The Sign of the Prophet Jonah (Feb 4, 2026)
The apostle Paul reminds the Corinthians of the gospel’s core:
Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures...he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. (1 Cor. 15:3-4, ESV)
But which scriptures? The prophet Hosea speaks of Israel being raised up “on the third day” (Hos. 6:2), and because Jesus embodies Israel, his resurrection fulfills this prophecy of the nation’s restoration. But there is another scripture Jesus himself explicitly cites as pointing to his third-day resurrection: the sign of Jonah.
When scribes and Pharisees demand a sign from him in Matthew 12, Jesus responds:
An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Matt. 12:39-40)
This saying represents the only place in the Gospels where Jesus explicitly connects his resurrection to a specific Old Testament text.
But what makes Jonah an apt parallel? As biblical scholar Brant Pitre observes, if you read Jonah’s prayer carefully, you discover something remarkable. Jonah cries out “from the belly of Sheol” and “the Pit” (Jonah 2:2, 6), both standard Old Testament terms for the realm of the dead. He says his soul fainted within him (2:7), the language of dying. Then God speaks to the fish, and it vomits Jonah onto dry land. What is the first word God speaks to Jonah? “Arise” (3:2). This is the same word Jesus uses when he raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead: “Little girl, I say to you, arise” (Mark 5:41). The story of Jonah, then, presents a death and resurrection after three days—exactly the pattern Jesus claims for his own rising.
But the sign of Jonah is not only about resurrection. It is also about what follows: Gentile conversion.
The men of Nineveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. (Matt. 12:41)
The Ninevites were Gentiles, and not just any Gentiles. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, one of Israel’s fiercest enemies. Their mass repentance was the climax of Jonah’s story. Jesus says his sign will be twofold: the resurrection after three days and the repentance of Gentile nations throughout the world.
You are living inside the fulfillment of this sign. The global church, composed mainly of non-Jews who have turned from idols to worship the God of Israel, is ongoing evidence that something greater than Jonah is here.