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Appendix A to Session 5:
The Third Day Pattern in the Old Testament
'Climatic Reversal from Death to Life'
- We can say more about the timing of the Christ’s
resurrection. In the Old Testament
stories, the ‘third day’ is a
day with some surprising patterns. The first surprise is how often ‘the third day’ time stamp is
mentioned. There are 69 references
to ‘third day’ or ‘three days’ in the Old Testament.
[1]
By comparison, there are only 14
references to ‘two days’ or ‘second day’. There are only 8 references to
‘fourth day’ or ‘four days’. So the
Old Testament makes a lot of ‘three days’, and ‘the third day’. We can conclude that something is being
communicated. The day contains
special meaning. But what is that
meaning?
- We can see the meaning by looking at the pattern of
events on the third day. There are
fourteen passages in the stories of the Old Testament which use the phrase
‘on the third day’. Of these, nine
stories have a person saved from death that third day.
[2]
This is surprisingly high. Compare this sample with the twenty-four
passages where the Old Testament speaks of ‘the next day’.
[3]
Only 2 out of 24 passages on the ‘next day’ have such an event, where a person is saved from death. This is much less than 9 out of 14 on
the third day.
- Our point is that the careful reader can notice a
special theme in ‘the third day’ stories. This pattern is the ‘climactic reversal from death to life’.
- Let’s read a story to get the idea. Consider this story in Genesis 22:1-19: It’s a story from Abraham’s lifetime,
around 2000 BC.
NIV Genesis 22:1 Some time
later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I
am," he replied. 2 Then God said, "Take your son, your
only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him
there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." 3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him
two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the
burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and
saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, "Stay
here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and
then we will come back to you." 6 Abraham took the wood for the
burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire
and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up
and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?"
Abraham replied. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but
where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" 8 Abraham answered,
"God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son."
And the two of them went on together. 9 When they reached the place
God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham!
Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. 12 "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I
know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your
only son." 13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a
ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a
burnt offering instead of his son.
- In this story, the third day was the day when
Abraham was to kill Isaac. God had
decreed Isaac’s death, so Isaac was as good as dead. Yet, in the climax to the story, Isaac’s
life is spared on the third day. It
is a reversal from life to death on the third day.
- A shorter story occurs in 2 Kings 20. This story comes from around the year
710 BC.
NIV 2 Kings 20:1 In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The
prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, "This is what the LORD
says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not
recover." 2 Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to
the LORD, 3 "Remember, O LORD, how I have walked before you
faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your
eyes." And Hezekiah wept bitterly. 4 Before Isaiah had left the
middle court, the word of the LORD came to him: 5 "Go back and
tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, 'This is what the LORD, the God of your
father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal
you. On the third day from now you
will go up to the temple of the LORD. 6 I will add fifteen years to
your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of
Assyria
. I will defend this city for my
sake and for the sake of my servant David.'"
- Hezekiah had been told by God that he would
die. Yet in a great climax, on the
third day he is well enough to go to the temple.
- There is another passage in the Old Testament which
links the resurrection of the dead with the third day. This passage is not a story, but a
predictive prophecy. The passage is
Hosea 6:2, and was written around 730 BC.
[4]
ESV Hosea 6:1 "Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may
heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
2 After two
days he will revive us; on the
third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.
- The passage
is a poem. The first half of each line
is preliminary; the second half is the climactic prediction for the
future. For example, ‘he has torn us’ is
preliminary, a statement of the past. But
‘that he may heal us’ is the climactic prediction for the future. Just so, in verse two, ‘after two days he
will revive us’ is preliminary. ‘On the
third day he will raise us up’ is the climactic prediction for the future. So the third day is predicted to be a day of
raising up.
- We do not have time to cover all the stories in question. The point is that the Old Testament
points to the third day as a day of climactic reversal from death to life.
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