Introduction

Sometimes the prophets of the Lord tried to challenge His wisdom in calling them for divine service (see Moses in Ex. 4; Jeremiah in Jer. 1). However, Jonah is the only case in the record of Scripture where a true prophet of the Lord (see 2 Kin. 14:25) tried hard to thwart the will of God by fleeing from the task that God had given him (1:3).

In contrast to Elijah’s obedience to the Lord (see 1 Kin. 17:8–10), Jonah tried to go as far as he could in the opposite direction from where God had commanded him. Jonah hoped that Nineveh would get just what it deserved. He was afraid that if he announced judgment the people of Nineveh might respond in a manner that would prompt God to change His mind (4:2). So, in an attempt to restrain God from being merciful to his national enemies, Jonah ran away.

There is something humorous in this account. How could a prophet of God hide from the Creator of the universe? The location of Tarshish may have been the southeast coast of Spain. In any case it represents the farthest place known to the people of ancient Israel. It is similar to going “to the ends of the earth.”

Yet there is also something frightening here: Were a prophet of God directly to disobey the Sovereign God, he might place not only himself, but others connected with him, in dire jeopardy. Sadly, Jonah was not on a mission of mercy, even if he had achieved his goal. He was, in a way, an antimissionary; one who resisted God’s call to go to the nations. The repetition of the words “from the presence of the Lord” emphasizes Jonah’s attempt to remove himself as far as possible from his service to the Lord. When we remember that the people of Israel were not a maritime people, but rather had a great fear of the sea (see Ps. 93), we are all the more amazed at Jonah’s risky action. Jonah’s natural aversion to the ocean was overcome by his greater distaste for the thought that Nineveh might escape God’s threatened doom.

Thankfully, God did not allow Jonah to succeed, so there is something reassuring here as well. God accomplished His work despite the resistance of His reluctant worker.

From an experience of rebellion and discipline, Jonah turns to an experience of repentance and dedication, and God graciously gives him a new beginning. Jonah no doubt expected to die in the waters of the sea,^1-10 but when he woke up inside the fish, he realized that God had graciously spared him. As with the Prodigal Son, whom Jonah in his rebellion greatly resembles (Luke 15:11-24), it was the goodness of God that brought him to repentance (Rom. 2:4). Notice the stages in Jonah’s spiritual experience as described in his prayer.

He prayed for God’s help (Jonah 2:1-2).

 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. {2} He said: “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry.

After noting the place (inside the fish) where he voiced this prayer, Jonah poetically recounted the story of his deliverance.

It may be asked, “How could Jonah either pray or breathe in the stomach of the fish?” Very easily, if God so willed it. And let the reader keep this constantly in view; the whole is a miracle, from Jonah’s being swallowed by the fish till he was cast ashore by the same animal. It was God that had prepared the great fish. It was the Lord that spake to the fish, and caused it to vomit Jonah upon the dry land. All is miracle.

“Then Jonah prayed” (2:1) suggests that it was at the end of the three days and three nights when Jonah turned to the Lord for help, but we probably shouldn’t press the word “then” too far. The Hebrew text simply reads, “And Jonah prayed.” Surely Jonah prayed as he went down into the depths of the sea, certain that he would drown. That would be the normal thing for any person to do, and that’s the picture we get from verses 5 and 7.

His prayer was born out of affliction, not affection. He cried out to God because he was in danger, not because he delighted in the Lord. But better that he should pray compelled by any motive than not to pray at all. It’s doubtful whether any believer always prays with pure and holy motives, for our desires and God’s directions sometimes conflict.

However, in spite of the fact that he prayed, Jonah still wasn’t happy with the will of God. In chapter 1, he was afraid of the will of God and rebelled against it, but now he wants God’s will simply because it’s the only way out of his dangerous plight. Like too many people today, Jonah saw the will of God as something to turn to in an emergency, not something to live by every day of one’s life.

Jonah was now experiencing what the sailors experienced during the storm: he felt he was perishing (1:6, 14). It’s good for God’s people, and especially preachers, to remember what it’s like to be lost and without hope. How easy it is for us to grow hardened toward sinners and lose our compassion for the lost. As He dropped Jonah into the depths, God was reminding him of what the people of Nineveh were going through in their sinful condition: they were helpless and hopeless.

I cried … I cried: These terms come from two different verbs. The first is a more general term meaning “to call aloud,” with a wide range of usage in the Bible. The second is a term that means a “cry for help,” particularly as a scream to God (see Ps. 5:2; 18:6, 41; 22:24; 28:1; 30:2; 31:22; 88:13; 119:146). Jonah was terrified. Out of the belly of Sheol: When the sailors threw Jonah into the sea, he seemed to be “as good as dead.” Thus for Jonah, the sea became like Sheol, the place of death (see Gen. 37:35; Ps. 16:10; 88:4, 5; Prov. 9:18; Isa. 28:15).

God heard Jonah’s cries for help. Prayer is one of the constant miracles of the Christian life. To think that our God is so great He can hear the cries of millions of people at the same time and deal with their needs personally! A parent with two or three children often finds it impossible to meet all their needs all the time, but God is able to provide for all His children, no matter where they are or what their needs may be. “He who has learned to pray,” said William law, “has learned the greatest secret of a holy and a happy life.”

Jonah’s conduct in the storm is no less noble than his former conduct had been base. The burst of the tempest blew away all the fog from his mind, and he saw the stars again. His confession of faith; his calm conviction that he was the cause of the storm; his quiet, unhesitating command to throw him into the wild chaos foaming about the ship; his willing acceptance of death as the wages of his sin, all tell how true a saint he was in the depth of his soul. Sorrow and chastisement turn up the subsoil. If a man has any good in him, it generally comes to the top when he is afflicted and looks death in the face. If there is nothing but gravel beneath, it too will be brought up by the plough. There may be much selfish unfaithfulness overlying a real devoted heart.

Jonah represented Israel here too, both in that the consequence of the national unfaithfulness and greedy, exclusive grasp of their privileges would lead to their being cast into the roaring waves of the sea of nations, amid the tumult of the peoples, and in that, for them as for him, the calamity would bring about a better mind, the confession of their faith, and acknowledgment of their sin. The history of Israel was typified in this history, and the lessons it teaches are lessons for all churches, and for all God’s children for all time. If we shirk our duty of witnessing for Him, or any other of His plain commands, unfaithfulness will be our ruin. The storm is sure to break where His Jonahs try to hide, and their only hope lies in bowing to the chastisement and consenting to be punished, and avowing whose they are and whom they serve. If we own Him while the storm whistles round us, the worst of it is past, and though we have to struggle amid its waves, He will take care of us, and anything is possible rather than that we should be lost in them.

The miracle of rescue is the last point. Jonah’s repentance saved his life. Tossed overboard impenitent he would have been drowned. So Israel was taught that the break-up of their national life would not be their destruction if they turned to the Lord in their calamity. The wider lesson of the means of making chastisement into blessing, and securing a way of escape—namely, by owning the justice of the stroke, and returning to duty—is meant for us all. He who sends the storm watches its effect on us, and will not let His repentant servants be utterly overwhelmed. That is a better use to make of the story than to discuss whether any kind of known Mediterranean fish could swallow a man. If we believe in miracles, the question need not trouble us. And miracle there must be, not only in the coincidence of the fish and the Prophet being in the same bit of sea at the same moment, but in his living for so long in his strange ‘ark of safety.’

