Jonah 2:1 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Then Jonah prayed, &c.— The following prayer was conceived and formed, as to substance, in the belly of the fish, and probably afterwards digested and written in its present mode; a thanksgiving for his deliverance being added at the end of it. Houbigant very properly reads the verbs in the following verse in the present tense, because, says he, Jonah is said to pray when in the belly of the fish. By the belly of hell, is meant the lowest parts of the deep, or place which was to Jonah as the grave.