Jonah 2:10

And, or, as the particle is sometimes rendered, Then, i.e. after Jonah had prayed, and acted his faith, though in the whale's belly. The Lord, who made heaven and earth, and commandeth both, who is God of salvation. Spake; commanded, signified it to be his pleasure; as the same word prepared the fish, and brought it to give attendance to receive the prisoner, so now it doth discharge the keeper, and requires him to set his prisoner at liberty. Unto the fish: though fishes are destitute of reason, and understand not as man, yet they have ears to hear their Creator, and readily obey. It vomited out Jonah; it presently obeys the word, it could no longer keep Jonah a prisoner. On the dry land: the command required this, nor could it be a deliverance without this; had he been cast out of the whale's belly any where else in the sea he had been drowned, but now that which was his danger shall be his safety, a ship now to land him which before was like to be his grave. The Scripture doth not say where he was thus set on shore, but considering he was to go to Nineveh and preach repentance to them, it is a very obvious conjecture that any man might make, that the whale set Jonah on shore in some place of the Syrian shore nearest to Nineveh; and on view of the charts any indifferent geographer would conjecture that it was some where on the bay or gulf of Lajazzo, anciently the Sinus Issicus, or somewhat near to Alexandette, as the French, or Scanderoon, as the Turks call it, whence, though a long, yet by the maps appears to be the straightest, journey to Nineveh. As for some who conjecture it was on the Euxine Sea, they consider not the strait passage of the Propontis, nor the length of one thousand six hundred miles from Joppa to that part of the Euxine which is next to Nineveh, nor the length and difficulty of the passage thence by land to Nineveh: but he that said Jonah was landed on Nineveh's shore was much wider out in his guess, and never considered that Nineveh was built on Tigris some hundreds of miles by land from Joppa, and if the fish brought him thither, it was by a compass of many thousand miles, which would require some months to run over, besides that the fish would be too great to swim up the river. Their conjecture biddeth fairest who confine it to some places of the Syrian sea, and not far from Scanderoon.