fullest, from the beginning of that night up to the end of the Sabbath and beginning of the following night ; the third, strictly speaking, from the beginning of the following night up to the resurrection of the Lord, and the rising of the sun on Sunday morning. Two nights, therefore, were certainly joined with two days ; nor does one night taken from one day, i.e. the first, affect the truth of the language, which denominates the thing in ques tion from its superior part (locutionis a potiori1 rein denominan- tis). In fine, there were not two nights and days, nor four; therefore there were three. The Hebrew mode of expression is agreeable to this ; concerning which, see Lightfoot and Wolfe on this passage, and Michaelis on Josh. ii. 16. Although what I have here said may satisfy a reader who is not unreasonable, I would also further observe, that the synecdoche does not belong so much to the three-day s-and-three-nights as to the actual re maining in the heart of the earth. Scripture indeed frequently defines a certain time, and expresses not the whole matter which commensurately and exactly occupied that time, but a part of the matter longer in duration than the other parts ; as, for example, the four hundred and thirty veal's of the sojourning in Egypt, Ex. xii. 40 ; and thus passim the whole book of Judges. In this passage, therefore, the remaining in the heart of the earth, i.e. in the sepulchre, is expressed, but at the same time the whole period of the Passion is implied, certainly from the agony in Gethsemane, when Jesus fell on the earth which He was the next day to enter, and from the capture by which the Jews commenced their undertaking to destroy that Temple (as Erasmus thinks, Annot. F. 134). Nay, the glorious beginning of the three days on Thursday is clearly intimated, in John xiii. 31 [comp. Harmon. Evang. p. 310, 366], as dating from the time when the Jews bargained for the Saviour, who was to be committed to the earth. The remaining in the earth, taken in a wider signification, includes all these things ; see Ps. Ixxi. 20.
1 " A potiori" implies that the whole twenty-four-hour-day (the first of the three in question) is denominated, not only from a part, but also from the superior part, viz. the part which had the daylight, and which is regarded as superior to the part during which darkness prevailed, viz. the night pre ceding Friday, and attached to it, according to the Jewish mode of counting. — Eix