Swallowed by a Whale

2 ¹From the belly of the fish, Yonah prayed to Adonai his God; ² he said,

“Out of my distress I called to Adonai, and he answered me; from the belly of Sh’ol I cried, and you heard my voice.

Sh’ol is the realm of the dead, often the grave. The fish’s stomach is metaphorically like a tomb. Yonah thought he was dead, and perhaps he literally was at some point. If so, the parallel with Yeshua’s resurrection (Mattityahu 12:40) is even stronger. But God was present in Sh’ol (you heard my voice) to receive Yonah’s prayer. Indeed, God is everywhere we go (Ps 139:8).

³ For you threw me into the deep, into the heart of the seas; and the flood enveloped me; all your surging waves passed over me. ⁴ I thought, ‘I have been banished from your sight.’ But I will again look at your holy temple. ⁵ The water surrounded me, threatened my life; the deep closed over me, seaweed twined around my head.

Verses 3 and 5 depict Yonah’s dire circumstances. He sees both the flood that enveloped me and the surging waves as judgment tools of God. But verse 4 sounds like a note of faith and hope. Though he had been banished from God’s sight, he expected to look at your holy temple again, which means he expected to live, pray, and perhaps even worship in the YerushalayimTemple.

⁶ I was going down to the bottoms of the mountains, to a land whose bars would close me in forever; but you brought me up alive from the pit, Adonai, my God!

Imagery for going down to the bottom of mountains was provided by Isra’el’s own Mount Carmel, whose base extends into the Mediterranean Sea, ending in unseen depths below. As the Pit permanently imprisons the dead, so Yonah thought the fish’s body would trap him, but unexpectedly, God was rescuing him.

⁷ As my life was ebbing away, I remembered Adonai, and my prayer came in to you, into our holy temple.

Reminiscing about thanksgiving songs in the Psalms (Psalms 18; 30), Yonah tells the story of answered prayer (see Yonah 2:2).

⁸ “Those who worship vain idols give up their source of mercy; ⁹ but I, speaking my thanks aloud, will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed, I will pay. Salvation comes from Adonai!”

God’s miraculous deliverance shows that He exists, unlike pagan idols. What I have vowed refers to a promised gift to God if He should answer prayer (Numbers 21:2; 1 Samuel 1:11). Yonah promised praise and animal sacrifice. A fellowship offering was used to worship God after a vow (Numbers 6:21; 2 Samuel 15:7–8; Proverbs 7:14).

Yonah Put On Land

¹⁰ Then Adonai spoke to the fish, and it vomited Yonah out onto dry land.

Vomited, an ignoble means of exiting the fish, perhaps symbolizes God’s disgust at Yonah’s prior disobedience or even his continued bad attitude, which the subsequent narrative unfolds. Personally, I think the fish was really a whale. What fish is there that could swallow a grown man?

Mission Ordered Again

3 ¹ The word of Adonai came to Yonah a second time: ² “Set out for the great city of Ninveh, and proclaim to it the message I will give you.”

Yonah went to Nineveh as God had commanded. Even though Gentiles inhabited it, Nineveh was enormous and vital to God.

Ninevites Repent

³ So Yonah set out and went to Ninveh, as Adonai had said. Now, Ninveh was such a large city that it took three days just to cross it.

Three days just to cross it could refer to greater Nineveh, which included the region around Nineveh proper, including modern Kuyunjik, Khorsabad, and Nimrud, with a 60-mile perimeter. More likely, however, it refers to how long it took for Yonah to preach thoroughly throughout Nineveh, street corner by street corner.

⁴ Yonah began his entry into the city and had finished only his first day of proclaiming, ‘In forty days, Ninveh will be overthrown,’

Forty often refers to a period of testing or judgment in the Bible (Luke 4:2; Hebrews 3:9), and it is used here to give Nineveh time to repent.

 ⁵ when the people of Ninveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least.

King Orders Righteousness

⁶ When the news reached the king of Ninveh, he got up from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes. ⁷ He then had this proclamation made throughout Ninveh: “By decree of the king and his nobles, no person or animal, herd or flock, is to put anything in his mouth; they are neither to eat nor drink water. ⁸ They must be covered with sackcloth, both people and animals; and they are to cry out to God with all their might—let each of them turn from his evil way and from the violence they practice. ⁹ Who knows? Maybe God will change his mind, relent and turn from his fierce anger; and then we won’t perish.” ^[1]

After recounting that Nineveh repented and believed the deity whom Yonah represented, the text explains that this overwhelming response resulted from a royal decree. The king led by example. Sackcloth was worn during times of mourning and repentance, usually while sitting atop ashes (Genesis 37:34; 1 Kings 21:27; Mattityahu 11:21). No person or animal fasted, bellowing miserably to heaven along with the people. Who knows indicates that Yonah had not explicitly stated that judgment against the city could be averted by repentance. The king of Nineveh took a shot in the dark.

Next, we will continue to explore Yonah (Jonah).

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[1] Yonah 2:1-3:9.