Prayers From the Belly

Text: Jonah 1:17-2:10

Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish’s belly. And he said:

“I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction,
And He answered me.

“Out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
And You heard my voice.
For You cast me into the deep,
Into the heart of the seas,
And the floods surrounded me;
All Your billows and Your waves passed over me.
Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight;
Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’
The waters surrounded me, even to my soul;
The deep closed around me;
Weeds were wrapped around my head.
I went down to the moorings of the mountains;
The earth with its bars closed behind me forever;
Yet You have brought up my life from the pit,
O Lord, my God.

“When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord;
And my prayer went up to You,
Into Your holy temple.

“Those who regard worthless idols
Forsake their own Mercy.
But I will sacrifice to You
With the voice of thanksgiving;
I will pay what I have vowed.
Salvation is of the Lord.”

 So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

As we continue with our study of Jonah, we get to what is certainly the most famous part of the story, where Jonah is swallowed by the great fish. And yet, to be the most famous image, the fish plays only a very passing role in the actual text itself. It’s mentioned in just three verses. In his prayer, Jonah doesn’t even talk about the fish! Instead, what is important for the book is that the fish was sent from God, that the fish was a time of death-like judgment for Jonah, and that the fish was a necessary instrument in changing Jonah’s attitude towards preaching in Nineveh. We learn that for Jonah to cry out to God, he first had to be brought down to lowest depths. And this is still true for us today. In order for us today to seriously pray to God, we have to experience times of fear, judgment, and affliction. In order to be raised up into newness of life, we first have to die, and even then, we’ve only just begun.

The Fish Grave

“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights” (Jonah 1:17). This is about the whole of the fish’s appearance in Jonah’s story. Most of chapter 1 had been concerned with the storm, with no mention of a fish. There is no discussion of what kind of fish it was. It certainly could have been a whale. The term used is just a generic one for a sea creature, and the Old Testament classified animals according to their habitat and means of motion and not by modern standards like gills or eggs. For most of church history, the fish was understood to have been a sea monster, and it was usually depicted as a great sea serpent. It was only with the advances in the natural sciences during the Renaissance and Reformation that serious effort was put into to finding actual fish that could possibly swallow a man. Many commentators today believe that the fish in question was a whale shark, but there’s no sure way to know. What is clear is that his is all brought about by the direct action of God.

But if the Bible doesn’t seem to care about what kind of fish this was, what significance does the Bible give to the fish? It is a symbol of burial. Jesus makes this clear when he says, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40). In fact, Jonah himself made this same connection, as we can see in chapter 2, verse 1, “I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction, and He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried.” Jonah is in the belly of the fish, but he says that he is in the belly of Sheol, the Hebrew word for the grave. In a sense this ways true. Jonah was as good as dead. And his deliverance would be a sort of resurrection. Thus, while I think we can ask questions about what kind of fish this was and how it could have swallowed a man, we shouldn’t miss the bigger and more obvious fact. This fish was sent by God to be a form of divine judgment. And that judgment, as is so often the case, became the means of redemption. Death leads to resurrection.

The Prayer

Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, and during that time he prayed:

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish’s belly. And he said:

I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction,
And He answered me.
Out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
And You heard my voice.
For You cast me into the deep,
Into the heart of the seas,
And the floods surrounded me;
All Your billows and Your waves passed over me. (Jonah 2:1-3)

What we see in these lines is that Jonah knew that it was God who had done this. While we might think of the fish as a means of keeping Jonah from drowning, Jonah understood it to be a form of Sheol, the grave. And had God not eventually caused the fish to spit Jonah up, he surely would have died in that fish tomb.

Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight;
Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’ (vs. 4)

The reference to the temple is a reference to God’s presence. Even the Jews who lived outside of Jerusalem would face towards the temple to pray. And so Jonah is expressing his desire to be near God. Isn’t it telling that Jonah was the one trying to flee from God earlier, and now that he has been humbled, he desire is to be near God. There is a lesson here. Divine judgment often brings us closer to God, and this is very often the goal of that judgment.

Jonah continued to pray, saying:

The waters surrounded me, even to my soul;
The deep closed around me;
Weeds were wrapped around my head.
I went down to the moorings of the mountains;
The earth with its bars closed behind me forever;
Yet You have brought up my life from the pit,
O Lord, my God. (vs. 5-6)

Here we have a poetic description of Jonah falling to the sea floor, comparing it to the grave. I don’t think we have to try to explain this as something that actually happened. He could simply be reflecting on the gravity of his situation inside the fish. Again, the symbolism is “the pit” or the grave, and Jonah is as good as dead in his current condition.

But incredibly, God did answer Jonah, and it seems as if God has already answered Jonah. “Yet You have brought up my life from the pit…” Is this merely a reference to the fish “saving” Jonah from drowning? I don’t think so. I think Jonah is saying that God has already begun to be merciful to him, already begun to turn him around towards His will. Jonah was dead inside, and God has resurrected Him.

This seems to be what Jonah is saying in the next verse:

When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord;
And my prayer went up to You,
Into Your holy temple. (vs. 7)

Jonah had “died” internally, and yet, even in that weak spiritual condition, he was able to “remember” the Lord. His prayer went up, ascending into heaven, and God heard and answered. We must learn from this as well. Even in the deepest hell, we can pray to God in heaven above. God is always present, and He always hears us. And broken hearts are exactly the kind of hearts that God loves to receive.

