Jonah 1:17-2:9

First notice that the LORD prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah.  Prepared.  The word is used of appointing or choosing someone.  God had many fish; He appointed one to do His will.  It’s a good thing fish are more obedient to their Creator than the prophet.  We will see this word three more times, in Ch. 4, each speaking of something that God prepared.  Each of these occasions is a part of what God is teaching Jonah, and us.  God had a plan; He would not allow His disobedient prophet to thwart that plan.  I am God, and there is none like me … My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure (Isaiah 46:9-10).

Second we note Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.  Jesus noted this when speaking of His resurrection.  People often wonder: if Jesus was crucified on Friday, how could He be in the grave three days and nights and raised Sunday morning?  The usual answer is that for Jews any part of a day is considered a day and night, an answer I struggle with.  In Jewish culture we also know that they believed that after three days (72 hours) the spirit left the dead body and would not return.  That is not Bible truth; that is Jewish thought.  But it does seem that Jesus time in the grave needs to be more like three days and three nights as part of the powerful testimony to His people Israel.

What is important is that Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the fish’s belly.  He accepted God’s chastening (my affliction.)  It is the miserable experience you would expect, mired in belly-fluids and seaweed.  Jonah likened it to the grave (Sheol) though he is not dead; he is experiencing this event.  It is terrible; but in this prayer he expresses hope.  The very fact that he was not dead causes him to think that someday he will again look toward the temple.

In his prayer Jonah returns whole-heartedly to God.  He recognizes God’s omnipresence (Psalm 139:7-10); he had thought he was cast out of God’s sight only to realize God was there with him, in the fish.  Jonah had been to the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, the moorings of the mountains, and yet God brought him up.  God accepted the prayer from his fainting soul.

Meditate on Jonah’s conclusion.  If you turn away from God and pay attention to your own gods (desires), you will have no mercy.  One of God’s attributes is chesed, mercy, lovingkindness (Ex. 34:6-7).  Jonah experienced this in that God has kept him alive.  Thus Jonah offered the only sacrifice he could in the belly of the fish: the sacrifice of praise … the fruit of lips giving thanks to His name (Heb. 13:15).  And by the way, the ship’s crew also experienced mercy when they saw that God spared them, even though they had aided and abetted Jonah’s attempt to run from God.  They too feared the Lord, sacrificed and took vows.

Mercy is available because there is atonement, a covering for sin that satisfies God.  It is the atonement of His Son, Jesus Christ.  This is Jonah’s future hope; it is our anchor of faith as we look back to the cross!  Salvation is of the LORD!