Jonah 1:17

And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

The crux of the miracle

The real miracle was that Jonah should survive so long in his strange prison. “That violates the laws of nature.” But let us once understand Christ’s profound saying about a Father who “worketh hitherto” (John 5:17), that is, who has never taken His hand from off the thing which He has created, but is ceaselessly active and operative in His creation. Once let us understand that all force, in the last reach of our thought, is with force, and that the forces of nature are only the many-sided puttings forth of that force of the will of God, outspoken and expressed in that Word of His power by which He upholdeth all things. Once understand that there are no “laws of nature” to be violated, except the rules which He has laid down for His own ordinary and orderly action in governing His world. Once let it be seen that whilst for our sakes it is generally best and happiest that He should keep to His own rules, and should very seldom indeed do in any way differently, yet He is at perfect liberty to choose whether He will keep to His ordinary and orderly plan, or for some special reason will in any particular instance turn aside. Then, if there is as good evidence for the fact as the case admits of, and, above all, if plainly there is good reason for the fact, we may as reasonably fred no more difficulty in the miracle than in the general providence. What is ordinary is of God, just as much as the extraordinary. The natural is of God, as much as the supernatural. Once more it may be said that if our eyes were not too much the eyes of the children, we should see that the wonder is the orderly, reliable, age-long, ordinary providence, rather than the special thing, done just once, to meet an emergency for which the ordinary rule and method did not sufficiently provide. And the special is not an after-thought. It is provided for in the whole great plan of the Worker. It is one of His rules. It quite as much needed God to keep Jonah alive year after year in the atmosphere and upon the earth, as to keep him alive for three days within the body of the great fish. (H. J. Foster.)

The miracle of the whale

No miracle has been more frequently quoted, or more severely scrutinised.

I. Establish such principles as will warrant the fact.

1. There are some things of which even the Divine power is incapable. Things inconsistent or contradictory cannot be asserted of God.

2. There are other instances in which the Divine power may be easily supposed to interfere for the suspension or even contradiction of those laws which God hath given to a material world.

3. Besides these parts of creation with which we are in some measure acquainted, there are, doubtless, many others of which we remain totally ignorant. The infinitude of the Divine power is the basis on which this observation is built.

II. Consider the particular difficulties with which it has been thought this miracle was attended.

1. The act of deglutition.

2. The difficulty of respiration in the body of a fish.

3. The impossibility of resisting for so long the digestive powers of so huge an animal.

III. There were designs to serve which were worthy of such interposition.

1. It was of important advantage to the prophet.

2. It was of vast importance to the mariners.

3. It was of vast advantage, we may believe, to the people of Nineveh.

4. It was of the utmost importance if you consider it in its relations to the promised Messiah.

5. The sign of Jonas is intended for standing use to the Church, to the end of the world. (James Simpson.)

The miracle of the great fish

Strauss said, “He who will rid the world of priests, must first rid religion from miracles.” But the Christian religion stands or falls with the supernatural. A man may believe in a living God who works miracles, and yet hesitate and recoil at the extraordinary one which is narrated in the history of Jonah. No one will say that every man who believes that God can work miracles is bound to accept implicitly every miraculous event described in the Bible as having really happened, and as being the work of God. Let no one think that he is not a Christian because he must hesitate about the literal interpretation of this miracle of the “great fish.” Instead of adopting any artificial interpretation of this miracle, it would be better to suspend our judgment, and acknowledge that we cannot come to any conclusion about it. At any rate there is only the choice between saying that the whole history of Jonah is a parable, or an allegory, including the preaching in Nineveh, and saying that every event in it is related as an actual occurrence. To suppose that Jonah fell into a “mysterious hiding-place” is only to set aside the biblical miracle, and put another and more wonderful one in its place. We seek an answer to the general question, whether it is so wonderful a thing to believe that God works miracles: or whether, on the contrary, the belief that He must and does do so, is not founded on the very being of God, and on His relations with men. If we arrive at that decision, the question of the miracle by which Jonah was saved will be settled. A God without miracles would be the greatest miracle of all. If we have not a God who works miracles, we have no living God; and if no living God who communicates with men, then no God at all. Whoever knows anything of the living God, cannot possibly think that God has tied His own hands, once for all, with laws of nature. The rank and privilege of man demands Divine miracles. God must work for us in extraordinary and exceptional ways, or we could neither fear nor love Him, and He would soon be indifferent to us. (Otto Funcke.)

