Deeper Commentary
Jonah 2:1 Then Jonah prayed to Yahweh his God out of the great fish’s
belly- Did Jonah die? It could be argued that he was cast into the sea,
drowned, and his body went to the bottom of the sea. But there, he was
swallowed by the "great fish", and revived within the fish's belly. And from
there he prayed to God, reflecting upon his death experience. This would
then heighten the connection with the Lord's death and resurrection. To pray
to God on reviving inside the fish was surely natural and inevitable for any
man. But as noted on Jon. 1, Jonah was led almost involuntarily to realize
the error of his previous positions. He could pray to God from outside the
land / eretz promised to Abraham, and far from the temple or any
organized religious apparatus.
Jonah 2:2 He said, I called because of my affliction to Yahweh and He
answered me- "Affliction" translates the same word used of Israel's
afflictions for disobedience (Dt. 31:17; Neh. 9:27; Is. 37:3) and the time
of Jacob's trouble (Gen. 35:3); Jonah was the representative of sinful
Israel, bearing their punishment at the same time as he represented the
sinless Lord Jesus in His time of dying. In this sense, the Lord Jesus was
afflicted in all their affliction / condemnation for sin (Is. 63:9 s.w.).
Here we have profound insight into the representative nature of the Lord's
death; He died sinless, and yet intensely identified with the sinful people
of God and their condemnation. Jonah's prayer in Jon. 2 is shot through with
allusions to various Psalms; here to Ps. 120:1. God's word was in his heart,
but only through Divine teaching and affliction due to his own sinfulness...
could he come to know it as true for him personally. And this is a path we
too pass through.
Out of the belly of Sheol I cried. You heard my voice- Here we learn clearly that sheol refers not to a place of fire and torment for the wicked, but to a covered place, the grave. And as noted on :1, it would support the idea that Jonah did actually die by drowning, and the belly of the fish became his tomb. The Hebrew words for "cried" and "heard" differ by only one rather similar letter; a subtle difference. Our cry in prayer and God's hearing are intimately connected. He is not truly not far from every one of us.
"Cried" is the word used of Nineveh's crying to God and the sailors crying to God (Jonah 1:14; 3:8). Gentiles cried and were heard; Jonah cried and was heard. He ought therefore to have been willing to accept that Nineveh, like the sailors, could cry to God and be heard by grace. But he presents himself as the man who refused to learn his lessons. Until he writes up his memoirs in this fascinating little book, and on that basis pastored over a million people, many of whom will be accepted by the Lord Jesus at the last day.
Jonah 2:3 For You threw me into the depths, into the heart of the
seas- Jonah perceived God's hand in what others did to him, and that
is an abiding lesson to take with us in life's path. He alludes to Ps.
88:6. The same word is used of God casting His people out of their land
(Dt. 29:28), out of His presence (2 Kings 24:20; Jer. 52:3)- just as Jonah
felt he had been (see on :4). Banished from God's presence
and far from the temple (:4). All God's true Israel are to see themselves
in Jonah; especially those who had been cast out by God from His land and
presence into the seas of the Gentiles.
I suggested that Jonah's request to be cast into the sea was suicidal, and not in response to any Divine command. He even got the sailors to throw him in so that yet more Gentiles would have blood on their hands. Yet he now marvels that it was God who threw him in to the waters- God by grace alone worked through his suicide rather than abandonning him to the consequences of his sin. We need to write our own autobiographies in our own minds, and perceive God's grace at every step. And only we can do this. This is self examination.
The water was all around me. All Your waves and Your breakers passed over me- This confirms the suggestion made on :1, that Jonah was not instantly swallowed by the fish. The pictures in children's Bibles are nearly all wrong: of a grinning whale waiting eagerly to catch the body thrown by the sailors from the boat. Jonah was surrounded by waves and went down "into the heart of the seas". The Psalms allusions are to Ps. 42:7; 69:1,2,14,15, and Ps. 69 is clearly a foretaste of the Lord's feelings on the cross. He felt there as condemned sinners like Jonah felt in the time of their condemnation. He never sinned, and was personally unworthy of condemnation. But that doesn't mean that He doesn't know how sinners feel now, as they are condemned in real time for their sins by the court of Heaven; nor how the condemned will feel at the last day. Judges pass down sentences which they have never experienced; but the Lord has experienced the feelings of condemned men, whilst being morally innocent. In this we see His complete identity with sinful man.
