Jonahchapter 2
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Jonah Is Spewed Forth by the Whale — Gustave Doré, Doré's English Bible (1866), public domain
Summary
Chapter summary
A psalm prayed from inside the fish, stitched almost entirely out of the Psalter. 'Out of the belly of Sheol cried I, and thou heardest my voice.' He describes drowning as God's own doing ('all thy waves and thy billows passed over me') and finds in the worst moment the one act of faith the book has shown so far: 'I am cast out from before thine eyes; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.' Weeds wrapped about his head, the bars of the earth closing on him, and still: thou hast brought up my life from the pit. The prayer ends in the book's thesis: 'Salvation is of Jehovah.'
Context
Prophecy · Jonah — Jonah overview
- A. 1–2 I cried out of the belly of Sheol and he heard me
- B. 3–6 Cast into the deep, weeds wrapped about my head
- C. 7–10 Salvation belongs to the LORD — and the fish lets him go
The outline
A.I cried out of the belly of Sheol and he heard mevv. 1 to 2
Read vv. 1 to 2 →B.Cast into the deep, weeds wrapped about my headvv. 3 to 6
Read vv. 3 to 6 →C.Salvation belongs to the LORD — and the fish lets him govv. 7 to 10
Read vv. 7 to 10 →
The world behind this chapter
Jonah 2The history
This chapter is a psalm, not a narrative. It uses the vocabulary of Israel's temple songs — the deep, the floods, the weeds, the pit, Sheol, the holy temple — and reads like the prayers in the Psalter almost line for line.
Sheol in Hebrew thought was the realm of the dead, and Jonah says he cried "out of the belly of hell" and that God brought his life up from corruption. He is not describing discomfort. He is describing death.
"I will look again toward thy holy temple" is the detail that grounds it. Israelites prayed facing the temple in Jerusalem — Solomon had asked God to hear prayers made toward that house, and Daniel opened his windows toward it in Babylon. Jonah, in the sea, in the dark, orients himself the same way.
The prayer is almost entirely past tense. He thanks God for the rescue before he is on dry land, which is why it reads as a song rather than a plea.
The last line is the turn: "Salvation is of the LORD." That sentence, from a runaway prophet in the belly of a fish, is the theological center of the book.
What it meant to them
To Israel this said God's mercy reaches the bottom. Jonah was not rescued because he repented well; the fish was already prepared before he prayed.
It also set up the punchline of the whole book. The man who sings so beautifully about undeserved rescue is about to be furious that God gives the same thing to Nineveh.
Sources cited
- John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets
- Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David (public domain)
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Jonah 2. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.