The ever-present providence of God, the possible safety of the nation, even when in captivity, the preservation of every servant of God who turns to the Lord in his chastisement, the exhibition of penitence as the way of deliverance, are the purposes for which the miracle was wrought and told. Flippant sarcasms are cheap. A devout insight yields a worthy meaning. Jesus Christ employed this incident as a symbol of His Death and Resurrection. That use of it seems hard to reconcile with any view but that the story is true. But it does not seem necessary to suppose that our Lord regarded it as an intended type, or to seek to find in Jonah’s history further typical prophecy of Him.

The salient point of comparison is simply the three days’ entombment; and it is rather an illustrative analogy than an intentional prophecy. The subsequent action of the Prophet in Nineveh, and the effect of it, were true types of the preaching of the Gospel by the risen Lord, through His servants, to the Gentiles, and of their hearing the Word. But it requires considerable violence in manipulation to force the bestowing of Jonah, for safety and escape from death, in the fish’s maw, into a proper prophecy of the transcendent fact of the Resurrection.^[1]

He accepted God’s discipline (Jonah 2:3).

{3} You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.

It wasn’t the sailors who cast Jonah into the stormy sea: it was God. “You hurled me into the deep . . . all Your waves and breakers swept over me” (v. 3, niv, italics mine). When Jonah said those words, he was acknowledging that God was disciplining him and that he deserved it.

Jonah’s use of the pronouns You and Your in this verse are not accusations, but acknowledgments of the Lord’s sovereign control of his life (see Ps. 88:6–18).

How we respond to discipline determines how much benefit we receive from it According to Hebrews 12:5-11, we have several options: we can despise God’s discipline and fight (v. 5); we can be discouraged and faint (v. 5); we can resist discipline and invite stronger discipline, possibly even death (v. 9)^1-11; or we can submit to the Father and mature in faith and love (v. 7). Discipline is to the believer what exercise and training are to the athlete (v. 11); it enables us to run the race with endurance and reach the assigned goal (vv. 1-2).

The fact that God chastened His servant is proof that Jonah was truly a child of God, for God disciplines only His own children. “But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons” (v. 8). And the Father chastens us in love so that “afterward” we might enjoy “the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (v. 11).

He trusted God’s promise (Jonah 2:4-7).

{4} I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’ {5} The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. {6} To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, O LORD my God. {7} “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.

I will look again toward Your holy temple: The man who had run from God’s presence (1:3) was alone, yet he clung to the hope that God would not abandon him. The temple, the sanctuary in Jerusalem (see v. 7; Deut. 12:5–7; Ps. 48; 79:1; 132; Heb. 9:24), was the symbol of God’s presence.

The deep: This is the same term used in Gen. 1:2 to describe the mysterious and terrifying sea. In the Bible, the sea is described as a part of God’s creation (see Gen. 1:10) that brings Him joy (see Ps. 104:24–26), but it also appears as a symbol for hostile forces (see Ps. 74:12–15; Isa. 27:1) which the Lord nevertheless holds in His firm control (see Ps. 93).

Jonah pictures himself so deep in the sea that it is as if he had found the moorings of the mountains. pit: This term is used to describe the realm of the dead (see Job 33:24; Ps. 30:9; 49:9).

I went down to the bottoms of the mountains—This also may be literally understood. The fish followed the slanting base of the mountains, till they terminated in a plain at the bottom of the great deep.

The earth with her bars—He represents himself as a prisoner in a dungeon, closed in with bars which he could not remove, and which at first appeared to be for ever, i.e., the place where his life must terminate.

Yet hast thou brought up my life—The substance of this poetic prayer was composed while in the fish’s belly; but afterwards the prophet appears to have thrown it into its present poetic form, and to have added some circumstances, such as that before us; for he now speaks of his deliverance from this imminent danger of death. “Thou hast brought up my life from corruption.”

Jonah was going in one direction only—down. In fact, he had been going in that direction since the hour he rebelled against God’s plan for his life. He went “down to Joppa” and “down into the sides of the ship” (1:3, 5). Now he was going “down to the bottoms of the mountains” (2:6); and at some point, the great fish met him, and he went down into the fish’s belly (1:17). When you turn your back on God, the only direction you can go is down.

What saved Jonah? His faith in God’s promise. Which promise? The promise that involves “looking toward God’s holy temple” (2:4, 7). When King Solomon dedicated the temple in Jerusalem, he asked God for this special favor (1 Kings 8:38-40, nkjv):

Whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your people Israel, when each one knows the plague of his own heart, and spreads out his hands toward this temple: then hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and forgive, and act, and give to everyone according to all his ways, whose heart You know . . . that they may fear You all the days that they live in the land which You gave to our fathers.

Jonah claimed that promise. By faith, he looked toward God’s temple (the only way to look was up!) and asked God to deliver him; and God kept His promise and answered his call. “I remembered [the] Lord” (Jonah 2:7) means, “I acted on the basis of His commitment to me.” Jonah knew God’s covenant promises and he claimed them.

I remembered: Jonah reaffirms his faith in the Lord and renews his commitment to Him (see Ps. 22:27; 63:6; 106:7).

He yielded to God’s will (Jonah 2:8-9).

{8} “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. {9} But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the LORD.”

Now Jonah admits that there were idols in his life that robbed him of the blessing of God. An idol is anything that takes away from God the affection and obedience that rightfully belong only to Him. One such idol was Jonah’s intense patriotism. He was so concerned for the safety and prosperity of his own nation that he refused to be God’s messenger to their enemies, the Assyrians. We shall learn from chapter 4 that Jonah was also protecting his own reputation (4:2), for if God spared Nineveh, then Jonah would be branded a false prophet whose words of warning weren’t fulfilled. For somebody who was famous for his prophecies (2 Kings 14:25), this would be devastating.

Worthless idols: This phrase (also found in Ps. 31:6) condemns every alternative to God. Idols here means “vapor,” that which passes away quickly. These vaporous gods (see Ps. 86:8–10; Jer. 10:15; 51:18) were without value. Mercy (loyal love), the term that so often describes God’s faithfulness to His covenant and to His people (see Ps. 13:5; 59:10, 17; 89:1–3) is used as a name for the Lord (4:2).

Jonah closes his prayer by uttering some solemn vows to the Lord, vows that he really intended to keep. Like the psalmist, he said: “I will go into Your house with burnt offerings; I will pay You my vows, which my lips have uttered and my mouth has spoken when I was in trouble” (Ps. 66:13-14, nkjv). Jonah promised to worship God in the temple with sacrifices and songs of thanksgiving. He doesn’t tell us what other promises he made to the Lord, but one of them surely was,” I will go to Nineveh and declare Your message if You give me another chance.”

Jonah couldn’t save himself, and nobody on earth could save him, but the Lord could do it, for “salvation is of the Lord!” (Jonah 2:9b, nkjv) This is a quotation from Psalms 3:8 and 37:39 and it is the central declaration in the book. It is also the central theme of the Bible. How wise of Jonah to memorize the Word of God; because being able to quote the Scriptures, especially the Book of Psalms, gave him light in the darkness and hope in his seemingly hopeless situation.

I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving: This vow of praise is common in the Psalms (see Ps. 13:6; 142:7). I will pay what I have vowed: Jonah declares that he will keep his promise, a pledge both to sacrifice and to acknowledge God’s help (see Job 22:27; Ps. 22:25; 50:14; 66:13; 116:14, 17; see also Rom. 6:13, 19; 12:1; 1 Pet. 2:5). Salvation: It is the Lord who delivers His people. God acts on behalf of His creation and the redeemed community to insure a relationship with them (see Ex. 15:2, 17, 18; Ps. 88:1; 89:26; 140:7; Isa. 12:2). Chapters 1 and 2 both end with vows of sacrifice and thanksgiving.

