Jonah 1:17

The story so far fills Jonah 1. The LORD told Jonah to go and preach to Nineveh, and he took ship for Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD (Jonah 1:1–3). Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, a cruel and feared enemy of Israel, and the book is set in the reign of Jeroboam II, a time of prosperity in Israel and of spiritual decline. Tarshish lay far to the west, probably in Spain. The LORD sent a great storm, and when Jonah owned that it had come because of him, the sailors threw him overboard at his own word and the sea grew calm (Jonah 1:4–16).

Death in the sea would have been the just end of his flight, and God answered it with a rescue: “Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” The verb mânâh means to count or number, and in the form used here to appoint, so the LORD appointed this fish for this work. Gâdôwl, “great”, tells us it was large, large enough to take a man whole. Bâlaʻ, “swallow up”, is the usual word for swallowing, and it can also mean to destroy. Here the swallowing keeps Jonah alive. The fish is at once his prison and his shelter, and inside it he has time to face his rebellion and seek God’s face.

The same LORD who sent the storm rules the creatures of the deep, as a psalm praises him for doing whatever he pleases in the seas and all deep places (Psalm 135:6). His first answer to his disobedient servant is mercy, the compassion that is new every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23).

“And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” The belly is mêʻeh, the inward parts. Jesus took up this very span of time as the sign of his own burial, as we shall see below.

“Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish’s belly.” Until now Jonah has fled, slept and been thrown overboard. Here, for the first time, he turns to God. The verb pâlal, in the form used here, means to pray or to intercede, and its root sense is probably to step in or intervene. He prays to Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD, the covenant name of the God of Israel, the self-existent and eternal one, and he calls him “his God”. After all his running, the bond still holds, and the God he tried to escape is the God he calls on.

In this verse the fish is dâgâh, the feminine form of the word for fish in 1:17 and 2:10, with the same meaning. Its belly is mêʻeh again, the word of 1:17, which can also stand for the inner self.

Jonah has learned what David asked: “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” Even in the uttermost parts of the sea, God’s hand leads and holds his own (Psalm 139:7–10). Another psalm says in a single line what Jonah is about to say: “In my distress I cried unto the LORD, and he heard me” (Psalm 120:1).

“I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me.” The verb qârâʼ, “cried”, means to call out to someone, to address him by name, and Jonah calls directly on the LORD. “Affliction” is tsârâh, which properly means tightness, and so trouble or distress. It fits a man hemmed in on every side.

The verse then says the same thing again, as Hebrew poetry often does, and the second line is stronger: “out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.” The English repeats “cried” and “heard”, while the Hebrew uses other verbs in this line: shâvaʻ, to cry out for help, and shâmaʻ, to hear and attend. Jonah also turns from speaking about God (“he heard me”) to speaking to him (“thou heardest”). His cry was heard, and he says so twice.

“Belly” here is beṭen, the belly or womb, the hollow inner part of anything, a different word from the fish’s belly in verse 1. “Hell” is shᵉʼôwl, Sheol.

David spoke the same way when the sorrows of death and hell compassed him, and in his distress he called upon the LORD, who heard his voice out of his temple (Psalm 18:4–6). “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD,” says another psalm (Psalm 130:1–2). In Lamentations the waters flow over the prophet’s head, he calls on the LORD’s name out of the low dungeon, and the LORD hears him, says “Fear not”, and redeems his life (Lamentations 3:54–58).

“For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas.” The sailors’ hands threw Jonah over the side, and Jonah knows whose will stood behind them. Shâlak means to cast, throw or hurl, often with a sense of throwing away. “The deep” is mᵉtsôwlâh, a deep place of water or mud, the very bottom. “The midst of the seas” is in Hebrew the heart, lêbâb, of the seas, their innermost part.

“And the floods compassed me about.” Nâhâr, “floods”, is the word for a stream or river, used here for the currents of the sea, and çâbab, “compassed”, means to go around or surround. Then: “all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.” Mishbâr is a breaker, a wave as it crashes, and gal is a wave that rolls. Jonah calls them “thy” billows and “thy” waves. Every one of them belonged to God, under his command and serving his purpose. A psalm uses almost the same words in its own distress, “all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me” (Psalm 42:7), and another cries, “Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul” (Psalm 69:1–2).

“The waters compassed me about, even to the soul.” Mayim is the ordinary word for water, here the whole mass of the sea, and “compassed me about” is ʼâphaph, to surround. “Soul” is nephesh, from a root meaning to breathe: a breathing creature, a life, a self. The waters came up to his very life and breath, and he was at the point of death.

“The depth closed me round about.” “Depth” is tᵉhôwm, the abyss, the surging mass of the deep sea, the word for the deep waters at creation (Genesis 1:2). “Closed me round about” is çâbab, the same verb as “compassed” in verse 3, and it pictures the deep sealing him in.

“The weeds were wrapped about my head.” Çûwph means a reed or rush, a word probably of Egyptian origin, and here the weeds of the sea. Châbash means to wrap or bind, the word for winding a turban, so the weeds were wound around his head like a headdress as he sank.

