Jonah 2:10

And the Lord This should rather have been rendered, For the Lord; because what follows was not done after the preceding thanksgiving, but before it; and it is mentioned here only to show the cause or subject of the thanksgiving. The Lord spake unto the fish, &c. God's almighty power is represented in Scripture as bringing things to pass by his bare will and command: see Genesis 1:3. He willed that the fish should cast Jonah up on the dry land, and the fish did so. Various are the traditions of the Orientals respecting the place where Jonah was disembogued; but, as Calmet well observes, amidst such doubt and obscurity, the best part is absolute silence, and the sincere declaration that the matter is entirely unknown. “The fame of Jonah's deliverance appears to have spread among the heathen nations; and the Greeks, who were accustomed to adore the memory of their heroes by every remarkable event and embellishment which they could appropriate, added to the fictitious adventures of Hercules, that of his having continued three days, without injury, in the belly of a dog, sent against him by Neptune.” Gray's Key. Huetius (Demonst. Evang., Prop. 4) supposes that Jonah's deliverance from the whale's belly gave occasion to the Greek story of Arion, who, after he was cast into the sea, was conveyed by a dolphin to the port of Corinth.