Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights - not created specially for the purpose, but appointed in His providence, to which all creatures are subservient. The prophet, in the simplicity of faith, does not stop to tell us how God performed the miracle. It is enough for him that God willed it; and what God wills He has no lack of means for accomplishing. Miracles were as much fore-ordered by God as the ordinary course of so-called nature. They are no more incongruous interruptions of nature than are the acts of man's freewill, whereby he modifies nature's course. Nature is simply God's will. If a man will not believe until he has solved all difficulties by his reason, he will never believe; and eternity, with all its momentous issues, will overtake him before he has settled on what is to be the main principle of his life. God could as easily have kept Jonah alive in the sea as in the fish's belly. In the first instance, he did sink to the "bottom" of the sea, and felt 'the seaweed wrapped about his head.'
But then God "prepared" a great fish to be his living grave, in order to prefigure the three days' burial and resurrection of the Saviour. The fish, through a mistranslation of Matthew 12:40, was formerly supposed to be a whale: there, as here, the original means 'a great fish' х keetos (G2785)]. The whale's neck is too narrow to receive a man. Bochart thinks the dog-fish, the stomach of which is so large that the body of a man in armour was once found in it ('Hierozo.,' 2: 5, 12). Others, think it was the shark. The white shark, having only incisive teeth, has no choice between swallowing its prey whole, or cutting off a portion of it. It cannot hold its prey or swallow it piecemeal. Otto Fatricius ('Fauna Gronlandica,' p. 129), says 'its custom is to swallow down dead,' and 'sometimes also living men whom it finds in the sea.' Its cartilaginous skeleton adapts it for swallowing large animals.
Jebb, the cavity in the whale's throat, large enough, according to Captain Scoresby, to hold a ship's jolly-boat full of men. A miracle in any view is needed; and we have no data to speculate further. A "sign" or miracle it is expressly called by our Lord in Matthew 12:39-40, "An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it but the SIGN of the prophet Jonas: for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Respiration in such a position could only be by miracle. The miraculous interposition was not without a sufficient reason; it was calculated to affect not only Jonah, but also Nineveh and Israel. The life of a prophet was often marked by experiences which made him, though sympathy, best suited for discharging the prophetic function to his hearers and his people. The infinite resources of God, in mercy as well as judgment, are prefigured in the devourer being transformed into Jonah's preserver. Jonah's condition under punishment, shut out from the outer world, was rendered as much as possible the emblem of death-a present type to Nineveh and Israel of the death in sin-as his deliverance was of the spiritual resurrection on repentance; as also a future type of Jesus' literal death for sin, and resurrection by the Spirit of God.
Three days and three nights. Probably, like the antitype Christ, Jonah was cast forth on the land on the third day (Matthew 12:40); the Hebrew counting the first and third parts of days as whole 24 hour days.
Remarks:
(1) This book of Jonah is the first sample and earnest in the Old Testament of God's purpose, in the fullness of time, to offer to the Gentiles also, as well as to the Jews, "repentance unto life." It brings forth, in vivid contrast to Israel's impenitence, notwithstanding all her religious privileges, the readiness of the pagan to obey the first call of God. As the children hardened their necks against God's loving appeals, He would show them their exceeding guilt by the one instance of Jonah's mission to Nineveh, and its marvelous and immediate effect upon the Ninevites. Surely, if the penitent Assyrians condemned Israel's hardness of heart, much more will the pagan now, being gathered into Christ's fold out of uncivilized lands, rise in judgment against professing Christians who "neglect so great a salvation." Our privileges, being manifold greater than Israel's, bring with them the greater condemnation if neglected or abused.
(2) When we read of Jonah's disobedience to the command of the Lord to go to Nineveh, let us remember Jonah's temptation; and then, instead of too hasty condemnation of him, let us mourn the sinful weakness of our fallen nature, even in the true servants of God when they are left to themselves. Jonah loved his country, and so gave way to unloving zeal against her enemies. What he desired was, to see the fall of her fore-appointed destroyer Nineveh. There was no want in him of animal courage as he proved by his readiness to give himself up to apparent death in the tempest, as well as by his subsequent boldness in proclaiming Nineveh's doom, though alone in the midst of her violent and warlike citizens. He was ready, as far as himself was concerned, at God's bidding, to enter that "dwelling of lions," as Nahum describes it (Nahum 2:11-12). But he feared the effect of his proclamation would be, Nineveh would repent of its sin, and so God would "repent" of the threatened evil, according to God's own gracious character, as "merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness" (Jonah 4:2).
Thus the consequence would be, Nineveh's repentance would prove Israel's ruin. Nineveh would be the instrument of destroying impenitent Israel. Hence, Jonah, at God's command, "rose up," not to obey, but to disobey and to flee. Not that he, who so vividly realized God's might in his prophesying to others, thought he could escape beyond the reach of God's presence and power. His object in fleeing was, to escape from standing in the presence of the Lord as His prophet. When we substitute our own will for the will of God, we run into inextricable perplexities and dangers. Fleeing from imaginary evils we fall into real and fatal ones. Our safety as well as our duty is to leave future events in God's hands, and to give ourselves unwholly to be His instruments to do by us and with us as He will. Instead of self-will, let us pray that, when "the word of the Lord comes unto" us, the Spirit of the Lord also may make us ready to obey heartily and immediately. Our cry to the Lord should be, Work for me by Thy providence, work in me by Thy grace, and work by me for Thy glory!
(3) As David stands alone among the servants of God, who after conversion have been murderers and adulterers; and Peter stands alone among the apostles in having denied his Lord, and then being restored: so Jonah stands alone among the prophets in having obeyed the Lord's command to prophesy, and then disobeyed, and, lastly, being constrained to obey once more. How the love of God transcends the highest conceptions which man can form of it!
