What is the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:40)?

By "the heart," or "lower parts," of the earth, we understand the grave. Our Lord not only died, but was buried" and "rose again the third day." Of this Jonah was a sign. Ps. 139:15 may serve to guard us from a too literal interpretation of the words which would seem to indicate that by the lowest parts of the earth is meant what is plainly out of sight — "in secret." The sepulchre was made sure and the stone sealed (Matt 27:66). Thus no human eye should peer into that holy domain where lay the body of Jesus.

After all the many miraculous signs of grace the Lord had shown (various healing on the sabbath days, for instance), the Pharisees ask for a sign from Him, ostensibly as witness to influence them to believe Him; but they have no heart whatever to believe. He responds that an evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign. Their evil was that of malignant enmity, as already seen; as adulterous they were guilty of introducing a corrupting mixture into their professed service for God. He would therefore add no sign to that long ago given them in Jonah the prophet, the significance of which had a direct application to Himself. They had already plotted His death. He would accept their rejection of Himself. He would die and be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (the grave), just as Jonah spent such a time in the belly of the great fish. Jonah's release alive was a great miracle, but significant of a greater, that is, Christ's resurrection from among the dead. This surely was a sign of tremendous import, but we know the Pharisees still refused to believe Him.

Now He goes down lower still, because Sheol, or Hades, as we have it, that is, the receptacle of departed spirits — is represented under the figure at any rate, and it may be the reality, of the heart of the earth. It is not the same thing as the lake of fire, but here we have a prison for those that have died. "Have the gates of death been opened to thee? Or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death? "

But hades is in the "heart of the earth," says Mr. Constable. How does he know? Why, the earth swallowed up Korah and his company, and they "went down alive into sheol." That is his proof. May we not equally say that hades is the belly of a whale, because Jonah says that he cried "out of the belly of sheol"? Thus it is not so easy perhaps to decide the question of locality. The necessarily vague thought of the "unseen" refuses such limitation. True, its imagery was naturally borrowed, before the fuller revelation had been given, from that grave with which it necessarily was associated in the mind, and thus you have it pictured as "beneath," souls going down to it or coming up from it. There is moreover a real truth in this conception, in its being a descent from man's position, a degradation from his natural place on earth. The New Testament removes for the saint the veil of the unseen. He departs to be with Christ, and Christ is not in the heart of the earth. The very name of hades for the believer almost disappears, and thus it is most beautifully at the Cross of Christ that the veil begins to lift decidedly. "With me in Paradise" may well be in contrast with Old Testament utterances. Alas, that men should refuse the consolation, the brightness of the new revelation, and seek to retain the darkness, for faith passed away.

A. — 1. Our Lord not only died, but was buried. His body lay in the grave (in the words of Matt. 12:40) "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." And of this the prophet Jonah was a sign, who himself confesses (2:5), "The waters compassed me about, even to the soul; the depth (or, abyss) closed me round about" (abyssos 'ekuklose me heskate, LXX.) Christ's "soul" was not left to Hades; and His "spirit" He committed into the hands of His Father.

1912 79 Q. — What is the teaching of Holy Scripture as to Sheol or Hades? Does the "three days the Son of man was in the heart of the earth," and our Lord's descent "into the lower parts of the earth," refer to anything more than, in the former the grave; and in the latter the dust of death and the grave? Would it be according to scripture to say that Sheol or Hades (including Abraham's bosom, and Paradise) were below the earth? and that the Lord Jesus went there and emptied one compartment of it taking them on high? Or was Paradise or Abraham's bosom always in heaven, and never below the earth even in Old Testament times? If so what is the force of such expressions as going down into Sheol? Is the "bottomless pit" distinct from Hades? Could the word Sheol or Hades be applied to heaven in that it also was part of the unseen? J.C.B.

“Wherefore He says, when He ascended up on high He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.” Now to say that He ascended involves the fact that He first descended into the lower parts of the earth, for the point of His departure is not here from heaven but from earth. When He came down from heaven He came only to earth. He came here to reveal the Father, and bring the love of God to men; but when man would have none of Him He went down further, even into the lower parts of the earth. He said in the day of His rejection: “As Jonah 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” (Matt. 12:40). Truly He might have said in the words of Jonah, “I went down to the bottoms of the mountains: the earth with her bars was about me for ever” (Jon. 2:6).

Just as Jonah was cast into the boiling sea because of his own sin, and was miraculously preserved in a fish’s belly three days and nights, so Jesus would enter into the flood-tide of God’s judgment upon sin—not His own, but that of others—and, dying, would lie in the heart of the earth three days and three nights, and be raised by God Himself, the Saviour of His people. None but faith could read the sign, or interpret the riddle. To reason it looked like nonsense.

This sign was a real miracle typifying a like event in our Divine Lord's own life; so Christ died and was buried to lay the storm our sins had raised; and lay in the grave, in the heart of the earth three days and three nights (Jewish reckoning) in the prison house of the grave. The third day He came forth as Jonah did, and by His messengers preached repentance and remission of sins even to the Gentiles. "Our Saviour Jesus Christ has annulled death; and brought to light life and incorruptibility by the glad tidings." 2 Tim. 1:10. New Trans.

The result for Jonah was far different from what any man could have expected: "And Jehovah prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." Jehovah's eye was on that parting scene on the deck of that little vessel amidst the storm. Jehovah's eye (an eye and a heart of love and grace) was on His erring servant as he sank under those angry waves; and there where he least expected it, he found a place of refuge — in the belly of the fish. If those dark and stormy waters spoke of death, surely the belly of the fish tells us of the grave. We know that this is so, for our Lord Jesus Christ tells us plainly that Jonah at this time was a type of Himself. "Even as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish three days and three nights thus shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights." (Matt. 12:40) Little did Jonah know the honor that was being put upon him at this moment, in that he was for ever after to be a sign of how his Lord and Master would later on go down voluntarily into death and the grave, in order to save others.