The AV has "floods". Jonah experienced death by flooding; as noted on Jon. 1:2, he thereby bore the condemnation due to Nineveh (Jon. 1:2 cp. Gen. 6:5), and could therefore give Nineveh a real hope of repentance and salvation thanks to his experience. Floods are a symbol of Divine judgment; Jonah had experienced this, and by grace been saved from it because he cried to Yahweh. He presents himself as so ungracious in denying Nineveh the opportunity to cry out to Yahweh and be saved from their condemnation. He still failed to perceive that his salvation by grace was to lead him to wish others to avail themselves of that same grace. Xenophobia and spiritual elitism are thus shown in their full power. Despite experiencing amazing grace, we can still wish to deny it to others, and to be riled when others do avail themselves of the same grace we experienced.
Jonah 2:4 I said- The language and ideas are similar to those of Hezekiah (Is. 38:11), who felt he was condemned to death. Jonah in the fish is now recalling his last conscious thoughts before his lungs filled with water for the last time (see on :1). So his later thoughts in this chapter are the wonder of a man saved from condemnation by utter grace.
‘I have been banished from Your sight; yet I will look again toward Your holy temple’- This is absolutely the language of God's exiled people, recalling the statement in Solomon's prayer that wherever they were scattered for their sins, they could always look again towards the temple and pray (1 Kings 8:38). Jonah was clearly representative of Israel. He had chosen to go out of God's presence (Jon. 1:3), and so he was being confirmed in that desire. He was being made to realize how terrible it was to in fact resign from God and His presence. His personal sin, however, must not be overlooked; for it was that which called forth all this judgment. It was not the sin of idolatry nor lukewarm response to Yahweh, but rather that of intolerance, pride and avoiding the call to witness. All of which things we at times have been guilty of and are continually tested with.
Jonah 2:5 The waters surrounded me, even to the soul- Alluding to
Ps. 40:12; 69:1, both of which Psalms are quoted in the New Testament
about the Lord's death. See on :3.
The deep was around me- The word used for sin and its judgment compassing around the condemned (Ps. 18:4; 40:12; 116:3).
The weeds were wrapped around my head- Confirming the suggestion in :1 that Jonah drowned and his body sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Perhaps he found himself inside the fish with seaweed wrapped around his body, as if they were his grave clothes and the burial napkin around his head. But "wrapped" is literally 'to bind around' and is the word usually used for healing and restoration- which was to come about through death and resurrection. Perhaps Jonah praying to God with seaweed wrapped around him looked ahead to the Ninevites calling out to God wrapped in sackcloth- again, highlighting how Jonah was so wrong to not accept their sincerity and the very real possibility of God hearing them in their sackcloth, when his prayer had been heard wrapped in seaweed. We may reach a peak of praise and gratitude- but not retain it, as we slip back into mere religion and our natural wiring of exclusivism.
Jonah 2:6 I went down-
The same word used of his going down to
Joppa, down into the ship, and further down into the very hold of the ship
(see on Jon. 1:3,5). He was brought down as low as could be, to be exalted
in due time. This is indeed the path we shall all pass through; it's a
race to the bottom.
Ps. 55:23 speaks of the wicked, those who had ‘broken the covenant’
which Jonah was so proud to be part of, being ‘brought down’ into
"the pit" or
“destruction”; and these very same two Hebrew words occur together in
Jonah 2:6. They also occur together in Ez. 28:8, speaking of how the
Gentile king of Tyre was to be ‘brought down’ to “the pit”. This would
have been the sort of prophecy which nationalistic Jonah would have loved
to hear; but now he recognized that he was essentially like a wicked
Gentile, and had shared their condemnation- but been graciously saved from
it. The preaching of Jonah is surely our example.
Jonah is alluding to the language of Ps. 139, about how we cannot flee God's presence even if we go to the uttermost depths of the ocean. Later in Jon. 4:2 he shows his awareness of God's basic graciousness, and he quotes Ex. 32. Jonah knew God was like this but didn't want Him to be like it. Just as he also knew Ps. 139:6 says that you can't flee from Yahweh's presence- but still he did. This is why the Hebrew language uses the idea of "knowing" in the sense of actually experientially knowing through relationship. We live in a world where knowledge for the sake of it is sought after and dealt with as never before. Wisdom is really all about translating our knowledge into practice, and so many waste their lives amassing the knowledge without translating it into practice.
To the bottoms of the mountains; the earth barred me in forever: yet have You brought up my life from the pit, Yahweh my God- This clearly states that Jonah died and was only then swallowed by the fish; see on :1. And he went to the very bottom of the ocean, into the deepest ravine on the seabed, and had the impression of the permanence of death, barred in forever, alluding to Job 17:16. This was how low down he had to be brought, such was his pride, and such was the significance of the work Yahweh wished to do with him; see on Jon. 1:3. "From the pit" is AV "from corruption", deepening the similarities with the Lord's resurrection (Ps. 16:10; Acts 2:27,31). Ps. 71:20 is also in view, where the Psalmist is brought out of "affliction" (s.w. :2), out of the pit to new life.