OTHER NOTES

2:3–6 Description of Past Distress and Rescue. Other Psalms speak of the threatening nature of ocean depths (Ps 42:7; 69:1–2, 14–15; 88:7) which Jonah has just experienced and now are used metaphorically as a description of his rejection and rescue by God. The Lord does two things: (1) He hurled Jonah into the sea (2:3), using a different word than the “threw” of 1:4 (“sent”), 5, 12, 15. (2) He brought Jonah up (2:6). The verses are filled with images of the underworld common in Scripture and the ancient world.¹⁵ His near-death experience in the sea is described in ten ways: (1) He was in the deep (מְצוּלָה, m^əṣûlāh in 2:3; cf. Exod 15:5; Micah 7:19). (2) He was in the very heart of the seas (2:3) using the general word for “heart.” (3) He was caught in the currents using the common Hebrew word for river (2:3). (4) He was pressed by the waves or billows (2:3, used only five times in the Bible: 2 Sam 22:5; Ps 42:7; 88:7; 93:4, “breakers”). (5) He was buffeted by the breakers (2:3; literally, “heaps of water”). (6) He was threatened by the waters (2:5).¹⁶ (7) He is surrounded by the deep (2:5), using the Hebrew word תְּהוֹם (t^əhôm, cf. Gen 1:2; 7:11). (8) He is wrapped by seaweed (2:5). “Seaweed” is from סוּף (sûph), which is the word for “reed” or “red” (Exod 2:3) that appears in “Red Sea” (Exod 10:19). (9) He is so deep that he is at the roots of the mountains (2:6, cf. Micah 6:2). (10) He is in the pit (2:6). Often translated “corruption,” the Hebrews used this concept to describe death (cf. Job 33:18, 22). Jonah reports on his near-death experience by saying I have been banished from your sight (2:4). The same word for “banished” (גָּרַשׁ, gāraš) is used to describe the driving out of the first humans (Gen 3:24; 4:14). He is barred beneath the earth forever (2:6; cf. Matt 16:18). The NIV makes the Hebrew noun בְּרִיחַ (b^ərîaḥ, “bar”) into a verb. Just as the prodigal son remembered his father’s house while in the faraway land, so Jonah remembers the Lord’s holy temple (2:4; same phrase in 2:7) while in the netherworld. The psalm places the deliverance of the Lord against the tenfold description of distress to enhance the power of God’s salvation.

2:7 An Appeal to God. A long series of events led to a change of heart. After being called, Jonah rebelled and ran only to be trapped in a storm and finally cast into the sea. It was then, when my life was ebbing away that Jonah changed. In the middle of the watery chaos at the flood, God remembered Noah (Gen 8:1), now in the midst of another watery chaos, there is another remembering. Jonah remembers and prays. God remembers and rescues. The holy temple represents either heaven or the Jerusalem sanctuary, likely the former here (cf. Ps 5:7; 11:4; 79:1; 138:2; Micah 1:2; Hab 2:20). See the reference to praying in Jonah 2:1–2.

2:8–9 Praise to God. Just as the sailors had abandoned their own gods to turn to the Lord (1:5, 14, 16), so now Jonah abandons all idols to turn to God. Just as the sailors sacrifice to the Lord, so Jonah promises the same when he escapes his place in the deep. Israelites who sought God in idol worship could not find him (Hos 5:6). Sailors who prayed to their gods (1:5) received no answer. Jonah rejects idols as useless. The Hebrew phrase is “empty emptiness.” Those who pursue emptiness abandon fullness, here described as grace, in Hebrew חֶסֶד (ḥesed), the deep devoted love of God for his people. Instead, from his prayer room, Jonah promises to do three things: (1) Sing a song of thanksgiving. Such a song would be much like Jonah 2:2–9. (2) Offer sacrifice (cf. 1:16). (3) Make a vow to the Lord. The content of the vow here and in 1:16 is lacking. Jonah may mean that his singing and sacrifice will be consistent and not just a singular event. Still inside the fish, Jonah celebrates his salvation, knowing by faith that God will deliver.

2:10 As Jonah’s thanksgiving song comes to an end, so does his current means of transportation. Just as Jonah opens his mouth to shout, “Salvation comes from the Lord” (2:9), so the fish opens its mouth and ejects Jonah. Vomit appears only six other times: Leviticus 18:25, 28; 20:22; Job 20:15; Proverbs 23:8; 25:16. Jonah is returned to Palestine, having traveled away in a ship and back in a fish, he ends up on the dry land that the sailors had so desperately sought during the storm (1:13). The storm, sailors, and the fish are obedient to God. Chapter three takes up the obedience of the prophet.^[2]

‘Lying Vanities’ Jonah 2:8

JONAH’S refusal to obey the divine command to go to Nineveh and cry against it is best taken, not as prosaic history, but as a poetical representation of Israel’s failure to obey the divine call of witnessing for God. In like manner, his being east into the sea and swallowed by the great fish, is a poetic reproduction, for homiletical purposes, of Israel’s sufferings at the hands of the heathen whom it had failed to warn. The song which is put into Jonah’s mouth when in the fish’s belly, of which our text is a fragment, represents the result on the part of the nation of these hard experiences. ‘Lying vanities’ mean idols, and ‘their own mercy’ means God. The text is a brief, pregnant utterance of the great truth which had been forced home to Israel by sufferings and exile, that to turn from Jehovah to false gods was to turn from the sure source of tender care to lies and emptiness. That is but one case of the wider truth that an ungodly life is the acme of stupidity, a tragic mistake, as well as a great sin.

In confirmation and enforcement of our text we may consider:—

1. The Illusory Vanity Of The Objects Pursued.

The Old Testament tone of reference to idols is one of bitter contempt. Its rigid monotheism was intensified and embittered by the universal prevalence of idolatry; and there is a certain hardness in its tone in reference to the gods of the nations round about, which has little room for pity, and finds expression in such names as those of our text—‘vanities,’ ‘lies,’ ‘nothingness,’ and the like. To the Jew, encompassed on all sides by idol-worshippers, the alternative was vehement indignation or entire surrender. The Mohammedan in British India exhibits much the same attitude to Vishnu and Siva as the Jew did to Baal and Ashtoreth. It is easy to be tolerant of dead gods, but it becomes treason to Jehovah to parley with them when they are alive.

But the point which we desire to insist upon here is somewhat wider than the vanity of idols. It is the emptiness of all objects of human pursuit apart from God. These last three words need to be made very prominent; for in itself ‘every creature of God is good,’ and the emptiness does not inhere in themselves, but first appears when they are set in His place. He, and only He, can, and does, satisfy the whole nature—is authority for the will, peace for the conscience, love for the heart, light for the understanding, rest for all seeking. He, and He alone, can fill the past with the light in which is no regret, the present with a satisfaction rounded and complete, the future with a hope certain as experience, to which we shall ever approximate, and which we can never exhaust and outgrow. Any, or all, the other objects of human endeavour may be won, and yet we may be miserable. The inadequacy of all these ought to be pressed home upon us more than it is, not only by their limitations whilst they last, but by the transiency of them all. ‘The fashion of this world passeth away,’ as the Apostle John puts it, in a forcible expression which likens all this frame of things to a panorama being unwound from one roller and on to another. The painted screen is but paint at the best, and is in perpetual motion, which is not arrested by the vain clutches of hands that would fain stop the irresistible and tragic gliding past.

