Jonah 2:3

For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.

Ver. 3. For thou hadst cast me into the deep] A graphic description of his woeful condition, which yet he remembereth now as waters that are past, and is thankful to his Almighty deliverer: see the like in David, Psalms 116:3, and learn of these and other saints to acknowledge the uttermost extremity of a calamity after we are delivered out of it. For hereby thy judgment will be the better instructed and the more convinced; thine heart also will be the more enlarged to admire, and thy mouth the wider opened to celebrate the power, wisdom, and mercy of God in thy deliverance. As if this be not done, God will be provoked either to inflict heavier judgments, or else to cease to smite thee any more with the stripes of a father, and to give thee up for a lost child.

For thou hadst cast me into the deep] Not the mariners, but thou didst it, and therefore there was no averting or avoiding it. Thou hadst cast me with a force, as a stone out of a sling, or as that mighty angel, Revelation 18:21, that took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, "Thus with violence," &c.

In the midst of the seas] Heb. in the heart of the seas; so Matthew 12:40, "So shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." And Deuteronomy 4:11, we read of the heart of heaven, that is, the middle of it, as the heart sitteth in the midst of the body as king of that Isle of Man. Now, if it were so grievous to be cast into the main sea, what shall it be to be hurled into hell by such a hand, and with such a force into that bottomless gulf, whence nothing was ever yet buoyed up again?

And the floods compassed me about] Aquarum confluges, the sea, whence all floods or rivers issue, and whereto they return (Homer calleth the ocean ποταμον, a river, by the figure meiosis, a Pοταμοιο ρεεθρα ωκεανου. Iliad. xiv.). Danaeus here noteth that out of that gulf of the sea, which of Plato is called Tartarus, that is, hell, the waters do flow into the veins of the earth (as it is, Ecc 1:7), losing their saltness in the passage. Here Jonah cried out, as Psalms 69:1,2, "Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into the deep waters, where the floods overflow me." It was only his faith that held him up by the chin; and, like blown feathers, bore him aloft all waters.

All thy billows and thy waves passed over me] All; so it seemed to Jonah, that God had poured out all his displeasure upon him; but he suffereth not his whole wrath to arise against his people; neither remembereth iniquity for ever. Thy billows or surges; not the sea's, but thine. God seemed to fight against Jonah with his own hand. David likewise in a desertion complains that all God's waves and floods were gone over him, Psalms 42:7. In this case (for it may be any one's case) let us do as Paul and his company did (in that dismal tempest, Acts 27:20, when they saw neither sun nor star for many days and nights together), cast anchor of hope, even beyond hope; and then wait and wish for day. God will appear at length, and all shall clear up; he will deliver our souls from the nethermost hell.

a A figure of speech by which the impression is intentionally conveyed that a thing is less in size, importance, etc., than it really is. ŒD