In the Belly of the Fish

Midweek Meditations: Jonah 1:15-2:10

In our previous midweek meditation, Jonah fled God’s call to Nineveh and jumped onboard a ship sailing toward Tarshish instead. His disobedience endangered everyone aboard during a violent storm. While pagan sailors prayed desperately, Jonah slept—eventually choosing to be thrown overboard rather than pray for these Gentiles. His narrow view of God as solely Israel’s deity blinded him to God’s purposes for all nations. Yet God’s plan prevailed—the sailors found faith despite Jonah’s rebellion. We now continue Jonah’s journey from below.

---

So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Jonah 1:15-17

When God Won’t Let You Go

Jonah’s descent continues. He has gone down to Joppa, down into the ship, down into the inner part of the ship, and now down into the depths of the ocean itself. His flight from God has led him to the ultimate low point—quite literally. But even here, at what should be the end of his story, God intervenes.

Once again we encounter God’s sovereignty. Throughout Jonah, we’re repeatedly reminded that all of creation is the Lord’s. Jonah is never a step ahead of God: He flees—but the sea is the Lord’s, and God brings a storm. He chooses death in the waves—but God appoints a great fish to swallow him up. God’s reach extends even to the depths where we believe we’ve finally escaped him. The great fish becomes not Jonah’s end but a womb for rebirth.

Jonah cannot escape God’s sight and hand, not even in death. And as he will discover, even in Sheol (the place of the dead, also see Psalm 139:8): God is there.

In this bizarre circumstance, confined in the uncomfortable belly of a great fish, Jonah finally does what he should have done all along:

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish.

Jonah 2:1

Here we go!

When Jonah can descend no further, he turns to God. He prays. And interestingly, his prayer is the only thing highlighted during his stay in the belly of the fish. Not the smell. Not the squishiness. Not the undigested sea creatures. Not the darkness. The focus is entirely on what this crisis reveals about Jonah’s heart. What does the prophet have to say to God after this ordeal?

I called out to the Lord, out of my distress,
and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and you heard my voice.
For you cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas,
and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows
passed over me.

Jonah 2:2-3

His language is telling.

Jonah describes himself as being in “the belly of Sheol.” While he hasn’t literally died and gone to the place of the dead, the belly of the fish has become, for him, a living Sheol—a living death. From Jonah’s perspective, he is experiencing death—the waters have closed over him, the deep has surrounded him, he’s sunk to the roots of the mountains, and the bars have closed upon him forever.

It’s at this point of absolute rock bottom that Jonah finally prays. This is significant because sometimes when things can get no worse, our hearts can still harden further. Everything falls apart, and we dig in our heels, saying, “Still, I will not speak to God.” Or we blame God all the more.

But like Jonah, distress can also lead us to a breaking point where our only option is to turn to God. Sometimes—and it’s never easy when it happens—God intervenes in our lives by allowing things to fall apart. Nothing seems to work. And God permits this because it’s in the distress of our circumstances, even the consequences we deserve, that our hardened hearts allow the smallest crack. And through this crack, God’s light begins to shine in.

Revisionist History

As we examine Jonah’s prayer more closely, we discover something revealing about the human heart: we like to rewrite history. We gloss over the messy parts and make ourselves look better. Don’t believe me? Look at verse 3:

For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas.

Sorry, who cast Jonah into the deep?

God?

That’s not how I remember the story—how about you?

Jonah attributes (blames) God for sinking him the depths. God. Jonah is rewriting what happened. This is revisionist history. Nowhere on the boat did Jonah pray or seek direction from the Lord. He simply assumed death was his only option—and on some level he desired it—and instructed the sailors to throw him overboard.

It’s telling that Jonah didn’t jump ship himself. By instructing others to do it, he shifts blame to them, and ultimately to God. He interpreted the circumstances himself and decided what God must want. Now in prayer, he portrays himself as a victim—like a psalmist who suffers innocently at the hand of their enemies.

When we’re confronted with the consequences of our choices, our instinct is often to cast ourselves as victims rather than responsible agents.

What’s glaringly absent from this eloquent, psalm-rooted prayer is any hint of confession. Jonah offers no recognition of his disobedience, no contrition, no apology, not even a halfhearted “sorry not sorry.” Jonah quotes selectively from Psalm 31 but ignores lines in that very psalm like “my strength fails because of my iniquity and my bones waste away.” In fact, he bypasses all the psalms of confession entirely.

To be fair, Jonah expresses some deep truths.

God does hear us when we call out.

God does answer us.

God can deliver us and bring our lives out of the pit.

Even from the depths of our failures and running, God still gives ear to our cries.

But from the focus of Jonah’s prayer, it seems he only turns to these truths in hope of escaping his circumstances. My point is this:

Jonah’s prayer is fundamentally self-centred.

This reminds us that often when we pray from distress, our prayers become myopic and self-focused. We may give very little thought to being with God and returning to God. Instead, our overriding concern is finding help and a way out. We bank on the truth that “God listens, he hears, he can help!” but our hope is merely to be delivered from our circumstances, not delivered into God’s presence.

That’s what's happening with Jonah.

Jonah just wants out of the belly of Sheol.

So—he prays.