These vanities are ‘lying vanities.’ There is only one aim of life which, being pursued and attained, fulfils the promises by which it drew man after it. It is a bald commonplace, reiterated not only by preachers but by moralists of every kind, and confirmed by universal experience, that a hope fulfilled is a hope disappointed. There is only one thing more tragic than a life which has failed in its aims, and it is a life which has perfectly succeeded in them, and has found that what promised to be bread turns to ashes. The word of promise may be kept to the ear, but is always broken to the hope. Many a millionaire loses the power to enjoy his millions by the very process by which he gains them. The old Jewish thinker was wise not only in taking as the summing up of all worldly pursuits the sad sentence, ‘All is vanity,’ but in putting it into the lips of a king who had won all he sought. The sorceress draws us within her charmed circle by lying words and illusory charms, and when she has so secured the captives, her mask is thrown off and her native hideousness displayed.

1. The Hard Service Which Lying Vanities Require.

The phrase in our text is a quotation, slightly altered, from Psalm 31:6: ‘I hate them that regard lying vanities; but I trust in the Lord.’ The alteration in the form of the verb as it occurs in Jonah expresses the intensity of regard, and gives the picture of watching with anxious solicitude, as the eyes of a servant turned to his master, or those of a dog to its owner. The world is a very hard master, and requires from its servants the concentration of thought, heart, and effort. We need only recall the thousand sermons devoted to the enforcement of ‘the gospel of getting on,’ which prosperous worldlings are continually preaching. A chorus Of voices on every side of us is dinning into the ears of every young man and woman the necessity for success in life’s struggle of taking for a motto, ‘This one thing I do.’ How many a man is there, who in the race after wealth or fame, has flung away aspirations, visions of noble, truthful love to life, and a hundred other precious things? Browning tells a hideous story of a mother flinging, one after another, her infants to the wolves as she urged her sledge over the snowy plain. No less hideous, and still more maiming, are the surrenders that men make when once their hearts have been filled with the foolish ambitions of worldly success. Let us fix it in our minds, that nothing that time and sense can give is worth the price that it exacts.

‘It is only heaven that can be had for the asking;

It is only God that is given away.’

All sin is slavery. Its yoke presses painfully on the neck, and its burden is heavy indeed, and the rest which it promises never comes.

III. The Self-Inflicted Loss.

Our text suggests that there are two ways by which we may learn the folly of a godless life—One, the consideration of what it turns to, the other, the thought of what it departs from.

‘They forsake their own Mercy,’ that is God. The phrase is here almost equivalent to ‘His name’; and it carries the blessed thought that He has entered into relations with every soul, so that each man of us—even if he have turned to ‘lying vanities’—can still call Him, ‘my own Mercy.’ He is ours; more our own than is anything without us. He is ours, because we are made for Him, and He is all for us. He is ours by His love, and by His gift of Himself in the Son of His love. He is ours; if we take Him for ours by an inward communication of Himself to us in the innermost depths of our being. He becomes ‘the Master-Light of all our seeing.’ In the mysterious inwardness of mutual possession, the soul which has given itself to God and possesses Him, has not only communion, but may even venture to claim as its own the deeper and more mysterious union with God. Those multiform mercies, ‘which endure for ever,’ and speed on their manifold errands into every remotest region of His universe, gather themselves together, as the diffused lights of some nebulae concentrate themselves into a sun. That sun, like the star that led the wise men from the East, and finally stood over one poor house in an obscure village, will shine lambent above, and will pass into, the humblest heart that opens for it. They who can say, as we all can if we will, ‘My God,’ can never want.

And if we turn to the alternative in our text, and consider who they are to whom we turn when we turn from God, there should be nothing more needed to drive home the wholesome conviction of the folly of the wisest, who deliberately prefers shadow to substance, lying vanities to the one true and only reality. I beseech you to take that which is your own, and which no man can take from you. Weigh in the scales of conscience, and in the light of the deepest necessities of your nature, the whole pile of those emptinesses that have been telling you lies ever since you listened to them; and place in the other scale the mercy of God, and the Christ who brings it to you, and decide which is the weightier, and which it becomes you to take for your pattern for ever.^[3]

3. Redemption (Jonah 2:10)

(Jonah 2:10)  And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

What an ignominious way for a distinguished prophet to arrive on shore! In chapter 1, the sailors treated Jonah like dangerous cargo to be thrown overboard, and now he’s treated like a foreign substance to be disgorged from the fish’s body. But when Jonah ceased to be an obedient prophet, he cheapened himself, so he’s the one to blame. We can be sure that he was duly humbled as he once again stood on dry land.

The miracle. Few miracles in Scripture have been attacked as much as this one, and Christian scholars have gathered various kinds of evidence to prove that it could happen. Since the Bible doesn’t tell us what kind of fish swallowed Jonah, we don’t have to measure sharks and whales or comb history for similar incidents. It was a “prepared” fish (1:17), designed by God for the occasion, and therefore it was adequate for the task. Jesus didn’t question the historicity of the miracle, so why should we?

The sign (Matt. 12:39; 16:4; Luke 11:29). The “sign of Jonah” is seen in his experience of “death,” burial, and resurrection on the third day, and it was the only sign Jesus gave to the nation of Israel. At Pentecost, Peter preached the Resurrection (Acts 2:22–26) and so did Paul when he preached to the Jews in other nations (13:26–37). In fact, the emphasis in the Book of Acts is on the resurrection of Jesus Christ; for the apostles were “witnesses of the Resurrection” (2:32; 3:15; 5:32; 10:39).

Some students are troubled by the phrase “three days and three nights,” especially since both Scripture and tradition indicate that Jesus was crucified on Friday. In order to protect the integrity of the Scripture, some have suggested that the Crucifixion be moved back to Thursday or even Wednesday. But to the Jews, a part of a day was treated as a whole day, and we need not interpret “three days and three nights” to mean seventy-two hours to the very second. For that matter, we can’t prove that Jonah was in the fish exactly seventy-two hours. The important thing is that centuries after the event, Jonah became a “sign” to the Jewish people and pointed them to Jesus Christ.

Jonah was now free to obey the Lord and take God’s message to Nineveh, but he still had lessons to learn.^[4]

The focus in the story of Jonah is on the Lord’s sovereign control over creation to bring about His purpose. What an ignominious way for a distinguished prophet to arrive on shore! In chapter 1, the sailors treated Jonah like dangerous cargo to be thrown overboard, and now he’s treated like a foreign substance to be disgorged from the fish’s body. But when Jonah ceased to be an obedient prophet, he cheapened himself; so he’s the one to blame. We can be sure that he was duly humbled as he once again stood on dry land.

And the Lord spake unto the fish—That is, by his influence the fish swam to shore, and cast Jonah on the dry land. So the whole was a miracle from the beginning to the end; and we need not perplex ourselves to find out literal interpretations; such as, “When Jonah was thrown overboard he swam for his life, earnestly praying God to preserve him from drowning; and by his providence he was thrown into a place of fish—a fishing cove, where he was for a time entangled among the weeds, and hardly escaped with his life; and when safe, he composed this poetic prayer, in metaphorical language, which some have wrongly interpreted, by supposing that he was swallowed by a fish; when    should have been understood, as a place of fish, or fishing creek,” etc. Now
I say the original has no such meaning in the Bible: and this gloss is plainly contrary to the letter of the text; to all sober and rational modes of interpretation; and to the express purpose for which God appears to have wrought this miracle, and to which Jesus Christ himself applies it.

For as Jonah was intended for a sign to the Jews of the resurrection of Christ, they were to have the proof of this semiosis, in his lying as long in the heart of the earth as the prophet was in the belly of the fish, and all interpretations of this kind go to deny both the sign and the thing signified. Some men, because they cannot work a miracle themselves, can hardly be persuaded that GOD can do it. The text, and the use made of it by Christ, most plainly teach us that the prophet was literally swallowed by a fish, by the order of God; and that by the Divine power he was preserved alive, for what is called three days and three nights, in the stomach of the fish; and at the conclusion of the above time that same fish was led by the unseen power of God to the shore, and there compelled to eject the prey that he could neither kill nor digest.