“I went down to the bottoms of the mountains.” Qetseb means a shape as if cut out, and so the base or bottom of a thing. Jonah pictures the roots of the mountains beneath the sea, as low as a man can go. “The earth with her bars was about me for ever.” Bᵉrîyach is a bar or bolt, the beam that secures a gate. The earth has become a prison with its gates bolted behind him, like the gates of the grave. “For ever”, ʻôwlâm, properly means what is hidden from sight, time beyond reckoning, and it gives his sense that the bars would hold him for good.

Then comes the turn of the whole prayer: “yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.” “Brought up” answers “went down”. Jonah went down, and God brought him up. “Corruption” is shachath, a pit, especially a pit dug as a trap, and so destruction and the grave. God reached him there and lifted his life out. A psalm speaks of the same hope, that God will not leave his soul in hell nor suffer his Holy One to see corruption (Psalm 16:10). He calls God “O LORD my God”, the same personal claim on him that verse 1 makes.

“Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight.” “Cast out” is gârash, to drive out or expel, the word used for driving a people from their land and for divorcing a wife. It is a different verb from the “cast” of verse 3. Jonah felt sent away from God like a wife put away, banished from his favour and from the care of his eye. The man who fled from the presence of the LORD now fears that he has lost it.

“Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.” Nâbaṭ means to look intently at something, and also to regard it with favour or care. With yâçaph, to add or to do again, it means that he will look once more. “Holy” is qôdesh, what is sacred or set apart to God, and “temple” is hêykâl, a palace or temple, a large public building. Here it is the temple at Jerusalem, the place of God’s presence among his people, of sacrifice and atonement, and of prayer. Israelites far from it prayed toward it, as Daniel did with his windows open toward Jerusalem (Daniel 6:10), and a psalm says, “in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple” (Psalm 5:7). From the belly of the fish Jonah’s look is the turning of his heart, and “yet” is the hinge of the verse. He feels driven away, and he turns back all the same.

“When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD.” ʻÂṭaph means to shroud or cover, and from the idea of darkness, to languish and grow faint. His nephesh, his life, was ebbing away, as verse 5 has described. Zâkar, “remembered”, means to remember, and for Jonah it was a turning of heart and mind back to the LORD and all he knew of his power and faithfulness.

“And my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.” Tᵉphillâh is prayer or supplication, and bôwʼ, “came in”, means to come or go in. His prayer entered God’s presence. “Holy temple” comes back from verse 4: the place he resolved to look toward is the place his prayer reached. Some take the temple of verse 7 to be the house in Jerusalem, as in verse 4. Others take it to be God’s dwelling in heaven, the sanctuary of which the earthly holy places were figures (Hebrews 9:24). On either reading his prayer reached God himself, from the bottom of the sea.

“They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.” Shâmar, “observe”, properly means to hedge about as with thorns, to guard, keep or watch over. Those who observe lying vanities give them their attention and loyalty, and guard them as if they were precious. “Lying” is shâvᵉʼ, evil as destructive, ruin, deceit, and so idolatry or what is useless and in vain. “Vanities” is hebel, whose base sense is breath or vapour, and which in use means futility or a worthless idol. Together they describe idols as deceitful emptiness, things that promise and cannot deliver.

ʻÂzab, “forsake”, means to loosen, let go, leave. “Mercy” is cheçed, kindness, lovingkindness, mercy, favour, one of the richest words in the Old Testament for God’s steadfast and loyal love. “Their own mercy” is the mercy that could have been theirs, God’s kindness held out to them, which they let go when they hold on to idols.

The prophets and psalms say the same about idols. They have mouths and eyes and cannot speak or see, and those who make them become like them (Psalm 115:4–8). God’s people forsook him, the fountain of living waters, for broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jeremiah 2:13). What God desires is mercy, cheçed, and the knowledge of himself (Hosea 6:6).

The verse speaks first of idols, the gods of the nations around Israel. It also fits Jonah’s own story. His flight to Tarshish rested on a false hope, that he could escape God’s command and find peace in disobedience (Jonah 1:3), and it brought him to the brink of death. He fled the mercy God was showing through his command, and found himself in desperate need of that very mercy. The same holds for anything trusted in God’s place, such as wealth, status, power or self-reliance. All of them are lying vanities, and Isaiah’s call to the wicked holds for all of them: return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy (Isaiah 55:7).

“But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving.” Zâbach means to slaughter an animal, usually in sacrifice. “Voice” is qôwl, the same word as in verse 2, “thou heardest my voice”, so the voice God heard crying from the deep will be raised in thanks. “Thanksgiving” is tôwdâh, properly an extension of the hand, and so confession, thanksgiving, a thanksgiving choir or a thank offering. The thank offering was a kind of peace offering, eaten as a meal, brought to thank God for a deliverance or blessing (Leviticus 7:12–15). In the fish Jonah had no animal to offer, and his sacrifice begins as praise spoken with his voice, the offering God has always looked for. “Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High,” says a psalm (Psalm 50:14). Hosea calls Israel to return and render “the calves of our lips” (Hosea 14:2), and David says that “the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit” (Psalm 51:17).

