Jonah 2 - Introduction

HOMILETICS

IN THE DEEP.—Chap. 2

As soon as the prophet was entombed, he knew that he was in a living grave. Then began that new and bitter experience recorded in the prayer of this chapter. We have no external history of those days. But we have a very intense and clear history of his inward life. Speaking generally, there was evidently a great and sudden quickening of consciousness. The man who speaks in this holy psalm hardly seems the same person whom we have seen in flight—dark, moody, silent, despairing. Beneath the waves the whole man reveals himself to God. Men rescued from drowning have told of quickened consciousness in danger—how they have lived again through years of past moments, estimated possible means of escape, and pierced with anticipative thought into the two possible futures—that of time, and that of eternity. Then rapidly this new consciousness became distressful. His soul fills itself fuller than the sea with “affliction.” The reserved sorrow of sinning comes all at once. If sinners knew the fruitage of their ungodliness, what the universe would be when Divine presence is darkened out of them, and what the bitterness of that moment when the soul awakes in the thought, “God is now away, perhaps for ever,” they would stay the beginnings of departure as men keep back from a slippery precipice. Then he began to “look”—upwards to earth, eastwards to the temple, where he knew that the lost presence was richly manifested. This is one of the most characteristic acts of faith—to look, although death may come in the looking. This is a tough battle. It is hard to fight aboveground; but to fight as deep as ever plummet sounded, where stretches the shadow of death, is grand. The look soon became a cry. It may have been literally a vocal cry. The voice was much used by Jews in gladness, sorrow, and worship—especially by great and impassioned souls. This may have been Jonah’s habit on land, the means of preserving his life in the deep, and may have so acted upon the sensations of his submarine custodian as to induce at length the disgorgement. But it was the cry of the soul, which rose from farthest depths in one instant, without injuring natural law, above all heights, to the primal springs of power and earthly providence. He began to be grateful. Some measure of gratitude mingled with his distress from the first, but as he felt himself still alive as time rolled on, then would come a feeling of thankfulness. There was daybreak in the land of the shadow of death. Then, apparently, his soul passed into a more active state of renewed personal consciousness to God. Religious thankfulness nearly always grows into that. The voice of thanksgiving begins with the act of sacrifice. Vows when truly made are paid. The prophet resolved “I will”; acted when deliverance came. The final state of his mind—that into which all other feelings subside and resolve themselves—is a state of entire dependence, involving a quiet and trustful surrender of himself to God. I have done all I can, need not cry any more. If God will accept me for active service I shall be delivered. If not, I shall trust in him: “Salvation is of the Lord” [Raleigh].