And how easy is all this to the almighty power of the Author and Sustainer of life, who has a sovereign, omnipresent, and energetic sway in the heavens and in the earth. But foolish man will affect to be wise; though, in such cases, he appears as the recently born, stupid offspring of the wild ass. It is bad to follow fancy, where there is so much  at stake. Both ancients and moderns have grievously trifled with this prophet’s narrative; merely because they could not rationally account for the thing, and were unwilling (and why?) to allow any miraculous interference.

The miracle.

Few miracles in Scripture have been attacked as much as this one, and Christian scholars have gathered various kinds of evidence to prove that it could happen. Since the Bible doesn’t tell us what kind of fish swallowed Jonah, we don’t have to measure sharks and whales or comb history for similar incidents. It was a “prepared” fish (1:17), designed by God for the occasion, and therefore it was adequate for the task. Jesus didn’t question the historicity of the miracle, so why should we?

The sign (Matt. 12:39; 16:4; Luke 11:29).

The “sign of Jonah” is seen in his experience of “death,” burial, and resurrection on the third day, and it was the only sign Jesus gave to the nation of Israel. At Pentecost, Peter preached the Resurrection (Acts 2:22-26) and so did Paul when he preached to the Jews in other nations (13:26-37). In fact, the emphasis in the Book of Acts is on the resurrection of Jesus Christ; for the apostles were “witnesses of the Resurrection” (2:32; 3:15; 5:32; 10:39).

Some students are troubled by the phrase “three days and three nights,” especially since both Scripture and tradition indicate that Jesus was crucified on Friday. In order to protect the integrity of Scripture, some have suggested that the Crucifixion be moved back to Thursday or even Wednesday. But to the Jews, a part of a day was treated as a whole day; and we need not interpret “three days and three nights” to mean seventy-two hours to the very second. For that matter, we can’t prove that Jonah was in the fish exactly seventy-two hours. The important things is that centuries after the event, Jonah became a “sign” to the Jewish people and pointed them to Jesus Christ.

Jonah was now free to obey the Lord and take God’s message to Nineveh, but he still had lessons to learn.

The Setting of the Psalm

Jonah’s “psalm” is a poetic description of his deliverance from drowning. A great fish is not only the divinely appointed means of deliverance (1:17), but also the place from which the psalm was composed (2:1). One can only imagine the thoughts which must have passed through Jonah’s mind as he came to grasp what had happened to him.

As he sank below the surface of the water, Jonah knew that he was certain to drown (2:2‑7). In his last conscious moments, he cried to the Lord for deliverance. Suddenly, everything went black. Perhaps the dark form of the approaching fish was noticed by the prophet. Then, there was a sense of motion, of being carried along. There may also have been the near birth‑like experience of passing from the fish’s mouth into its stomach, probably through a very small opening. This could have served to extract any water from his lungs, something akin to artificial respiration.

As Jonah regained consciousness, imagine the horror of his first sensations: the feel of the stomach lining of the fish pressing about him; irritation of the acidic stomach juices of the fish beginning to bleach his skin; the foul smell of the place; the passing‑through of the normal diet of the fish; the darkness of this place. In

time, Jonah must have realized that this fish was not the means of his destruction, but the means of his deliverance. His prayer for deliverance had been heard by God. He was to live. His psalm, recorded in verses 2‑9, was composed in the stomach of the fish and later recorded for our edification. Let us now move on to the content of this “psalm of the prodigal prophet” to see what it teaches us about Jonah, about Israel, and about ourselves.

Jonah’s “Psalm” and the Psalms

The best way to understand Jonah’s “psalm” is to identify some of its unique characteristics, and then to compare these with the characteristics of the psalms in the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament. By means of this comparison, the inferiority of Jonah’s “psalm” becomes evident. Consider the following characteristics of Jonah’s “psalm”:

(1) Jonah’s “psalm” employs the poetic form of the biblical psalms, as well as the terminology of many of these psalms.

In Jonah 2:9 we read, “Salvation is from the LORD.”

Likewise, in Psalm 3:8 we read, “Salvation belongs to the LORD.”

Notice also the similarity of terminology between Psalm 18 and Jonah 2:

The cords of death encompassed me, And the torrents of ungodliness terrified me. The cords of Sheol surrounded me; The snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called upon the LORD, And cried to my God for help; He heard my voice out of His temple, And my cry for help before Him came into His ears (Psalm 18:4‑6).

“I called out of my distress to the LORD, And He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; Thou didst hear my voice . . . While I was fainting away, I remembered the LORD; And my prayer came to Thee, Into Thy holy temple” (Jonah 2:2, 7).

In Psalm 42, the psalmist also employs “water” imagery, which has a familiar sound when we read Jonah’s “psalm:”

Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence. O my God, my soul is in despair within me; Therefore I remember Thee from the land of the Jordan, And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the sound of Thy waterfalls; All Thy breakers and Thy waves have rolled over me. The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime; And His song will be with me in the night, A prayer to the God of my life (Psalm 42:5‑8, emphasis mine).[5]

(2) Jonah’s “psalm” focuses on his physical deliverance from death by drowning.

All of the poetic description found in Jonah’s psalm pertains to his near‑death experience in the sea. He was engulfed by the breakers (vv. 3, 5), and seaweed was wrapped around him (vs. 5). Jonah was near to fainting away when he cried out to God for his salvation (vv. 2, 4, 7).

This plea was probably similar to that of Peter, who having walked upon the water towards our Lord, suddenly began to sink (cf. Matt. 14:22‑33). There was little time for anything but a hurried cry for help. The “great fish” was appointed by God to swallow Jonah, and while Jonah does not mention the fish, we know that it provided him with an underwater haven for three days and nights (1:17). It was from within the belly of this fish that this psalm was composed by the prophet (2:1).

Just as Saul, who would become the Apostle Paul, had three days of blindness in which to contemplate the gospel (Acts 9:9), Jonah had three days in which to contemplate his divine deliverance. It was not over, of course, because there was still the small problem of his release from his underwater incarceration.

(3) Jonah’s psalm is self-centered.

Jonah described his dilemma, his danger, his deliverance, and his delight. In The Book of Psalms the psalmists also described their deliverance, although the particulars were often left out, or only briefly mentioned, often in the introduction to the psalm (cf. Psalms 3, 18). Very quickly, the Old Testament psalmists turned from the details of their personal experience to the character of God, which was demonstrated in their deliverance. In short, the psalms are God‑centered, while Jonah’s psalm is self-centered.

Note how cryptic is this psalmist’s description of his dilemma, and how quickly he changes his focus to the character of His God:

The cords of death encompassed me, And the terrors of Sheol came upon me; I found distress and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the LORD: “O LORD, I beseech Thee, save my life!” Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; Yes, our God is compassionate (Psalm 116:3‑5, emphasis mine).

Such is not the case with Jonah. Chapter 2 dwells on the details of Jonah’s dilemma, while God’s character is scarcely mentioned. Not until chapter 4 does Jonah get around to addressing the character of God, in particular His grace, compassion, longsuffering, and lovingkindness:

And he prayed to the LORD and said, “Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that Thou art a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life” (Jonah 4:2‑3, emphasis mine).

While the biblical psalmists found the character of God to be the basis for their praise, adoration, and obedience, Jonah found the character of God to be the pretext for his disobedience and for his protest.