Jonah concludes his prayer by exalting the true God, condemning idols, and vowing to worship God and dedicate himself to Him:

Those who regard worthless idols
Forsake their own Mercy.
But I will sacrifice to You
With the voice of thanksgiving;
I will pay what I have vowed.
Salvation is of the Lord. (vs. 8-9)

We might think that Jonah is talking about the idols in whom the Gentile sailors were trying to find help, and there may be something to that. But these sentences closely parallel the psalms. For instance, just after proclaiming God’s kingship, Psalm 97 says, “Let all be put to shame who serve carved images, who boast of idols. Worship Him, all you gods” (Ps. 97:7). Psalm 138 states that the God of Israel is the true God, higher than all so-called gods, “I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart; before the ‘gods’ I will sing your praise” (Ps. 138:1). And the promise to offer sacrifices and pay vows is also common in the psalms. I think of Psalm 22 which says, “My praise shall be of You in the great assembly; I will pay My vows before those who fear Him” (Ps. 22:25). Jonah is most likely praying after the manner he had been taught, a lesson learned from the Scriptures themselves.

Jonah concludes it all by saying, “Salvation is of the LORD.” Salvation comes from God, not from anyone else. This means that it doesn’t come from ourselves either. It is all of grace. God is the true God, and He alone saves. Therefore we must “sacrifice” and “pay” our vows.

For Jonah this paying what he had vowed meant that he had to now go fulfill his prophetic calling. He would go to Nineveh. He would do what God had asked. This is the true sacrifice, his obedience. And this is how we should understand our sacrifice today. We do not kill animals in order to be saved, and we do not offer up our good works in order to have our sins forgiven. No, that is all fulfilled in the death of Christ. But we do offer ourselves as a “living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1), and this means our lives must be lives lived in obedience to God. We show our gratitude for the gracious salvation by obeying God. And so what vows do you need to pay to God? What sort of obedience should you offer to Him? Are you doing it? Hopefully you won’t have to be taken down to the grave in order to stop focusing on yourself and start obeying God. But if so, you can be assured that God will use judgment and affliction in your life as ways to open your eyes to His truth and to cause you to offer new obedience to Him. When you do find yourself in the belly of Sheol, lift your prayers up to God and ask Him how you can sacrifice rightly.

Resurrection Through Fish Vomit

In response to Jonah’s prayer, the Lord does cause the fish to spit Jonah up onto dry land. “So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land” (Jonah 2:10). This completed his “salvation” from judgment and death, but it was hardly the end of the story. This resurrection through fish vomit was a resurrection for the purpose of new faithfulness. And we need to pay attention to this in our lives too. God doesn’t just save us for us. He does delight in our salvation because He loves us, but He always saves us for a purpose. He wants us to obey Him, to be holy, and to preach His gospel to others. This is what Jonah was supposed to do.

Now, as we will see in the next two chapters, Jonah still didn’t have the right state of mind. He had been humbled to the point of obeying God’s command, but he had not yet come to actually love the grace of God. He went on to Nineveh with abiding anger in his heart, looking for their condemnation. H will have to learn yet another lesson before this is all over. And we should learn from this too. None of us are finished products. None of us are fully sanctified. Even after we experience God’s love and His grace, and even after we have big experiences in life, we are still not complete. We might backslide. We might still make mistakes. We might even still have major sin in our life. God works in us over time.

This means a few things. The first is that we shouldn’t look to any one single point in our life as the point in which we are “fixed.” I don’t believe that salvation is a process in the sense that we are getting more or less saved or that salvation depends on our works. But I do mean that we can be saved by God and still be very spiritually confused and immature. We must not stay put in that condition. We must push forward, growing in grace. A second thing this means is that the presence of sin later on in our lives does not mean that we are not saved. It just means that we, like Jonah, do not become perfectly sanctified overnight. Believers can still sin and in big ways. And so, finally, this means that we must resolve ourselves to continually mortify sin. We must fight against sin and its temptations, and we have to take the call to holiness very seriously. It requires ongoing effort.

The Puritan John Owen described sanctification quite vividly when he said:

Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts.  He who doth not kill sin in his way takes no steps towards his journey’s end.  He who finds not opposition from it, and who sets not himself in every particular to its mortification, is at peace with it, not dying to it.  (On the Mortification of Sin in Believers, chapter 2)

Becoming holy takes time, and we will have to learn many lessons from God along the way. We should never lose faith because of this, but we should also never be careless or unaware. We should never be content with our progress. What sins remain in your life? Are you being faithful to the grace and calling that God has given to you? Are you actively fighting your desires?

Conclusion

To sum it all up, we might say that Jonah’s prayer is the prayer of a sinner. And we would be correct. But it is the prayer of a sinner who has died and been resurrected. It is the prayer of a redeemed sinner. And it’s also the prayer of an incomplete sinner, one who has been redeemed but still has to overcome remaining sin. That is definitely true, and for that very reason the prayer is an appropriate one for each of us. We too are incomplete. We too have much more to do. But we know that salvation is of the Lord, and for that reason we can believe, and for that reason we can follow our calling in the Lord.

Let us pray.