The number 3 (connected with days) is repeated 75 times in the Bible.  When God places emphasis on something repetitively, it is worth noticing.  This Bible pattern relates a spiritual truth and then repeats it in a similar fashion in another part of the Bible. This is often the case with the phrase “3 days”.

The number 3 signifies completeness and/or perfection.  It identifies some important event that is connected to another important event. It can express a connection in time like “past, present, and future” OR “knowledge, wisdom, and understanding (Colossians 1:9)” OR “birth, life, and death”.  

“3 days” has many important implications to the Christian and is an integral part of one’s relationship to GOD.

Matthew 16:21 records Jesus telling His disciples that He must be killed but would be raised on the 3rd day.  The connection here is – He would die, be in the earth, and resurrected in 3 days.  In Jonah 1:17 the Lord allowed Jonah to be swallowed by a big fish, be in it's belly, and spit out, again in 3 days. Jesus connects these two events in Matthew 12:40 (NKJV), “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (under Satan’s dominion). These scriptures show the connection and wisdom of GOD, the Heavenly Father, in knowing and presenting HIS plans and purposes from beginning to end. (See Isaiah 46:10.)

Jesus also stated directly, not symbolically, that He would die and be raise again on the third day. Matthew 27:63, Luke 9:22, Mark 8:31 all record Jesus’s prophetic teaching of when He would be raised. 

In Acts 9:9 Saul is blinded for 3 days.  This is a picture or type of Israel blinded, unable to see the true Messiah (Jesus). The days here are 1,000 year days. (2 Peter 3:8 NKJV, “But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”) So, in the third 1,000 year period after Jesus died (which is the present), the Jews will accept Jesus as their Savior. (See Zechariah 12:10.)

There are many more scriptures depicting 3 days in other forms and features.  There is always a connection which shows a completion of GOD’s plan.