Ravenous Fish Gulps Jonah

(3 Minute Read)

How would you like to be thrown from a ship into a savage, seething sea and almost drown?

Imagine then being swallowed whole by a huge fish!

Think about spending three days and three nights in the stomach of that fish!

How could you breathe? How could you eat, drink, or sleep? How could you avoid being digested?

Imagine being vomited up out of the fish onto dry land.

Could you possibly survive such an experience? Could you ever recover?

The Old Testament prophet Jonah tells this riveting, almost unbelievable story in only 48 verses (Jonah 1:1-4:11).

Jonah was pitched overboard into a raging sea and then swallowed by a great sea monster. Yet three days and three nights later, the creature vomited Jonah onto the shore alive. Can people today believe such a fantastic story? Is it really true or just a myth?

By God’s sovereign appointment, a rebellious prophet (Jonah), a raging storm, and a ravenous fish collided to illustrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and to bring revival to a sin-soaked city. Jonah’s preaching spurred Assyrian Nineveh to believe in “the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.” (Jonah 1:9; 3:3-10)

Did a Whale Swallow Jonah?

Some say whale throats are too small to swallow people. This is not true. Actually sperm whales and some extinct whales have large enough gullets to swallow adult humans. Great white sharks do as well.

Scripture does not specify that a “whale” swallowed Jonah. The Hebrew word Jonah uses means “great fish” (Jonah 1:17). In the New Testament, when the gospel writer Matthew refers to these events, he uses a Greek word meaning “sea monster” (Matthew 12:40). The creature that swallowed Jonah was probably a whale, a shark, a giant fish, or one of the sea monsters originally created on Day 5.
God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:21)

In the books of Jonah and Matthew, the Hebrew and Greek words for “stomach” (Jonah 1:17) and “belly” (Matthew 12:40) are general terms that can be used for various organs (stomach, heart, womb) or for the entire abdomen. “In the stomach or belly” means “inside” without specifying the exact location.

Jonah could have lodged in a whale’s spacious laryngeal pouch. With thick elastic walls, it could isolate a man from digestive processes and also supply air.

If a shark swallowed Jonah, he could have been safe from digestion. Stomachs of dissected sharks often contain completely undigested food. Unlike humans, sharks can regulate their stomach processes and retain food undigested for a week.

On the other hand, if the fish’s gastric juices bleached Jonah white, this could explain why the people of Nineveh responded so readily to his preaching. Was Jonah’s disfigurement the reason why Jesus called him a sign to the Ninevites? (Luke 11:30)

Credibility

An intriguing detail in Jonah’s prayer from inside the great fish adds to the credibility of Jonah’s account. In his prayer he recounted his experience of being cast into the sea:
“For You had cast me into the deep,
Into the heart of the seas,
And the current engulfed me.
All Your breakers and billows passed over me. …
Water encompassed me to the point of death.
The great deep engulfed me,
Weeds were wrapped around my head.
I descended to the roots of the mountains.“ (Jonah 2:3,5,6)

Jonah almost drowned in the depths of the sea before the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights (Jonah 1:17). In his prayer Jonah mentions descending to the roots of the mountains in the sea.

How did Jonah know about mountains in the sea? Normally no one would know in Jonah’s day that coastal mountain ranges extended below water to the sea floor. There were no submarines in Jonah’s day to discover that the Mediterranean Sea is full of underwater mountains.

According to Jonah’s prayer, he learned about the mountains on the sea floor through personal experience. The God-breathed Scriptures report mountains in the depths of the sea long before today’s scientists discovered them.

Exactly who was Jonah? Who were the Ninevites to whom Jonah preached? Is the book of Jonah history or is it myth? These questions will be covered in the next two blog articles.

Questions to Ponder

1. Why do skeptics want so badly to discredit the book of Jonah?
2. How would you defend the historical reality of Jonah and his record?

Share your thoughts on these questions in the comments below. It could encourage or help another reader.

For Christ and His Kingdom. Soli Deo Gloria.

This is the first of three blog posts on Jonah.
Read the sequels:
Jonah & Nineveh
Jonah, Jesus, & the Resurrection

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©William T. Pelletier, Ph.D.
“contending earnestly for the faith”
“destroying speculations against the knowledge of God”
“for the defense of the gospel”
(Jude 1:3; 2 Cor 10:5; Phil 1:16)
Wednesday April 3, 2019 A.D.

Jonah said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.” (Jonah 1:9)

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