Sermon Tone Analysis

Wenstrom Bible Ministries

Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom

Tuesday October 12, 2010

www.wenstrom.org

Jonah: Jonah 1:17-The Lord Commissions A Great Fish To Swallow Jonah Consequently He Lives In The Stomach Of This Fish Three Days And Three Nights

Lesson # 23

Please turn in your Bibles to Jonah 1:1.

This evening we will study Jonah 1:17, which begins the third scene in the book of Jonah.

In this passage the Lord appoints 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 the son of Amittai saying, 2 ‘Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.’ 3 But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. 4 The Lord hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up.

5 Then the sailors became afraid and every man cried to his god, and they threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.

But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship, lain down and fallen sound asleep.

6 So the captain approached him and said, ‘How is it that you are sleeping?

Get up, call on your god.

Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.’

7 Each man said to his mate, ‘Come, let us cast lots so we may learn on whose account this calamity has struck us.’

So they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.

8 Then they said to him, ‘Tell us, now!

On whose account has this calamity struck us?

What is your occupation?

And where do you come from?

What is your country?

From what people are you?’ 9 He said to them, ‘I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.’

10 Then the men became extremely frightened and they said to him, ‘How could you do this?’

For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.

11 So they said to him, ‘What should we do to you that the sea may become calm for us?’—for the sea was becoming increasingly stormy.

12 He said to them, ‘Pick me up and throw me into the sea.

Then the sea will become calm for you, for I know that on account of me this great storm has come upon you.’ 13 However, the men rowed desperately to return to land but they could not, for the sea was becoming even stormier against them.

14 Then they called on the Lord and said, ‘We earnestly pray, O Lord, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life and do not put innocent blood on us; for You, O Lord, have done as You have pleased.’

15 So they picked up Jonah, threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped its raging.

16 Then the men feared the Lord greatly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

17 And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.”

(NASU)

Beginning in Jonah 1:17, the verse numbers through 2:10 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS).

Jonah 1:17 in the English Bible is 2:1 in the Hebrew Bible and 2:1 in the English Bible is 2:2 in the Hebrew text, etc. through 2:10 in the English text equals 2:11 in the Hebrew text.

The Masoretic text (MT) of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint (LXX) and the Latin Vulgate all end chapter one with 1:16 so that chapter two begins with Yahweh’s appointment of the great fish and ends with Yahweh commanding the great fish to vomit Jonah onto dry land.

Therefore, in the MT, the LXX and the Vulgate, chapter two is composed of eleven verses and the employment of the great fish by Yahweh both begins and ends the chapter.

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 masculine singular proper noun Yahweh (יהוה) (yeh-ho-vaw), which is emphasizing that Jonah possesses a covenant relationship to God and that God 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.

“Appointed” is the third person masculine singular piel active imperfect form of the verb mā∙nā(h) (מָנָה) (men-aw), 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.

Also, the Septuagint translates this Hebrew verb with Greek verb prostasso, “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 composed of the masculine singular form of the noun dāḡ (דָּג) (dawg), “a fish” and the masculine singular form of the adjective gadhol (גָּדֹול) (ga-dol), “great.”

The noun dāḡ 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 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.

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 an historical character and that the events recorded in the book of Jonah were historical events.

A.C. Gaebelein writes, “The highest authority that Jonah lived and had the experience recorded in this account is the Lord Jesus Christ.

The words which He spoke, who is the Truth, are plain and unimpeachable.

There can be no secondary meaning…Our Lord tells us that there was a Prophet by the name of Jonah and that he had the experience related in the book which bears his name.

To deny this is paramount with denying the knowledge and the truthfulness of the Son of God.

This is exactly what sneering critics do.

They have even gone so far as to say that if our blessed Lord knew better than He spoke, He acted thus for expediency’s sake, so as not to clash with the current opinions among His contemporaries.

Others boldly say that He did not know, for He had not access to the sources which are at our command today.

In other words, the destructive critic claims to have more knowledge than the Lord Jesus Christ possessed in His days on earth…The truth is that the Lord Jesus Christ placed such emphasis upon the book of Jonah because it foreshadowed His own experience as the Redeemer and because He knew of what apostate Christendom would do with this book and its record.

There is no middle ground possible; either this book of Jonah is true, relates the truth and miraculous history of this Prophet, or the Lord Jesus Christ is not the infallible Son of God.

His Person and His Work stand and fall together with the authenticity of Jonah.”

(The Annotated Bible: The Holy Scriptures Analysed and Annotated, volume V: Daniel to Malachi, pages 156-157).