Jonah 2:5 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

The former part of this verse seems to be an ingeminating of what was said Jonah 2:3, and bears the self-same meaning and interpretation. The waters; literally, the waters of the sea; metaphorically, afflictions; mystically, temptations; these last arising from his own guilt, and from the tokens of God's displeasure against him in so unusual a manner. Compassed me about, even to the soul; to the endangering his life, and were forerunners (as he apprehended) of worse miseries, the foretastes of an eternal damnation: it was a miracle of providence to preserve my life, it was no less wonder of free grace to save my soul. The depth closed me round about; he was carried to the bottom of the sea, lay as in the deepest hole of the sea. The weeds were wrapped about my head; not immediately, as some conjecture, by the fish pulling them from the bottom of the sea and swallowing them down, where they wrapped Jonah's head; but mediately, when the fish swam amidst these: or rather it is a comparative speech; I was no more likely to escape drowning, than a man in the depth of the sea, wrapped up in, and held fast down by, the weeds in the bottom of the sea.