"You brought up" alludes to how Jonah has presented himself as going down to Joppa, down into the ship, down into the bottom of the ship, down into the sea, down to the depths of the ocean. All this going down was of his own device. But God by grace saved him rather than allowing the consequences of sin to work out, as a kind of 'fair dinkum' result of his own choices. This is grace. He had repeatedly been told to "arise", to 'go up', but he had refused; to arise and go to Nineveh, to arise and pray to his God, and to arise again and go to Nineveh. As the king of Nineveh arose to repent, Jonah sat down and sulked (Jonah 3:6; 4:5). But despite all this stubborn refusal, God brought Jonah up. This is sovereign grace. The exact opposite of 'God helps those who help themselves', the ultimate slap in the face to the Protestant Work Ethic. That ethic claims that God doesn't save from consequences; and yet He does, even in David's life this is apparent and he therefore often prays for it. If we are not saved from consequence of sin, we would all die eternally. But we are saved from consequences of sin, and that is one huge lesson of Jonah. Anything other than that would not be grace.
Jonah 2:7 When my soul ebbed away within me- Jonah recalled the
feelings of death (Ps. 42:6; 73:26; 142:3). The language is suggestive of
how a person in the final minutes of palliative care ebbs back and forth
until they cease breathing and the heart stops. It is the word used of the
ebbing away of Judah's life in the Babylonian invasion (Lam. 2:12,19);
again we see Jonah presented as representative of God's people under
condemnation. The way he describes those feelings make him a parade
example of resurrection. Jonah's life "ebbed away"
inside the fish- and a
very similar word is used about his experience as he sat under the gourd
(Jonah 4:8 "he fainted"). In the fish, Jonah prayed that God would save his life, and
was heard. But when he was made to feel the same again, he instead prayed
God to take away his life. Perhaps this shows that even when we respond
well to circumstances, those same circumstances may repeat in order to
test us as to whether we will continue to make that right response.
Jonah continually presents himself as simply 'not getting it'.
I remembered Yahweh. My prayer came in to You, into Your holy temple- David also felt that his prayers came into God's holy temple even before that temple was built (Ps. 11:4; 18:6). Jonah was brought to realize that the true temple presence of God was in Heaven and not in a stone building in Jerusalem. It is only desperation which leads us to these kinds of perceptions; that God is so real, that He is outside of organized religion. Israel too were afflicted as Jonah but the prayer of the faithful came into God (Ps. 102:1 s.w. Jon. 2:2 "affliction").
Jonah had been shown that the prayers of the Gentile sailors were heard. His own prayer had been heard. Despite it being uttered from within a fish's belly, where he was esconced for his rebellion and sins. This was all to prepare him for the absolute possibility that if the Ninevites prayed to God, He would likely hear them. And given his own experience of prayer answered by grace, he ought to wish them well in such endeavour. His later anger that they prayed and were heard... is therefore the height of ingratitude and refusal to 'get it'. And he is presenting himself, therefore, as the most unlikely and undeserving person on earth to be used to convert 120,000 children and therefore probably anything from 600,000 to 1 million adults.
Jonah 2:8 Those who regard lying vanities forsake their own mercy-
This is a profound truth; true grace ["mercy" is hesed]
and salvation is only found in Yahweh the God of Israel. To forsake Him is
to forsake our own access to mercy and grace. Jonah was surely reflecting
upon how the sailors had begged their idols and gods for salvation, and
not found it. Only Yahweh had provided such saving grace, both to them and
to Jonah. This reflection was surely to motivate Jonah to now go and try
to persuade the Ninevites of Yahweh's grace. Jonah is constantly quoting
from the Psalms, and here he may have in mind Ps. 31:6: "I have hated them
that regard lying vanities". But now Jonah doesn't hate the idolaters
personally, but rather perceives the tragedy of the fact that they are
rejecting their own access to Yahweh's grace. Yahweh is all about mercy,
or grace; again, Ps. 59:17 "the God of my mercy" is in mind. But we
preclude His grace if we trust in the lying vanities of this world.
Grace is therefore the unique characteristic of Yahweh, of true
Christianity- no other religious system incorporates this.