Jonah’s preservation

I. An ordinary event in the providence of God. It was not a miracle that a large fish should swallow Jonah. Instances have been known in which sharks have swallowed men.

II. What may be called a special providence of God. A remarkable coincidence of ordinary providences leading to some important result we generally regard as a special providence.

III. We have a miraculous providence of God. That the prophet should have lived in the fish was a miracle. And the miracle is the more striking because conscious ness continued. Learn--

1. That there is no way out of a plain duty except through chastisement.

2. That the place of prayer can neither add to nor take from the value of prayer.

3. That the inferior creatures may become instruments of moral instruction to man.

4. That the fish was honoured by being thus brought into the plan of God for Jonah’s recovery to the way of duty. Consider--

(1) The object and design of the miracle.

(2) The Disposer and Ruler of the action. “The Lord.”

(3) The manner of doing it. “The Lord prepared.”

(4) The instrument. “A great fish.”

(5) The end of its preparation. To swallow up Jonah.

(6) The time during which Jonah continued in the fish. “Three days and three nights.” (Outlines by a London Minister.)

Jonah in the sea

Mercy and truth, or an innate tendency towards kindness, and an essential love of rectitude form the most prominent features of the revealed character of God. A God all mercy would be a God unjust. The demands of justice were rigorously exacted, and the prophet was hurled into the deep. Why such severity? Jonah had sinned presumptuously against God, and he must bear the penalty. In this phase of Jonah’s experience, which we now consider, we find “mercy rejoicing against judgment.”

I. The prophet’s imprisonment. Note--

1. The singularity of the mode of imprisonment; the agency of God in preparing the prophet’s cell. On the supposition that Jonah retained his consciousness when cast into the mighty deep, it must have been with emotions of indescribable horror that he saw the jaws of this marine monster expanding to receive him.

2. The term of Jonah’s captivity. Explain Jewish reckoning “three days and three nights.”

II. The prophet’s prayer. Jonah retained his consciousness during the term of his imprisonment. Evidently we have only the substance of the prophet’s prayer. Note the evidences which his spiritual exercises furnish of sanctified affliction.

1. The spiritual exercises with which the prophet’s prayer is identified.

2. The conclusion of unbelief. “I am cast out from Thy sight.”

3. The victory of faith. “Yet will I look again towards Thy holy temple.”

4. The ardour of Jonah’s gratitude.

5. His emphatic ascription. “Salvation is of the Lord.” Notice the evidence of spiritual reclamation which the prophet’s prayer supplies. See his altered feeling towards God: the rekindling of the spirit of devotion: the vigorous action of faith. In the expression of his faith Jonah embodied the sentiments of former saints. Jonah was evidently cured of his folly in flying from God.

III. The prophet’s deliverance. This was miraculous in its character. Jonah was conveyed back safely to the Holy Land, and cast upon the dry shore. It was intended to test the sincerity of the prophet’s penitence, to secure the fulfilment and success of his errand, and to typify the mission of Christ. (John Broad.)

A restrained fish

The chapter closeth with the narration of Jonah’s preservation. Though thus pursued by justice in a fish’s belly, where, in a miraculous way, he was kept three days and three nights. Doctrine.

1. When God is pursuing the rebellion of His children in a most severe way, yet doth He not altogether cast off His mercy toward them, but out of the abundance thereof, moderates their affliction: for “the Lord,” pursuing Jonah, “had yet prepared a great fish to swallow him up.”

2. God’s providence over rules and directs the motions of irrational creatures and sea monsters, as pleaseth Him. For “ the Lord had prepared a great fish,” etc., whereas it knew nothing but to range up and down in the sea, and swallow him as any other prey.

3. God may have a mercy and proof of love waiting upon His people, in a time and place where it would be least expected; for Jonah meets a mercy in the heart of a raging sea, into which he is cast in anger, as to be destroyed.

4. Albeit the mercy of God will not destroy His guilty people in their afflictions; yet His wisdom seeth it not fitting at first totally to deliver them, but will have their faith exercised.

5. God can, when He seeth fit, preserve His people from ruin in an incredible and miraculous way. Therefore Jonah is not only swallowed whole by the fish, not being hurt by its teeth; but is preserved in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, where he was in hazard of choking for want of breath, or of being digested by the fish into its own substance. (George Hutcheson.)