There is but one dominant reference in Jonah’s “psalm” to God’s attributes. He does allude to the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. This attribute is distorted and abused, however. Rather than attributing his danger to his own rebellion, Jonah depicts God as the cause of his danger:

“For Thou hadst cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current engulfed me. All Thy breakers and billows passed over me” (Jonah 2:3).

This sounds similar to Adam’s explanation for his disobedience:

“The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12).

(4) Jonah’s psalm reveals his disdain for Gentiles and a smug self-righteousness as an Israelite. We have already been informed of the faith of the Gentile sailors in chapter 1, and of their obedience to all that they knew they were to do. In Jonah’s “psalm of praise,” we find no mention of these sailors, of their physical deliverance from death, or of their newly-found faith in the God of Israel. We can safely assume that Jonah did not find any of this to be a source of joy or the cause for praise to God. We can press this point further and conclude that Jonah really despised Gentiles and would have preferred their death and damnation to their deliverance and salvation.

This may be merely conjecture, to be demonstrated in chapter 4, except for the tone of Jonah’s words in verses 8 and 9: “Those who regard vain idols Forsake their faithfulness, But I will sacrifice to Thee With the voice of thanksgiving” (Jonah 2:8‑9a). Jonah has great disdain for the Gentiles, who practice idolatry. At the same time, he regards himself as one of the elite, who worships the true God by means of the sacrifices which God has appointed. Jonah, as an Israelite, is superior to the idolatrous Gentile heathen.

Jonah’s words do not square with what we have seen in chapter 1, however. The heathen prayed; Jonah did not. The heathen were eager to uncover sin; Jonah was not. The heathen wanted to practice their religion; Jonah did not. The heathen had compassion on Jonah, yet Jonah showed none toward them. By virtually any standard, the Gentile sailors proved to be superior to Jonah from all that we have read in the first chapter, and yet Jonah can unabashedly tell God that he is somehow superior to the heathen.

The psalmists of the Old Testament knew better. In their psalms, they spoke of the conversion and worship of the Gentiles:

I will tell of Thy name to my brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise Thee. You who fear the LORD, praise Him; All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him, And stand in awe of Him, all you descendants of Israel. For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Neither has He hidden His face from him; But when he cried to Him for help, He heard.

From Thee comes my praise in the great assembly; I shall pay my vows before those who fear Him. The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; Those who seek Him will praise the LORD. Let your heart live forever! All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, All the families of the nations will worship before Thee. For the kingdom is the LORD’s, And He rules over the nations (Ps. 22:22‑28, emphasis mine).

In Psalm 67, the psalmist goes even further, basing his words on the promise God gave Abraham, which informed him that the blessing of his descendants was to result in blessing for the whole world:

God be gracious to us and bless us, And cause His face to shine upon us— Selah. That Thy way may be known on the earth, Thy salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise Thee, O God; Let all the peoples praise Thee. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy; For Thou wilt judge the peoples with uprightness, And guide the nations on the earth. Selah. Let the peoples praise Thee, O God; Let all the peoples praise Thee. The earth has yielded its produce; God, our God, blesses us. God blesses us, That all the ends of the earth may fear Him (Psalm 67).

Jonah does not wish God to bless the Gentiles as well as the Jews. Jonah does not wish God to bless the Gentiles through the Jews. Thus, when God commanded Jonah, a Jew, to preach to Nineveh, a Gentile city, Jonah fled. No wonder we find no praise for the conversion of Gentiles, but rather a statement to God about the superiority of the Jews to the Gentiles.

The Lessons of This Chapter

Despite the discomforting reality of Jonah’s continued rebellion in this chapter—indeed, because of  it there are several important lessons to be learned from this chapter. As we close, let me draw your attention to the lessons for Israel, and for the church.

Lessons for Israel

As we have already shown, Jonah was not only a prophet by virtue of his declarations, but also by his deeds, specifically his disobedience. Jonah typified the stubborn rebellion of God’s people, Israel. Just as Jonah disobeyed God’s order, Israel disobeyed God’s law. Just as Jonah refused to carry out his task of preaching to the Gentiles, so did the nation Israel. Just as Jonah called on God for deliverance, yet without genuine repentance, so did Israel. Just as Jonah had the outward trappings of righteousness, the right forms and the right terms, but lacked genuine righteousness, so did Israel.

The scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day typify this same willfulness and rebellion. When He came, our Lord, as it were, swept away the three-fourth inch covering of snow from the accumulated garbage of Judaism. Jesus uncovered and condemned the smug self‑righteousness and hypocrisy of the Israelite leaders, just as the Book of Jonah has done with the prodigal prophet.

The scribes and Pharisees were meticulous about the details of their religious forms and ceremonies (the gnats which they strained), but they overlooked the essence of true godliness—obedience (the “camels” they swallowed). Just as Jonah chaffed at the thought of the repentance and forgiveness of the Assyrians, so the self‑righteous scribes and Pharisees bristled at the repentance of the “prodigal son,” as reflected by the older brother (Luke 15:11‑32). They protested against the fact that Jesus spent his time with “sinners” and not with them (cf. Mark 2:16). And just as Jonah smugly saw himself as righteous, while the pagan was a sinner (Jonah 2:8‑9), so the scribes and Pharisees looked down their spiritual noses at others:

“The Pharisee stood and was praying thus to himself, ‘God, I thank Thee that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax‑gatherer. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax‑gatherer, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted” (Luke 18:11‑14).

The rejection of Christ and of the gospel by the Jews proved to be the occasion for the salvation of the Gentiles, just as Jonah’s disobedience was the means of God bringing the sailors and the Assyrians to salvation:

I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous. Now if their transgression be riches for the world and their failure be riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be! (Rom. 11:11‑12).

If not by their obedience, God fulfilled His promise to Abraham to be a blessing to all the nations through Israel.

Lessons for Contemporary Christians

Before showing the similarities of Jonah’s sins to those of saints in our own day, let me point out one significant difference between Jonah’s thinking and ours today. Jonah, thinking with the mindset of the Old Testament Jew, rested and relied on his election as an Israelite, failing to see his relationship to God in terms of grace, but in terms of some kind of intrinsic worth, based upon his race and perhaps even on his calling as a prophet. Today we tend to presume upon God’s grace. We use the grace of God as an excuse for our disobedience. Jonah tended not to see himself as sinful, as much so, or more than, the heathen; we, on the other hand, see ourselves as depraved, and admit this as part of our human condition, but we view God as somehow committed and thus obligated to forgive. The common element, then and now, is viewing God as obliged to bless “His people,” regardless of their rebellion, and to view “heathen” sins as more reprehensible to God than “sacred sins,” like disobedience.

Jonah’s “psalm” warns us of the very real danger of superficial spirituality. The fact that Jonah’s “psalm” has been taken so seriously by scholars and laymen alike warns us that we are not sensitive to superficiality in spiritual things. The church at Sardis, addressed by God in the third chapter of Revelation, was superficially spiritual: “I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, and you are dead” (Rev. 3:1b).

Superficial spirituality is very skilled in following the approved religious forms and in the use of pious platitudes. Because of this, it initially looks holy and good. But a little probing reveals its true character. I might say also that a little persecution or suffering also quickly exposes the spiritual reality.

I greatly fear that superficial spirituality is the norm in America, rather than the exception. I fear that there is much of this in my life and in our church. May God give us the grace to see it for what it is and to deal accordingly with it.

Superficial spirituality has several tell‑tale symptoms. For one, it relies on the wrong things. It relies on one’s background, one’s ancestry, one’s denominational heritage, one’s position (an elder in the church, etc.), or one’s knowledge. None of these constitute spirituality. Many of them are used to counterfeit it.

