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The "day" comes from Genesis 1:5 - "Yahweh called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. So there was evening, and there was morning, one day."
So a whole "day" is measured from dark - that is, sunset - to the next sunset. Therefore a full "day" is sunset, through all night, through all day, until the sun sets again. Therefore, the Sabbath begins when the sun sets on Friday, and it ends when the sun sets on Saturday. Of course, according to the Gregorian calendar, Saturday remains "Saturday" until midnight, because we must use modern civil time to determine our days which are measured from midnight to midnight....
There is another meaning of the word "day" as you can see in the scripture above: When it is light - that is, the sun is up - it is also called "day". So you must take care to determine what "day" is meant as you read the Bible. In Matthew 12:40, Yeshua is referring to "day" as in "daylight", when the sun is up. Therefore when He says "For just as Yonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea-monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the depths of the earth", He means "3 daytimes, and 3 night-times". In other words, 3 full days.
One problem here is that the English word "day" means both a full 24 hour day, and it means the period in which the sun is up. Another problem is that any 24 hour period is considered a "day". To explain this, try to imagine that at sunset, you are starting your clock at zero. Then, the next evening, your clock will show 23 hours and about 56 minutes have passed when the sun sets again. Just at sunset, your clock reads zero again.
This is not any different than our civil world where the clock changes from 23:59 to 00:00 during the middle of the night. Society has simply chosen to determine the "day" as measured from midnight to midnight, whereas Yahweh said it is from sunset to sunset.
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