“I will pay that that I have vowed.” To pay is shâlam, to make complete, and to vow is nâdar, to promise to do or give something to God. Jonah sets his thanksgiving beside a vow, as a psalm does, and the word tôwdâh itself means thanksgiving. A vow was a solemn promise to God, often made in distress, and keeping it was a serious duty (Deuteronomy 23:21–23, Ecclesiastes 5:4–5). The book leaves the content of Jonah’s vow unrecorded. Since he had fled from God’s command, it most likely concerned his obedience, perhaps going to Nineveh at last, or giving himself more fully to God’s service.

“Salvation is of the LORD.” Yᵉshûwʻâh means something saved, deliverance, help, victory. Scripture uses it for rescue that comes through human hands as well, as when Jonathan “hath wrought this great salvation in Israel”, and it traces every rescue back to the LORD. Jonah’s own rescue from the deep was entirely God’s doing, owed to his grace and power alone. Here is the heart of the prayer and of the book. A psalm says the same (Psalm 3:8), Moses told Israel at the sea to stand still and see the salvation of the LORD (Exodus 14:13), and the apostles preached that “neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

“And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.” ʼÂmar, “spake”, is the everyday verb for saying, and it also covers commanding, as here. The LORD who prepared the fish now commands it, and his word alone sets Jonah free. In this book the wind (Jonah 1:4), the fish, and later a plant and a worm (Jonah 4:6–7) all do as God directs. The fish is dâg again, as in 1:17.

Qôwʼ, “vomited out”, means to vomit or spue out. It is a blunt word for a sudden, undignified release, and it marks the end of Jonah’s confinement. Yabbâshâh is dry ground. From the depths of the sea and the belly of the fish, Jonah comes to solid ground, to safety and a new beginning. Scripture tells of other deliverances that ended on dry ground, when Israel crossed the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21) and the Jordan (Joshua 3:17), and a psalm praises the God who hears those who cry to him at sea, makes the storm a calm, and “bringeth them unto their desired haven” (Psalm 107:25–30).

The deliverance comes straight after the prayer, and it opens the second half of the book. Jonah is given another chance to obey (Jonah 3), Nineveh repents, and God shows the same mercy to the city that he has shown to the prophet (Jonah 3:5–10).

When some asked Jesus for a sign, he said that the only sign given would be the sign of the prophet Jonah, and named Jonah’s three days and three nights in the fish as the picture of the Son of man three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:38–41). Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). Jonah went down into what he called Sheol and was brought up. Christ went down into death itself, descending into the lower parts of the earth and then ascending far above all heavens (Ephesians 4:9–10), and God raised him up, having loosed the pains of death (Acts 2:24).

The likeness has its differences, and they show how much greater Christ is. Jonah went down because he disobeyed, and Christ went down in perfect obedience, to save us. The waves that passed over Jonah picture the judgment Christ bore when God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jonah cried from the depths and was heard, and Christ prayed in agony in Gethsemane (Luke 22:42–44) and cried out on the cross (Matthew 27:46). Jonah was rescued, while Christ conquered death and triumphed over the powers of darkness (Colossians 2:15). Those who belong to him are buried with him and raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4), and the Spirit of the God who raised Jesus will give life to their mortal bodies too (Romans 8:11).

Jonah’s longing for the holy temple has its answer in Christ too. Jesus spoke of the temple of his body, which he would raise in three days (John 2:19–21). Through his blood we have boldness to enter the holiest by a new and living way (Hebrews 10:19–22), for he has entered the true sanctuary as our high priest (Hebrews 9:11–12), and we come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy (Hebrews 4:16).

“Salvation is of the LORD” is fulfilled in Jesus, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29), the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). We are saved by grace through faith, as God’s gift (Ephesians 2:8–9), and whoever confesses Jesus as Lord and believes that God raised him from the dead will be saved (Romans 10:9–10). Where lying vanities come only to rob and destroy, Christ came that we might have life abundantly (John 10:10). And Jonah’s journey to the Gentiles of Nineveh looks ahead to the gospel going to all nations (Matthew 28:19).

This prayer shows us a God who pursues his servants, even when they run from him, and whose discipline is aimed at their return. He hears a cry from the bottom of the sea, from a man who had brought his trouble on himself, and he answers it. The waves belong to him, and so does the fish, and so does the dry land. The same God who cast Jonah down brought his life up from the pit.

It also gives us words for our own low places. Jonah’s prayer is made of the language of the psalms, the prayers he had learned, and in his distress they came back to him. His turning point was a single resolve, “yet I will look again toward thy holy temple”, made while he still felt cast out. God works all things together for good to those who love him (Romans 8:28), and his compassions fail not. And at the end of every rescue stands the confession that sums up Jonah’s prayer and the whole gospel: “Salvation is of the LORD.”