Superficial spirituality relies heavily on forms. It borrows much from others; it mimics piety rather than manifests it. Superficial spirituality prays only in dire circumstances; it is motivated by crises, and is manifested by foxhole prayers. It is selfward in orientation, rather than Godward or manward. It seems insensitive or oblivious to personal sin, yet it recognizes sin in others. It lacks a depth of intimacy with God and has little evangelistic fervor. It has a very narrow band of concern, and is usually very introverted in focus (e.g., “Lord, bless our missionaries.”). It tends to distort doctrines and to accommodate or excuse one’s sins (such as Jonah’s use of God’s sovereignty, veiling his own sin).

The salvation of Jonah reminds us that God’s means of saving us are not those we would have chosen. God does not save us according to our preferences, but according to His provision. The great fish would not have been Jonah’s choice of accommodations, but as unpleasant as the belly of the fish was, it did the job. Jonah would have much preferred a dramatic search effort, employing a Coast Guard cutter, helicopters, and skin divers. He would rather have been hoisted aboard a ship and given mouth‑to‑mouth resuscitation by a beautiful female sailor. God did not flatter Jonah in the means by which He saved him because pride was one of this prophet’s principle problems.

So too, God’s means of saving men has never been flattering either. Spending 400 years as slaves in Egypt was not flattering to the Israelites, nor entering into the Red Sea or the river Jordan, nor slaughtering an innocent animal and pouring out its lifeblood on God’s altar, but these were the means which God provided. Looking up to a brazen serpent was not a flattering way to be healed from the bite of a serpent, but it was God’s way. Trusting in the death, burial, and resurrection of a rejected king, the Lord Jesus Christ, is not man’s preferred means of finding the forgiveness of sins and of entering into eternal life, either. Nevertheless, this is the means which God has provided for man’s eternal salvation. This is the only means. If you have not experienced His salvation, you may have to be brought very low, as low as Jonah, so that any means of salvation is gladly received. May God keep us from the superficial and synthetic spirituality of Jonah’s “psalm”, and bring us to the vibrant and genuine spirituality of the Book of Psalms.

Where Do We Find God’s Grace?

The story reveals that God “appointed” a great fish to swallow Jonah. This verb is used several times in the book, as when God appointed a plant to grow and then to die, as we will see in chapter 4 of the book of Jonah. In each case, God orchestrated a circumstance in history to teach Jonah something he desperately needed to know.1  With 20/20 hindsight, we can see that the most important lessons we have learned in life are the result of God’s severe mercies. They are events that were difficult or even excruciating at the time but later came to yield more good in our lives than we could have foreseen.

The great fish is a perfect example of such a severe mercy. Obviously, the fish saved Jonah’s life by swallowing him. On the other hand, he was still in a watery prison. He was still sinking to the bottom of the world, to “the roots of the mountains,” far from help and hope. He was still alive, but for how long? It was only a temporary respite unless God provided another act of deliverance.

Peter Craigie writes that when we reject and disobey God, as Jonah did, it takes “radical treatment, if it [is] to be remedied.” He points out that the text has been depicting Jonah as descending—going down to Joppa, down into a ship, down into the depths of the ship —and now, finally, he goes even further down into the very depths of the ocean. “But not until he was all the way down, finally stripped of his own buoyant self-sufficiency, was deliverance possible.”2 There was a fatal flaw in Jonah’s character, and it had lain hidden from him as long as his life was going well. It was only through complete failure that he could begin to see it and change it.

This principle works itself out at multiple levels. In J. K. Rowling’s Harvard commencement speech in 2008, she described a point in her life in which she had “failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless.” But, she added, “[I] began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena, [writing, in which] I believed I truly belonged.”3  In short, she said, her success was built on her failures.

Jacob was not prepared to lead the family of God until he had been forced to flee from his home, experienced years of mistreatment at the hands of his father-in-law, and faced (what he thought was) a violent encounter with is aggrieved brother, Esau. It was only then that Jacob met God face to face (Genesis 32:1–32). Abraham, Joseph, David, Elijah, and Peter all became powerful leaders through failure and suffering. Countless Christians can attest to the same experience. It is only when you reach the very bottom, when everything falls apart, when all your schemes and resources are broken and exhausted, that you are finally open to learning how to completely depend on God. As is often said, you never realize that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have. You must lose your life to find your life (Matthew 10:39).

If Jonah was to begin finally to ascend, both in the water and in faith, he had to be brought to the very end of himself. The way up was, first of all, down. The usual place to learn the greatest secrets of God’s grace is at the bottom.

But it is not simply being at the bottom that begins to change Jonah but prayer at the bottom. As Jack Sasson says, at this point in the story, “the action is about to come to a full halt to leave Jonah alone with his God.”4  Jonah begins to pray, and at the climax of the prayer, he speaks of chesdh (Jonah 2:9). It is a key biblical word often translated as “steadfast love” or “grace.” It refers to the covenant love of God. It takes the whole prayer for Jonah to get there—to a declaration about God’s grace—but when he does, he is released back into the land of the living.

What Is God’s Grace?

In his great book Knowing God, J. I. Packer observes that many people talk about God’s grace, but it is an abstraction to them, not a life-changing power. He goes on to explain that there are several “crucial truths . . . which the doctrine of grace presupposes, and if they are not acknowledged and felt in one’s heart, clear faith in God’s grace becomes impossible.”5 Jonah’s prayer shows him coming to grips with three of them.

The first truth we must grasp is what Packer calls our “moral ill-desert.” That is a hard message for our culture to hear, however. We live in an age marked by “The Triumph of the Therapeutic.”6 We are taught that our problem is a lack of self-esteem, that we live with too much shame and self-incrimination. In addition, we are told, all moral standards are socially constructed and relative, so no one has the right to make you feel guilty. You must determine right or wrong for yourself. In a society dominated by such beliefs, the Bible’s persistent message that we are guilty sinners comes across as oppressive if not evil and dangerous. These modern cultural themes make the offer of grace unnecessary, even an insult.

Jonah’s prayer, however, recognized that “you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas” (verse 3). Jonah knew that there was divine justice and that he deserved it.

Second, we must believe in what Packer calls our “spiritual impotence.” We must admit not only our sins but also that we cannot repair or cleanse ourselves from them. Our culture, again, does not help us here, for it is dominated not only by therapy but also by technology. Even if we accept responsibility for wrongdoing, we believe “we can fix this.” The most common way we try to do that is to apply the technology of morality. We believe that with hard work and/or fastidious religious observance, we can repair our relationship with God and even put him in a position where he “can’t say ‘no’ to us.”7

This idea, that we can fix ourselves through moral effort, was certainly around in Jonah’s day. It is a foundational assumption of every other religion. But in verse 6, Jonah rightly rejects it. He says he is sinking to “the netherworld,” the underwater world farthest from living humanity and God in his temple, and that there “its bars are closed upon me forever.” He realizes that he stands condemned and permanently barred for his sin and rebellion, and there is no possible way to open those gates himself or make good his debt. The famous hymn expresses it like this: Not the labors of my hands Can fulfill thy law’s demands. Could my zeal no respite know, Could my tears forever flow, All for sin could not atone. Thou must save, and thou alone.8

We are “barred” from God, and the doctrine of grace resonates deeply only if we admit we cannot save ourselves.

Amazing Grace

The third truth we must grasp, if we are to understand God’s grace in a way that transforms, is how costly the salvation is that God provides. Not once but twice in his prayer, Jonah looks not merely toward heaven but “toward your holy temple” (verse 4) and “to the temple of your holiness” (verse 7). Why? Jonah knew that it was over the mercy seat in the temple that God promised to speak to us (Exodus 25:22). The mercy seat was a slab of gold over the top of the Ark of the Covenant, in which resided the tablets of the Ten Commandments. On the Day of Atonement, a priest sprinkled the blood of the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the people on the mercy seat (Leviticus 16:14–15).

