A heartfelt conclusion
At issue is whether Matthew’s comparison drawn between Jonah and the Son of Man is a basically incoherent statement requiring extraordinary deference and excuse, or a straightforward, sensible remark however culturally distant it may be from modern readers. I argue for the latter.
Matthew’s reference to “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” as an ordeal for the Son of Man is therefore not a stressed synecdoche, nor a cryptic chronology, nor a mismatched metaphor. It is a summation of events involving Jesus in Jerusalem from Thursday evening to Sunday morning. Although draped in biblical prose it recalls a historical memory about the suffering of Jesus. As Jonah spent three days and three nights of suffering inside the great fish, so Jesus spent a final three days and three nights of suffering in Jerusalem, that place known in biblical and extrabiblical tradition as the “middle,” “center,” “navel,” or “heart” of the earth.