Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish, and he said,
"I called out of my distress to the Lord,
And He answered me.
I cried for help from the depth of Sheol;
You heard my voice. "For You had cast me into the deep,
Into the heart of the seas,
And the current engulfed me.
All Your breakers and billows passed over me. "So I said, ‘I have been expelled from Your sight.
Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.’ "Water encompassed me to the point of death.
The great deep engulfed me,
Weeds were wrapped around my head. "I descended to the roots of the mountains.
The earth with its bars was around me forever,
But You have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. "While I was fainting away,
I remembered the Lord,
And my prayer came to You,
Into Your holy temple. "Those who regard vain idols
Forsake their faithfulness, But I will sacrifice to You
With the voice of thanksgiving.
That which I have vowed I will pay.
Salvation is from the Lord."
Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land.
My thoughts -
This is a moving, heart felt prayer of thanks to God. This was spoken from inside a fish. I just feel like it should be said again, this is a prayer of thanksgiving for being miraculously rescued by God and placed safely inside a fish. I don't think the absurdity of this can be overstated.
Jonah did a bad thing. He knew what God was calling him to do. There was no confusion. Signals didn't get crossed. The message didn't come in fuzzy. God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and Jonah decide not to. He willfully, selfishly, and sinfully directly disobeyed the clearly revealed will of God.
Jonah, while living in disobedience to the will of God, had to face the consequences for his sin. The ship he was on suffered in a horrible storm and he was found to be the cause and cast out into the water. Jonah was drowning. Jonah was going to die. And then we was eaten by a fish. And that improved his situation.
Hope can be found in the strangest of places. Redemption can be an interesting process. Salvation can be revealed in unusual ways. Jonah's salvation here, inside a fish, is relative. If the seas were calm and a giant fish somehow managed to leap aboard the ship, swallow Jonah whole, and go back into the water I'm sure he's praying a different prayer to God. Rather than thanking God for rescuing him he'd be begging God to come save him.
But Jonah was drowning. Moreover, he was drowning because of his own actions. He was drowning because of his disobedience. He knew this. There was no hope. He turned his back on God and for this he was punished. He may have resigned himself to the fact that he got what he deserved. Whether he did or not the fact was he was drowning. And then he prayed for God to come rescue him. And then he was no longer drowning.
Going from a place of safety to the stomach of a giant fish is not salvation. Going from certain death to the relative safety of the stomach of a giant fish is. Jonah was saved, relatively speaking. And this salvation was not earned. It was the direct action of a God who chose to save Jonah. This action caused Jonah to return to God, at least for a while, and do God's will in Nineveh, which directly led to the salvation of 120,000 people. This action also caused the crew of the ship to see God's glory revealed and to offer sacrifice, praise, and even oaths to the Lord God.
What a mighty, odd God we serve that could redeem and save so much by having a prophet swallowed by a fish!
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