SABBATHS, Multiple, Harold Hunt There could be more than one Sabbath in the same week. The Leviticus account of the day of atonement (Lev. 23:23-44) shows that there could be as many as four successive Sabbaths on four successive days. In addition to the regular weekly seventh day Sabbath (Exo. 20:8-11), we are told, “On the first day shall be a Sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a Sabbath” (vs. 39). Verse 32 says, “In the ninth day of the month at even, shall ye celebrate your Sabbath.” And we are told, “Also on the tenth day of this seventh month there shall be a day of atonement: it shall be an holy convocation unto you…..and ye shall do no work in that same day: for it is a day of atonement….It shall be unto you a Sabbath of rest” (vss. 27, 28, 32).
John 19:31, “The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day, (for THAT SABBATH DAY was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.”
Christ was not crucified on Friday. The Sabbath that followed the crucifixion was not the weekly Sabbath. It was rather one of the high day Sabbaths.
Matt. 12:40, “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
Christ was in the grave three full days and three full nights. The Jews did not divide their days at midnight; that was a Roman practice which came later. The Jewish day began at sundown of the night before. “And [first] the evening [then] the morning were the first day” (Gen. 1:5). The Sabbath that followed the crucifixion began at sundown of the previous day.
Christ was taken down from the cross and buried on Wednesday before the high day Sabbath began at sundown. He was in the grave Wednesday night and Thursday, Thursday night and Friday, Friday night and Saturday.
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the sepulchre (Matt. 28:1) before sunrise, “very early in the morning” (Mark 16:2, Luke 24:1) “when it was yet dark” (John 20:1), “as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week” (Matt. 28:1). Notice that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are all very careful to demonstrate that Christ did not come out of the grave at sunrise on Sunday morning. When the women arrived at the tomb, the sun had not yet risen, and they discover that the Lord had already come out of the grave.
Neither the angel, nor the earth-quake, (Matt. 28:2) had anything to do with the resurrection. The angel did not roll the stone away to let the Lord out of the tomb. Stones and doors are no hindrance to him (John 20:19). The angel rolled away the stone to let the women see that the tomb was empty. The Lord had been in the garden alone all night.