Jonah #2: into the fish
Notes
Transcript
Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish’s belly. And he said:
“I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction,
And He answered me.
“Out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
And You heard my voice.
For You cast me into the deep,
Into the heart of the seas,
And the floods surrounded me;
All Your billows and Your waves passed over me.
Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight;
Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’
The waters surrounded me, even to my soul;
The deep closed around me;
Weeds were wrapped around my head.
I went down to the moorings of the mountains;
The earth with its bars closed behind me forever;
Yet You have brought up my life from the pit,
O Lord, my God.
“When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord;
And my prayer went up to You,
Into Your holy temple.
“Those who regard worthless idols
Forsake their own Mercy.
But I will sacrifice to You
With the voice of thanksgiving;
I will pay what I have vowed.
Salvation is of the Lord.”
So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
A good old story of input and output. And we meet the fish!
Now, you may be disappointed to know that I’m not going to spend much time at all talking about the fish today (sorry Doug). Because if we focus too much on the fish (which wasn’t necessarily a whale…. sorry to burst that bubble) then we lose focus on what God is up to. And please note how restrained I’m being here…. because there are all manner of hyperlinks firing here! But there will be some fishy business later on, I promise.
Jonah 1:17 (NKJV)
Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Now last week I said you’d see quite a few times in Jonah where the Lord says something, and it happens. This isn’t one of this - it’s not a case of the Lord saying “let there be fish” and there was fish! - but the Lord was in the act of making sure Jonah was safely swallowed. And we’re given a bit of a clue that everything is probably going to be alright for Jonah - because from the outset we know he was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
Three days and three nights. A few little hyperlinks here eh! There are two main connections with this one in the OT…. it’s either used to refer to a time of testing, danger, or nearness to death, or the time of an ominous journey. The classic example of the journey of the Israelites from Egypt, through the waters, to Mount Sinai - is meant to take three days (though of course the trip gets extended somewhat). And it’s a pretty safe bet that this is the scripture that the author of Jonah is giving a bit of a hat-tip to.
OK. So Jonah has been thrown into the sea, and is swallowed by the fish. What does Jonah appear to immediately do?
Pray.
Imagine for a moment that you’ve just been thrown overboard, and swallowed by a fish. What would you say in your prayers? [invite answers]
Me too, I think. But that’s not what we see Jonah doing. It’s a quirky old prayer!
Jonah 2:2 (NET 2nd ed.)
“I called out to the Lord from my distress,
and he answered me;
from the belly of Sheol I cried out for help,
and you heard my prayer.
The prayer starts in the past tense, describing both the prayer itself AND the Lord’s answer as if it has already happened. That’s a bit weird. And this continues throughout the entire prayer - narrating what is happening, and what the Lord will do about it. The prayer is a thanksgiving for a rescue that has already happened. Why is it a thanksgiving for deliverance instead of a confession of guilt or a plea to be released from the fish?
There is a lot of speculation about this, but one theologian, Gerhard von Rad, gives what I think is the most plausible answer, given that Jonah is a prophet.
It is quite possible that the righteous one enters into the disobedient one and lends him his voice. And when such thanksgiving… comes from the lips that are otherwise impious…. there the sun of divine comfort does shine, even though behind clouds.”
But one thing that I find fascinating is how unoriginal the entire prayer is. In essence, it’s just a mashup of 15 psalms, with a of Exodus sprinkled in for a bit of extra seasoning, as well as some extra things to add to the Jonah narrative. It’s pretty cool for a psalm nerd like me.
But it’s also reassuring - because how often, when we pray, do we find ourselves repeating bits and pieces from Scripture, or trotting out familiar clichés? There’s no need for us to be original when we pray - God sees our heart.
The real problem with Jonah’s prayer is that it’s so late. In the words of Phillip Cary,
While the sailors above him, having already found safety and redemption, celebrate the goodness of the Lord with sacrifices of thanksgiving, Jonah finally gets around to doing what the captain had urged him to do quite some time ago: he calls upon the name of the Lord. The sailors had obeyed the Lord before it was too late, before they suffered shipwreck, whereas Jonah does not pray until he has hit bottom.
Isn’t that true of us too? That we don’t turn to the Lord in prayer until we’re in a state of desperation? Thank goodness it’s never too late to pray.
