Jonah2chapter 2

Jonah 2:1-2

Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly turns the fish from an instrument of judgment into a closet of prayer, the psalm rising from inside the very punishment Jonah had asked for himself. His opening line, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me, out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice, uses the belly of hell as the natural word for the place of the dead and the deep alike, which the commentators read as poetic intensity rather than a claim about the fish's own nature. Gill and Henry both note that a prayer built almost entirely from the language of the Psalms argues Jonah carried the temple's own worship in memory long before the dark made him need it.

Jonah 2:3-4

For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas credits the sailors' act to the Lord himself, Jonah naming God rather than the crew as the one who threw him in, since their hands only carried out what his own flight had already earned. The floods compassing him about, and every billow and wave passing over him, describe a drowning already underway, and yet in the middle of it he can still say, yet I will look again toward thy holy temple, hope stated in the same breath as the despair. Keil and Calvin both read the turn from thou hadst cast me to I will look again as the pivot of the whole psalm, judgment owned and hope kept within two verses of each other.

Jonah 2:5-6

The waters compassed me about, even to the soul, and the weeds wrapped about his head, place Jonah at the sea floor rather than merely tossed on its surface, the picture of a man already drowned rather than one still swimming. Going down to the bottoms of the mountains, the earth's bars closing on him for ever, describes the grip of the place of the dead itself, and against that finality stands the one line that reverses it, yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God. Barnes and Wesley both read the bars of the earth as ordinary poetic language for the place of the dead rather than a claim about the fish's own anatomy, the miracle lying in the deliverance rather than in biology.

Jonah 2:7

When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord marks the psalm's lowest point turning at once to its answer, the fainting and the remembering set in the same verse rather than separated by any further struggle. His prayer coming in unto the Lord, into his holy temple, repeats the phrase from verse four and binds the whole psalm to one address, a man physically inside a fish praying toward a building in Jerusalem he cannot see. Clarke and Jamieson, Fausset & Brown both read the doubled reference to the holy temple as Jonah's own claim on the promise that prayer made toward that place would be heard, the same promise Solomon asked for at its dedication.

Jonah 2:8-9

They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy turns from Jonah's own case to a general verdict on idolatry, the sailors' many gods at 1:5 standing behind the line as much as any future Ninevite altar. Against that vanity Jonah sets his own resolve, I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving, I will pay that that I have vowed, a vow made from inside the fish rather than after his rescue. The psalm's last line before deliverance, Salvation is of the Lord, compresses the entire book into four words, and Pusey and Henry both read it as Jonah's confession that his own attempt to run from the commission changed nothing about who does the saving.

Jonah 2:10

And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land ends the ordeal with the same directness that began it, the Lord who prepared the fish at 1:17 now commanding it to release him, the creature obedient to God's word where the prophet had not been. Dry land closes the chapter's water imagery entirely, Jonah delivered onto solid ground exactly where his voyage from Joppa had begun. Gill and Wesley both note that the text never records Jonah stepping out under his own strength, the deliverance as total and as undeserved as the punishment that came before it.