically points to both Isaiah’s Suffering Servant and to “the sign of Jonah”. It is in Jonah we get three days and three nights.  Was Jesus crucified on “Good Thursday”, which would get the “required” three days and nights? That is, if Jesus was Crucified on Good Friday and rose on Easter Sunday, no matter how you count it, that is three days and two nights, making him a false prophet.  (If you count the days listed in Holy Week, we are short a day, so a Thursday crucifixion is possible, but I believe that is largely irrelevant.)

But why Jonah?  The Bible Project has an excellent summary of Jonah’s life.  Book of Jonah Summary: A Complete Animated Overview Briefly: Jonah appears in 2 Kings 14, telling Israelite king Jeroboam II to restore Israel’s original borders.  While this was successful, at least for a short time, Jeroboam’s reign is called “evil”.  And in the book of Jonah, he shows himself to be a terrible prophet, running in the other direction when God sends him to Nineveh; daring God to kill him rather than save people he hated.  And after “repenting”, he gives a minimal message to the Ninevites, but they repent anyway.  His response is to sulk and again beg God to kill him.  Like many of Jesus’ parables, Jonah’s book ends with a cliffhanger: does he repent?  

Someone suggested that Jonah is the OT equivalent of the older brother in the Prodigal Son.  I always want to believe the older brother will come in and celebrate the younger brother’s return, but Jesus does not tell.  In Jonah’s real-life story, the entire city of Nineveh, more than 120,000 souls, have repented, but Jonah is bitter about it.  

The one “problem” with the Prodigal Son is that there is no sacrifice, other than the fatted calf.  But interestingly, Jonah himself is reluctantly “sacrificed” for the people of Nineveh.  Perhaps Jesus is saying that, though Jonah was (apparently) a false prophet, and a reluctant, petulant one, Jesus knew he would spend three days and nights in the tomb, just like Jonah, to redeem both the Israelites (the older brothers, the “Jonahs”, the Pharisees) and the Ninevites (the younger brother, the sinners of the world).  I suggest the Older Brother is way too common in Church today - the judgmental, bigoted “Christian” who is glad to tell others where they’ve gone wrong.  And the Younger Brother is way too common everywhere else in this country - only turning to God when there is no other way.  Otherwise, happy enough in their lives, or at least pretending to be.  Would that I did not see myself in both of these misguided sons.  

But seriously - why “the sign of Jonah”?  It’s weird, isn’t it?