What a picture! The temple was the residence of the holy God, his perfect moral righteousness represented by the Ten Commandments, which no human being ever has or ever can keep. How shall we approach God? Won’t the law of God condemn us? Yes it would, except for the blood of the atoning sacrifice on the mercy seat, over the Ten Commandments, shielding us from its condemnation. It is only when the death of another secures our forgiveness that we can speak with God.

Neither Jonah nor any other Israelite at that time understood all that this meant, but a better picture of the gospel of Jesus could hardly be imagined. The temple and the sacrificial system established all three of these “grace truths” as a foundation: We are sinners, unable to save ourselves and able to be saved only through extreme and costly measures. Not until centuries later would it be revealed that atonement could not be effected by the blood of bulls and goats but only by the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 10:4–10).

1. J. I. Packer is right. Many people sing “Amazing Grace” and give lip service to the idea, but that grace has not profoundly changed them. God’s grace becomes wondrous, endlessly consoling, beautiful, and humbling only when we fully believe, grasp, and remind ourselves of all three of these background truths—that we deserve nothing but condemnation, that we are utterly incapable of saving ourselves, and that God has saved us, despite our sin, at infinite cost to himself. Some people have too high a view of themselves. God’s grace is not stunning because they don’t feel they need it, or at least, not so much. Others do indeed see themselves as failures but, while they may have some notion of an abstract “God of love,” they have little idea of the enormity of Jesus’s sacrifice to purchase them out of debt, slavery, and death. They aren’t lost in wonder, love, and praise at the lengths and depths to which he has gone for us.

The Shout of Grace

Now we see why we find grace not at the high points of our lives but in the valleys and depths, at the bottom. No human heart will learn its sinfulness and impotence by being told it is sinful. It will have to be shown—often in brutal experience. No human heart will dare to believe in such free, costly grace unless it is the only hope. It is a combination of hard circumstances, insight from the biblical gospel of atonement for sin, and prevailing prayer that can move us to wonder and amazement, even in the darkest, deepest places.

Something of this amazement and wonder at grace is hinted at in Jonah’s prayer. He has recognized that the “bars are closed upon me forever.” However, he immediately adds: “And yet you lift me up from the pit alive, O Lord” (verse 6). He is lost, condemned, and unable to unlock the doors of his prison. And yet God saves him. Jonah begins to praise God and dedicate himself before he has any assurance that he will escape from the fish by some supernatural deliverance. This is important to notice. It is when he realizes the grace of God that the “great decision is taken.”9  “It is not when history is redirected by some supernatural event . . . that the great miracles occur. It is when a person comes to acknowledge his or her sin and confesses it before God and when, as a consequence, God restores the broken Creator-creature relationship.”1 0 That’s the real deliverance—not the release from the fish.

Jonah’s prayer ends with a shout. As he has been piecing together the constituent parts of a doctrine of grace, the wonder of it dawns on him, and in a climactic statement he says, “Salvation comes only from the LORD” (verse 9). Some have called this text the central verse of the Scriptures, or at least, it expresses with great economy of language the main point of the entire Bible.

It says, literally, that salvation is of the Lord, and the prepositional phrase denotes possession.1 1  Salvation belongs to God alone, to no one else. If someone is saved, it is wholly God’s doing. It is not a matter of God saving you partly and you saving yourself partly. No. God saves us. We do not and cannot save ourselves. That’s the gospel.

The Process of Grace

When placed into the context of the entire book of Jonah, however, this prayer has a sobering aspect. In verse 8 Jonah says that “those clinging to empty idols forfeit the grace that is theirs.” Jonah rightly says that idolatry blocks people from receiving grace. But what people is he referring to? In the context he is saying that pagans who worship literal statues and idols forfeit the grace of God. While that statement is true, we can’t help but read it in light of Jonah’s relapse into anger and confusion at God’s mercy to the Ninevites, which we will see when we get to chapter 4 of the book of Jonah.

In other words, despite his breakthrough here, Jonah has not grasped grace as deeply as we might at first think he has. There is still a sense of superiority and self-righteousness that will cause him to explode in anger when God has mercy on those Jonah sees as his inferiors. He sees the literal idols that the pagans worship and doesn’t see the more subtle idols in his own life that keep him from fully grasping that he too, just like the heathen, lives only, equally by God’s grace.

God releases Jonah from the fish even though, as will become obvious soon, his repentance is only partial. Yet the merciful God patiently works with us, flawed and clueless though we are.

Appreciation to Timothy Keller

• CHAPTER 6:

Running from Grace

1. 1. Daniel C. Timmer, A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation, and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah

(Dow ners G rove, I L: I nterVarsity Press, 2011), p. 77.

2. 2. Peter C. Craigie, Twelve Prophets, vol. 1, Hosea, Joel, Amos, O badiah, Jonah (Louisville, KY : Westminster John Knox

Press, 1984), p. 227.

3. 3. Marta Bousells, “J. K. Row ling’s Life Advice,” Guardian, March 30, 2015. The commencement address w as published as Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the I mportance of I magination (New Y ork: Little, Brow n,

2008).

4. 4. Jack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation, with I ntroduction, Commentary, and I nterpretation, The Anchor Bible

(New Y ork: Doubleday, 1990), p. 157.

5. 5. J. I . Packer, Knowing God (Dow ners G rove, I L: I nterVarsity Press, 1973), p. 117.
6. 6. Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: The Uses of Faith After Freud (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1966).

7. 7. Packer, Knowing God, pp. 118–19.
8. 8. Augustus Toplady, “Rock of Ages” (hymn), quoted in Packer, Knowing God, p. 119.
9. 9. Jacques Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah (G rand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans, 1971), pp. 48–49. Ellul w rites: “Jonah has not been answ ered if w e take the answ er to be rescue from the belly of the fish. . . . But he has been answ ered if w e take the answ er to be adoption under the care of G od w ho takes on the totality of our sufferings, dramas, and situations. He is answ ered because grace does not fail in any w ay. . . . Events have taken place w ithout any indication of a favorable intervention, only signs of judgment. . . . But simply in the very fact that he has been able to repent, to condemn himself, to recognize the sentence of the just judge [and see the atoning sacrifice in the temple], he has reason enough to say, ‘Thou has delivered me.’ I t is here indeed that the great decision is taken.”
10. 10. James Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets: An Expositional Commentary, vol. 1, Hosea–Jonah (G rand Rapids, MI : Baker, 1983), p. 288.
11. 11. Kevin J. Y oungblood, Jonah: Exegetical Commentary on the O ld Testament (G rand Rapids, MI : Zondervan, 2013), p. 114.

^[1] Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ezekiel, Daniel and the Minor Prophets (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 182–184.

¹⁵ See discussion and sources in Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, p. 477.

¹⁶ The Hebrew has the word nepheš which means soul or breath, the footnote suggesting that the waters were cutting off his breathing. On nepheš as neck or mouth, see Ps 69:1; Isa 5:14.

NIV New International Version, 1984

^[2] Harold Shank, Minor Prophets, The College Press NIV Commentary (Joplin, MO: College Press Pub. Co., 2001–), 347–350.

^[3] Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ezekiel, Daniel and the Minor Prophets (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 184–189.

^[4] Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Amazed, “Be” Commentary Series (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 80–81.

[5] Compare also Psalm 88:6‑7, 17, in which the psalmist uses “flood” terms, but here the adversity of the psalmist is brought upon him by God, not by men.