There is SO much in this short prayer that I’d love to dig into, but I’m going to limit myself to one aspect only.
So a question for you. Was Jonah dead or alive inside the fish? What makes you say that?
And that is whether Jonah was dead or alive inside the fish.
Because right at the beginning of the prayer we hear him crying “from the belly of Sheol” - Sheol is commonly used to either describe the grave, or the afterlife.
And then in verse 3 and 5 alone we find eight metaphors for death - these are all common metaphors for death found in other biblical poetry.
The belly of Sheol represents the grave in the underworld, while the deep, heart of the seas, waves, waters, deep, and weeds are all symbols of death - and the ‘moorings of the mountains’ represents the underworld.
And later we see Jonah thanking God for bringing his life up FROM the pit - another biblical image of death.
So Jonah is praying as one who has died. And three days later is alive again. What does that remind you of?
Jesus himself pointed this out, and said:
For just as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.
Jesus is saying this in response to some Pharisees who were demanding to see a sign from him - and Jesus says:
Matthew 12:39 (NET 2nd ed.)
“An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
The people of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented when Jonah preached to them—and now, something greater than Jonah is here!
Jonah died, and then three days later went to preach (slightly dubiously) at Nineveh - and they believed him. Jesus died, and three days later came back - and is now present among us in word and sacrament. It’s impossible for an evil and adulterous generation to believe - unless we, like the Ninevites believe in Him.
I’m jumping ahead to next week’s story…. but I want to draw another parallel. And that is baptism. Because in baptism Paul tells us that
Romans 6:3–4 (NET 2nd ed.)
we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life.
In the water we die to our old self and are born again in Christ.
A fun, or at least interesting, fact. The final line in Jonah’s prayer is “Salvation belongs to the Lord!” In Hebrew the word Salvation comes from the same root as the name “Joshua” which means “the Lord is salvation”, which is of course a variant of the name Jesus. So within his fishy tomb, you could just about argue that Jonah cries out the name of Jesus.
OK. At the start I promised some fishy business. So here goes, with my favourite fact of the week.
Doug is a great name for our fish up here. But no-one has asked me why I’ve called it Doug. So here goes. The Hebrew word for fish is dāḡ.
Well actually, Dāḡ is the word for a male fish. And that’s what we see in 1:17 - The Lord sent a huge dāḡ to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the dāḡ three days and three nights.
But suddenly at the start of chapter 2, when Jonah is praying from the stomach of the fish, dāḡ becomes dā·ḡā. The fish is now female, about to be part of Jonah’s rebirth.
Cool, huh?
This might, of course, just be the slip of a scribes quill. But it seems far too deliberate for that to be the case.
OK, let’s talk about the end of the chapter.
The Lord said “let there be vomit!” and there was vomit.
Alright, it’s not quite worded like that - but the effect is the same. The Lord speaks, and something happens.
So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
You have to enjoy this moment - Jonah’s final escape after three days and nights in the belly of the fish is not some dramatic Indiana Jones style rescue, but a bit of indigestion.
One final quote from Phillip Cary - because I love both his insights, but also the way he writes:
It would be nice if the belly of Sheol worked like that. And perhaps it does, thanks to the word of the Lord. Will we all laugh as we emerge from our graves on the last day? Will we be astounded as we blink and look around at ourselves? We thought death was so serious, but look at this silly mess! Time to clean up all the dirt and fish guts - yes, and let’s get those grave clothes off Lazarus - it’s all too funny looking for words.
It’s a bit of a silly quote, but the point of it is important. Jesus has conquered death - it’s not something we should fear. Just as Jesus was crucified, died and resurrected - so will we be.
Before we move on to Nineveh with Jonah next week, let’s pause and look back at where he has come from - and to rejoice at the lengths God is prepared to go for his children. Few things are more amazing and wonderful than this. Even we all seems lost, we can trust that God will be there, calling us on.
In the words of one of my favourites Charles Wesley hymns, Jesu, lover of my soul:
Other refuge have I none;
hangs my helpless soul on thee;
leave, ah! leave me not alone,
still support and comfort me.
All my trust on thee is stayed,
all my help from thee I bring;
cover my defenseless head
with the shadow of thy wing.
Amen.