Even worse, the idol Jonah constructed out of false ideas about God remains intact. He prays:

Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love

Jonah 2:8

Likely, in praying this, Jonah is thinking about his time on the boat. He still dismisses the sailors as pagans who worship “vain idols,” believing they’ve forsaken their opportunity to know God’s steadfast love. But this is another example of Jonah’s revisionist history. You may recall, it was the sailors who foreshook vain idols and turned to the steadfast love of God. Jonah is the one still paying regard to vain idols, clinging to a wrong understanding of God.

Jonah continues worshipping a “small-g” version of God that isn’t congruent with who God really is. In his prayer, where does God dwell? In verses 4 and 7, it’s “his holy temple.” While there’s truth to this, it’s clear Jonah still sees God as the God of Israel alone, not the God of the nations. He remains convinced God is only to be found in Jerusalem, in the temple—not on that ship, and definitely not in Nineveh.

So when Jonah declares, “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay,” his words ring hollow, just as they did on the ship. As we’ll see next week, when Jonah eventually follows through on his call, it’s pathetic, bare-minimum obedience. His “fear” of the Lord remains questionable at best.

The crux of Jonah's prayer comes in his closing words:

Salvation belongs to the Lord!

Jonah 2:9

Really, Jonah?

Are you prepared for what this means? What if salvation has already come to the sailors on the ship? What if salvation is on its way to Nineveh?

Often when we pray, we don’t realize what we’re really asking for. As Morgan Freeman’s God character says in the movie Evan Almighty: “If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If they pray for courage, does God give them courage? Or does he give them opportunities to be courageous?”

In the same way, you shouldn’t think you can pray “Salvation belongs to the Lord!” while holding onto your false idols. Deep down, Jonah still thinks “Salvation belongs to Israel.” As the book will show us, Jonah is not okay with salvation being shared with Nineveh.

But the twist is that Jonah has inadvertently invited God to deconstruct his idol. He has invited God to teach him the depth and breadth of salvation, and what God’s vision for salvation looks like for the whole world—even the enemies of Israel. If we pray “Salvation belongs to the Lord,” we shouldn't be surprised if the answer looks radically different than we're comfortable with.

… And God Answer a Prayer Like This?

When we look beneath the surface of Jonah’s prayer, we see it’s a mess. He rewrites history. He has a distorted view of events. He blames God for his distress. He doesn’t acknowledge his sin. He still clings to his idol.

Nevertheless, for all his faults, he prays.

And this prayer is the structural centre of Jonah's book.

As Jonah reflects on his story and retells it to us, he sees this broken, confused, messy, self-centred prayer as a turning point. A defining moment. Jonah wants us to see that prayer is the start of renewal. And he wants us to know that God answered this prayer.

Why?

Why would God listen to a prayer like this?

One scholar, Dr. Holbert, says the fish was so disgusted by Jonah’s hypocritical prayer that “It is no wonder that immediately after Jonah shouts, 'Deliverance belongs to Yahweh!' the big fish throws up.” I can’t help but smirk. Yet the passage attributes the hurling not to the fish’s volition but to God:

“And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land”

Jonah 2:10

God still hears Jonah.

God still responds.

God still answers Jonah's prayer to be delivered from the belly of Sheol. We can almost hear God saying, “Alright, spit him out. I can work with him. Faults and all.”

This is good news for us all, isn’t it?

Three Days That Point to Salvation

The answer to why God would listen to such a weak prayer has everything to do with how long Jonah was in the belly of the fish:

Three days and three nights

Jonah 1:17

This rare phrase in Scripture was highlighted by Jesus himself:

For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Matthew 12:40

Jesus descended to Sheol—the place of the dead. The point is that in leaving heaven and glory, Jesus’ descent knew no bounds. He came down and became man. He went deep down and became a servant. He knew death, and he even descended into Sheol. Whatever he did there, we can't know for certain. But here's what we do know:

Jonah tried as hard as he could to descend from God, but he could not outrun God's grace and presence. God was unwilling to let Sheol become a fixed location for Jonah. Jonah was millimetres from crossing a line from which he could never return. He went to Sheol to escape God. But in choosing death over life, he discovered God is willing to descend into the darkest places to rescue us.

Why?

Because Jesus went to Sheol—he descended as deep as one can go—so that Jonah didn’t have to.

The Crack That Lets Light In

By any measure, Jonah is exactly where he should be. He’s dug his own grave and prays possibly one of the most narcissistic prayers in Scripture. Yet Jonah, in writing his book, sees that this broken prayer is what connected him to God’s salvation.

Prayer made the difference between remaining in Sheol forever and being saved.

Jonah reminds us:

God doesn’t save the worthy—he saves the unworthy. He saves people who have dug their own graves, who have run as far away from him as possible, who deserve death. You cannot out-sin God’s grace or descend too far from his reach. On this side of eternity, there is always the opportunity to turn to him.

God isn’t looking for perfect prayers. He’s looking for the slightest crack in us to let the light of his presence in. As flawed as Jonah is, there is a crack—an ounce of openness amid his rampant imperfections. That’s all God needs to work with.

This is why Jonah presents prayer as the turning point in his book.

It wasn’t pretty.

He was still a mess.

There’s still more work to be done in his life.

But God responded and transformed the belly of the fish from a grave into a womb. In hindsight, Jonah sees how God took his self-focused prayer and answered it in ways he could never have imagined—new life burst forth from it.

Before Jonah could find his way to Nineveh, he had to find his way back to God. He had to remember the Lord. He had to pray. And we must do the same. Like Jonah, we’ll discover that our brokenness doesn’t stop God from calling us and using us for his purposes before we have our lives all sorted out.