Jonah 2:9 But I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving, I will pay that which I have vowed- Jonah is repeating the words of the sailors (Jon. 1:16), whom he has just been thinking about in :8. But he is also repeating the words of Ps. 3:8; 116:17,18. He comes to realize that those Gentile sailors had in their desperation come to the spirit of Yahweh's inspired words, and to the very songs which were at the core of the Jewish religion. He came to realize that he could not from that location within a fish offer a sacrifice, and so all he could do was offer the sacrifice of praise. He was being taught that beyond ritual and organized religion, there is the real relationship with God in the Spirit. That praise is the essential sacrifice is recognized throughout the Bible (Ps. 54:6; Heb. 13:15); it was the essence of the new covenant (Jer. 33:11), which Jonah was [like Israel in captivity] being prodded towards.
Presumably his vow was to be obedient to his commission of preaching to Nineveh. And yet despite the intensity of his sincerity whilst within the fish, we find that when it comes to it, he doesn't perform the vow at all well in that he loses the spirit of grace. We too, one moment, can be awed by our experience of grace and desire to give our very souls in order to share that grace with others; but then the old pride, bitterness and prejudices so easily return. When we are brought down, we have to stay down. That is the art of spiritual life.
There are a number of Old Testament examples of preaching the word
after becoming aware of the depth of one's own sins. Consider Jonah
preaching the second time, with the marks in his body after three days in
the whale, admitting his rebellion against Yahweh, pleading with them to
respond to His word. Reflect how when his head was wrapped around with
seaweed, at the bottom of the sea at the absolute end of mortal life, he
made a vow to God, which he then fulfilled, presumably in going back to
preach to Nineveh (Jonah 2:9). His response to having confessed his sins and
daring to believe in God’s forgiveness, turning again towards His temple
even from underwater, was to resolve to preach to others if he was spared
his life. And this he did, although as with so many of us, the pureness of
his initial evangelical zeal soon flaked. Or consider
Manasseh, 2 Chron.
33:16; Jehoshaphat, 2 Chron. 19:3 cp. 18:31; 19:2; Josiah, 2 Chron.
34:29,32; Nebuchadnezzar, Dan. 3:29; 4:2...
Jonah 2:10 Yahweh spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah on the dry land- Again we see God in harmony with nature and in personal communion with it. He created the vine for shelter, the tiny worm which ate it, the great fish, and the storm. And uses absolutely all things to reveal His grace. To be vomited out is the language used of Israel being vomited out of their land (Lev. 18:25,28; 20:22). Even in the moment of his salvation, Jonah was identified with sinful Israel in their condemnation, and was thereby the pattern for their salvation, and a clear prediction of the Lord's saving experiences.
Everything in the book of Jonah is obedient to God, even the animal creation [the fish, the vine, the worm, the east wind in Jon. 4:6-8]. The only character disobedient is Jonah. And I suggest he is intentionally presenting himself like this, to again heighten his own incredible lack of qualification to do God's work. God spoke to the fish twice and it was obedient, and twice to Jonah and he was both times disobedient.
The ‘resurrected’ Jonah was a type of the Lord- and he was a ‘sign’ to the Ninevites presumably in that he still bore in his body the marks of a man who had been three days within a fish. It could be that the fish beached itself, and vomited Jonah out of its stomach in its death throes (this is how beached whales meet their end). In this case, the fish would have drawn the attention of the local population, as would have the man with bleached hair and strange skin who walked away from it. Death, the dying fish, gave birth to life. And surely Paul had this in mind when he wrote of how in the Lord's death and resurrection, "death is swallowed up in victory". We too as witnesses of Christ will have something about us that is unintentionally striking in the eyes of those with whom we mix. There was no human chance that Jonah would be listened to when he came to preach judgment against Nineveh. Some guy standing on the edge of town, saying ‘You’re all gonna be destroyed’. People would have laughed, ignored him, or told him to shut up. But there was something about him that was gripping and arresting. He was living proof that the judgment of God is real, and that His mercy is just as real. Presumably Jonah must have said far more than “Nineveh is going to be destroyed”.
It is a worthwhile speculation that for Jonah to be a sign to the Ninevites by reason of being three days in the whale (Mt. 12:38-40), he must have borne in his body the marks of his experience for all to see, as our Lord did. Being inside the fish for that period may have made his flesh change colour or bear some other physical mark so that he could be a sign to them of what had happened. Doubtless he recounted his story to them- so that they were encouraged by the fact of God's love to the resurrected Jonah to repent and likewise throw themselves on God's mercy. In all this we see Jonah as a type of Christ. They would have looked upon that man as we look upon Jesus, to see the love of God manifested in him; they responded by repenting in sackcloth, casting off their materialism, and living in a way that showed their complete belief that "the judge stands before the door". What is our response to Jonah / Jesus?
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