Into the Deep

One thing Scripture doesn’t tell us is how long it took before the fish swallowed Jonah. The text recounts the events so matter-of-factly that it takes some work to imagine them from Jonah’s perspective. We can’t know how long Jonah spent struggling to tread water, tossed by the waves, fighting for every breath. It may have been seconds or hours, in the tumult before the tempest subsided, or set hopelessly adrift long after the sea had calmed.

It likely probably wasn’t very long, because it’s unlikely that Jonah could swim. The Hebrews were mountain people who weren’t very fond of water. In their culture, mountains were the places nearer to their God, places of safety and refuge, and lowlands and valleys were places of uncertainty. The sea was the place where God wasn’t. In Genesis 1, when God set apart the water from the dry land, he was pushing back the deeps of the darkness and void, carving out a safe place for his people to live. This is why, when Jonah wants to run away from God, he goes to the coast and gets on a boat, “away from the presence of the Lord” (Jonah 1:3). When he told the sailors to throw him overboard, he was telling them throw him into the grave, into Sheol.
It’s from the water, the belly of Sheol, not the belly of the fish, that Jonah cries out to the Lord. He cries out to the the same God whom he disobeyed, the one whose presence he boarded a boat to escape, and the Lord answers him. And from a fish’s stomach, Jonah sings this song of praise.

Just when it seemed that Jonah was being punished for his disobedience, God rescues him. He understands that even though it was the sailors that threw him overboard, and he himself told them to do it, it was God’s hand that brought him there and God’s waves that covered him. “For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me” (Jonah 2:3). And yet when Jonah cried out to God, he rescued him from judgement. The Lord cast him into the deep, but he also appointed the fish that spit him out on dry land. Salvation belongs to the Lord.

Jonah was getting exactly what he deserved, he was lying the the bed he had made for himself when God intervened. Jonah was disobedient, rebellious, and wicked. He was a coward, a liar and hypocrite. “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11).

God didn’t deliver Jonah because he was faithful, but because God is merciful and gracious. Jesus hasn’t saved you because you were good, but because he is.
Though we have been redeemed, we’re bound to end up in messes of our own making. Our sins are forgiven, but they are not always without earthly consequences. You may get tossed around by the waves and maybe end up with seaweed wrapped around your head, but you can still call out to the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Exodus 34:6).

Jonah’s prayer was permeated with the language of the Psalms, the prayer book of God’s people for thousands of years. Pray this prayer from Psalm 27.