(4) Jonah, we read, "went down to Joppa" (Jonah 1:3). When men turn their backs on the word and presence of the Lord, what a suicidal descent they make! They go down from a place of honour and safety to the region of humiliation and destruction. However strongly-built the ship was, and however complete were Jonah's arrangements for escape, nothing could be for him where God was against him. Jonah had done his all. Now began God's part. God lets the sinner seem to have his way up to a certain point. God waits in the calmness of His omnipotence until the sinner's plans are all but accomplished, and then He scatters them in a moment to the winds. When all appeared going on smoothly, God "hurled into the sea a mighty tempest" (Jonah 1:4). What were the troubles which Jonah feared as likely to ensue from his going to Nineveh, as compared with those which now he has brought on himself by fleeing in the opposite direction? Sin is, therefore, the one thing to be feared as the source of all trouble, rather than any outward trial.
(5) The mariners cried in their distress to their false gods, while Jonah, the prophet of God, cried not to the true God. They were alive to the danger who were comparatively innocent, while he who was the guilty one lay fast asleep (Jonah 1:5). How often great sin brings with it great insensibility! The sinner tries to drown thought, stifle conscience, and forget God and himself in the sleep of carnality and worldliness. They who are most dead to fear are just those who are nearest destruction.
(6) But God would not allow his servant to sleep the sleep of death. The pagan shipmaster (Jonah 1:6) is used by God as the instrument to awaken the drowsy prophet. Jonah, who was about afterward to call the pagan to the prayer of penitence, is now himself called to prayer by a pagan. The zeal of the pagan and Mohammedans in their false religions virtually appeals to many a professing Christian, "What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God"
(7) When earthly means of deliverance fail, men at last have recourse to God. He is a "very present help in time of trouble." His providence overruled the casting of lots whereby Jonah, the culprit, was detected. Ordinary casting of lots without necessity, or in the spirit of unbelief, which makes a god of chance, or in prying curiosity concerning the future, to which God hath not revealed, is a tempting of God. 'Satan may mix himself unknown in such inquiries, as in mesmerism. Forbidden ground is his own province' (Pusey).
(8) The reverent carefulness which the pagan mariners showed in behalf of the one life of Jonah, which they would not sacrifice, though the sole cause of their danger, if they could possibly avoid it, was a tacit reproof the reckless zeal of Jonah in wishing, in spite of God's command, to leave no opening for repentance and escape to the hundreds of thousands in pagan Nineveh. Alas! how much more zeal we all are apt to have for our party or kindred than for the glory of God and for the cause of the merciful Redeemer's kingdom throughout the whole earth!
(9) Jonah's confession, when he was at last roused to spiritual feeling, was as unreserved as his sin previously had been scandalous and monstrous. He now awakes to the penitent fear of the Lord God, who hath made sea and land alike (Jonah 1:9). Well might the mariners ask, "Why hast thou done this?" (Jonah 1:10.) The inconsistencies of Christians are the great stumbling-block in the way of the conversion of unbelievers. To know God, and yet to disobey Him, is the greatest of all marvels. 'A servant flee from his Lord, a son from his Father, man from his God!' (Jerome.)
(10) Jonah by inspiration directs (Jonah 1:12), and through penitence accepts, the punishment of his iniquity. The sea, which he had meant to make the instrument of his flight, is by God made, in just retribution, the instrument of his punishment. And the tempest raised through the wrath of God against Jonah's sin ceased when the divine wrath was satisfied in Jonah's punishment. The mariners now that all earthly fears were removed, "feared the Lord exceedingly." The prophet's punishment was overruled to their conversion; and the account of their deliverance, in connection with the wonderful circumstances of Jonah's history, prepared the way for the conversion of the pagan Ninevites at the subsequent mission of the prophet.
(11) All difficulties concerning the preservation of Jonah in the fish's belly are simply resolved by the consideration of the omnipotence of God. Self-wise rationalists are rebuked by the simple faith of the once-pagan mariners - "Thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased Thee" (Jonah 1:14). He who preserves the embryo in its living grave could as easily "prepare" a suitable fish, and preserve Jonah within it unto the time appointed for his typical resurrection. Faith laughs at impossibilities, where God is the Worker.
(12) The correspondence between Jonah the type and Christ the antitype is most minute. Man was ready to be swallowed by the waves of hell, stirred up by the tempest of God's wrath against sin, when Christ, as one of us, volunteered to give up His life to save our lives; just as the mariners were about to perish in the waves, until Jonah gave himself up as the victim to appease God's righteous anger. But the sin in Jonah's case was inherent: in Christ's, not inherent, but voluntarily imputed. As the Gentile mariners prayed that innocent blood should not be laid upon them, so the Gentile Pontius Pilate washed his hands of the death of Christ, saying, "I am clean from the blood of this man." The conversion of the Gentiles flowed from the death of Jesus, as the conversion of the mariners, and subsequently of the Ninevites ensued upon the casting of Jonah into the sea. From Christ's vicarious sacrifice there results to believers the settled calm of heartfelt peace. As Jonah, after a three days' entombment, through his return to the land of the living, became a prophet to the Gentiles, whom he was the instrument of converting, whereas he had failed to convert Israel: so Christ, through His resurrection out of death, became the power of God to the salvation of the Gentiles, after the Jews had rejected Him. The life of Jonah illustrates how wonderfully God can overrule history to be covert prophecy. Thus the infidel is rebuked, who would make nature the master instead of the servant of the God both of nature and of grace: and who 'would extinguish for themselves the Light of the world, in order that it may not eclipse the rushlight of their own theory' (Pusey).