Michael Brown writes in his Jewish Objections to Jesus, Vol. 3. Messianic Prophecy Objections.
4.38. Paul claimed that the Hebrew Scriptures prophesied theresurrection of the Messiah on the third day. Nowhere in our Bible issuch a prophecy found.
Paul’s exact words are: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Messiah died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures …” (1 Cor. 15:3–4).
As a Jew schooled in the Scriptures from his childhood, Paul was not thinking of just one passage but of several passages that pointed to the Messiah’s resurrection on the third day. And remember: Paul was not trying to “pull a fast one” on anybody! And no one had pulled a fast one on him either. This is the tradition he received, and if someone taught him something that was not in his Bible, he would have known itimmediately. In fact, when we study the Tanakh, we see that the third day is oftenthe day of completion and climax—and so it was with the Messiah’s death andresurrection!We should first look at some prophecies that make reference to restoration—orrescue from death—on the third day.• Hosea 6:1–2 states, “Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces buthe will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days hewill revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.”
This is a word given to Israel as a whole, but the sequence is there: full restorationon the third day!352
Footnote 352Note that the Septuagint’s rendering of Hosea 6:2 reads, “On the third day we shall be raised up and weshall live,” while the Targum renders, “In the day of the resurrection of the dead he will raise us up thatwe may live,” avoiding the issue of the third day entirely—possibly because of the use of the text by theearly followers of Jesus. For discussion on the significance of these translations as related to the questionof resurrection on the third day, see Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 1195–97, with reference to G. Delling,“hemera,” TDNT, 2:949 (more broadly, 2:943–53).• According to Genesis 22:4, it was on the third day that Abraham arrived at MountMoriah and prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac—that important event known in laterRabbinic tradition as the Akedah, “the binding (of Isaac)”—an event seen as aMessianic foreshadowing by the rabbis (see above, 4.1). In similar fashion, the Letterto the Hebrews notes, “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, andfiguratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death” (Heb. 11:19)—and thistook place on the third day.
• This was the time set for the miraculous healing of King Hezekiah, who as a son ofDavid serves as somewhat of a Messianic prototype (cf. also b. Sanhedrin 94a, 98a):“Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, ‘This is what the LORD, theGod of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I willheal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the LORD’” (2Kings 20:5; cf. also v. 8).
• Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days (a deathlike experience, to be sure!—cf. Jonah 2:1–9) before being spit out on dry land, and hence saved from his waterytomb (Jonah 1:17; 2:10). Jesus himself makes reference to this event in the contextof his death and resurrection (see, e.g., Matt. 12:40) [...]Based on this biblical data, the German biblical scholar Roland Gradwohl arguedthat “‘three days’ is a stereotyped phrase used by the Old Testament in describing asituation when something will be fulfilled or completed within a useful andreasonable time.… The ‘third day’ is used to describe the moment when an eventattains its climax.”354 Another German scholar, K. Lehmann, wrote an entire volumeon the subject of resurrection on the third day, pointing to passages such as Exodus19:11, 16; Genesis 22:4; 2 Kings 20:5; Esther 5:1; Hosea 6:2 (all cited above) asevidence that the third day was associated with special divine activity, somethingthat caught the attention of the ancient rabbis as well.355 These insights, coupled withsome key verses about restoration, salvation, or rescue from death on the third day,give Paul the right to say that the Messiah rose from the dead on the third dayaccording to the Scriptures. There would have been no day more suitable than this,from the viewpoint of the Word of God.356