Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Matthew · About this commentary
The Sign of Jonah
Matthew 12:38-42
38 Then certain of the scribes and Pharisees answered, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.” · WEB
A demand for proof from men who have just explained away the proof — refused, except for one sign given in advance.
"Teacher, we want to see a sign from you" Matthew 12:38.
The request comes immediately after the Beelzebul exchange, which is what makes it outrageous. These are men who have watched a blind and mute man healed and attributed it to the devil; asking now for a sign is not inquiry but a demand for something on their own terms, which no evidence would have satisfied.
"An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, but no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet" Matthew 12:39.
Adulterous is covenant language — the prophets' standing word for a people unfaithful to the God they were bound to Hosea 2:2. And the refusal is not absolute: one sign is promised, and it is the only one that could not be explained away, because it would happen to him rather than through him.
"For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the huge fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" Matthew 12:40.
The comparison is the burial and the resurrection, announced here to opponents before it is explained to disciples. Jonah's three days in the fish Jonah 1:17 and his emergence to preach are treated as a real event and as a pattern — this Gospel takes the account as history, and its argument depends on doing so.
The phrase three days and three nights is reckoned the way that idiom was used, counting any part of a day as a day; the Gospels are consistent that the burial was on the day of preparation and the tomb was empty on the first day of the week Matthew 27:62 Matthew 28:1.
"The men of Nineveh will stand up in the judgment with this generation and will condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, someone greater than Jonah is here" Matthew 12:41.
The two witnesses called are both Gentiles, which is the point. Nineveh was the capital of the empire that destroyed the northern kingdom, and it repented at a reluctant prophet's eight-word sermon with no miracle attached.
"The Queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and will condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon" Matthew 12:42.
The second traveled the length of the known world on a rumor 1 Kings 10:1. Between them the two cases establish the standard: pagans who responded to less will testify against people who had more and asked for a sign.
And the refrain closes the chapter's three claims — greater than the temple, greater than Jonah, greater than Solomon. The men demanding credentials are standing in front of the answer.
settled What this mark means