Jonah 1.17-The Lord Commissions A Great Fish To Swallow Jonah (Doctrinal Bible Church in Huntsville, Alabama)

Doctrinal Bible Church

Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom

Sunday January 25, 2026

Jonah Series: Jonah 1:17-The Lord Commissions A Great Fish To Swallow Jonah

Lesson # 19

Jonah 1:17 begins the third scene in the book of Jonah and records the Lord appointing a great fish to swallow Jonah and for three days and three nights the prophet remains in the stomach of this great fish.

Jonah 1:1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. 4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. 6 The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us, and we will not perish.” 7 Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?” 9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.” 10 This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.) 11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?” 12 “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.” Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. 14 Then they cried to the Lord, “O Lord, please do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, O Lord, have done as you pleased.” 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him. 17 But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights. (NIV84)

Jonah 1:17 takes us from the crew worshipping the Lord with great intensity and earnestly vowing to offer a sacrifice as a group on behalf of the Lord as a result of Him instantaneously calming the raging sea to the subject of Jonah and what the Lord was doing for him while he sunk into the depths of the ocean.

“The Lord” is the proper noun Yahweh (יהוה), which is emphasizing that Jonah possesses a covenant relationship to God who is now going to intervene in his life and deliver him from drowning in the Mediterranean Sea by appointing a great fish to swallow him.

The word also emphasizes with the reader the Lord’s sovereign control over His creation and His omnipotence over creation.

“Provided” is the verb mā∙nā(h) (מָנָה), which means, “to commission” in the sense that the Lord appointed or assigned a great fish for the specific purpose or task of swallowing Jonah so as to deliver him from drowning.

This rendering is supported by the fact that since the great fish is personified in 2:10 as being commanded by the Lord to vomit Jonah onto dry land and also, the Septuagint translates this Hebrew verb with Greek verb prostassō (προστάσσω), “to command, order.”

This verb emphasizes with the reader the Lord’s sovereign control over His creation and His omnipotence over creation.

“A great fish” is the noun dāḡ (דָּג), “a fish” and the adjective gadhol (גָּדֹול), “great.”

The noun dāḡ (דָּג) refers to creatures in general that live under water in oceans, rivers and lakes and does not make the distinction between creatures that we classify as mammals and fish since Biblical Hebrew has no technical terminology for different kinds of aquatic life.

Lessing writes, “Numerous attempts have been made to identify the species of this ‘great fish’ (2:1 [ET1:17]). None has met with any success. There are various ocean fish that could accommodate a person in their gullet. Since the narrator uses only the generic word for any kind of ‘fish’ (רָּג), any specific identification is simply a guess.” (Concordia Commentary: Jonah; page 187)

The adjective gadhol (גָּדֹול) means “enormous” or “huge” since it pertains to the size of this fish having a great mass that is beyond the norm for fish in the sea.

This is the fifth stage of Jonah’s spiritual descent away from God.

In verse 3, Jonah “went down” to Joppa and “went down” into the ship.

Verse 5 says that he “went down” into the inner most recesses of the merchant bound for Tarshish and then, in verse 15, the crew threw him into the sea.

Now, in verse 17, he goes down into the stomach of this great fish.

Jonah 2:6 presents the sixth stage in that he gets to the point of death by drowning and Jonah 2:2 presents the seventh and final stage when he finally cries out to the Lord to deliver him from death.

Jonah realizes that he has been delivered by the Lord from drowning after being swallowed by this great fish and that this great fish was not sent to execute him.

Therefore, this great fish was an instrument of God’s grace and mercy for Jonah.

Though he was guilty of insubordination, he was not executed by the Lord but instead was delivered from death.

There are several accounts of both men and animals being swallowed by a whale and living.

The famous French scientist, M. de Parville, writes of James Bartley, who in the region of the Falkland Islands near South America, was supposed to have drowned at sea.

Two days after his disappearance, the sailors made a catch of a whale and when it was cut up, much to their surprise, they found their missing friend alive but unconscious inside the whale.

Dr. Harry Rimmer, President of the Research Science Bureau of Los Angeles, writes of another case, “In the Literary Digest we noticed an account of an English sailor who was swallowed by a gigantic Rhinodon in the English Channel. Briefly, the account stated that in the attempt to harpoon one of these monstrous sharks, this sailor fell overboard, and before he could be picked up again, the shark turned an engulfed him. Forty-eight hours later after the accident occurred, the fish was sighted again and slain. When the shark was opened by the sailors, they were amazed to find the man unconscious but alive! He was rushed to the hospital where he was found to be suffering from shock alone, and a few hours later was discharged as being physically fit. The account concluded by saying that the man was on exhibit in a London Museum at a shilling admittance fee; being advertised as ‘The Jonah of the 20th Century.’”

This historical event of Jonah spending three days and three nights in the stomach of a huge fish is a prophecy of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.

The Gospels record the Lord Jesus Christ making mention of the prophet Jonah in the stomach of this great fish (Matthew 12:29-41; 16:4; Luke 11:28-32).

His statements make clear that Jonah was a historical character and that the events recorded in the book of Jonah were historical events.