Ver. 1. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God] i.e. Praised God with this Canticum eucharisticum, this gratulatory song, as Tremellius calleth it. That he prayed in the ship, in the sea, in the whale’s belly, we doubt not; but that he chiefly intendeth to show his thankfulness for the return of prayers and the sweet support he felt in the whale’s belly we do as little doubt, see Jonah 2:2,6,7; yea, that this was the substance (though now better methodized) of what he prayed and praised in the bowels of the fish we have cause to believe from this very verse; and therefore also his deliverance is set down, Jonah 2:10, after his doxology. The word here rendered prayed signifieth also, sometimes, to give thanks, as 1 Samuel 2:2; and who knows not that thanksgiving is a special part of prayer? This therefore is prayer. Jonah having prayed, and perceiving that he was heard, and by the goodness of God preserved safe in body and sound in mind, he grows “strong in faith, giving glory to God,” Romans 4:20, and being fully persuaded that he should yet walk before him again in the land of the living. Out of the fish’s belly] Where, though he might seem buried alive, and free among the dead, yet he enjoyed God’s gracious presence, and those strong consolations that made him live in the very mouth of death, and say in effect, as blessed Bradford did, I thank God more for this prison and for this dark dungeon than for any parlour, yea, than of any pleasure that ever I had; for in it I find God my most sweet God always.
Ver. 2. And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction] His lips did not move in affliction, like a creaking door or a new cart wheel, with murmuring and mutinying against God and men; he set not his mouth against heaven (as the howling wolf when hunger bitten), neither did his tongue walk through the earth, cursing the day of his birth, and cutting deep into the sides of such as were means of his misery, Psalms 73:9. But putting his mouth in the dust, if so be there might be hope, he cried by reason of his affliction, Lamentations 3:29. The time of affliction is the time of supplication; no time like that for granting of suits, Zechariah 13:9. God’s afflicted may have what they will of him then, such are his fatherly compassions to his sick children; he reserveth his best comforts for the worst times, and then speaketh to the hearts of his people when he hath brought them into the wilderness, Hosea 2:13. This Jonah experimented, and therefore said, “I cried out of mine affliction unto the Lord.” “ Ad Dominum afflicto de pectore suspirando. ” And he heard me] How else am I alive amidst so many deaths? Here is a visible answer, a real return: O, “blessed be God, who hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me,” Psalms 66:20. Surely as the cloud, which riseth out of the earth many times in thin and insensible vapours, falleth down in great and abundant showers; so our prayers, which ascend weak and narrow, return with a full and enlarged answer. This was but a pitiful poor prayer that Jonah here made, as appears Jonah 2:4; and so was that of David, Psalms 31:22, “For I said in mine haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes: nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto thee.” It would be wide with us if God should answer the best of us according to our prayers, yea, though well watered with tears; since, Ipsae lacrymae sint lacrymabiles, we had need to weep over our tears, sigh over our sobs, mourn over our griefs. Jonah was so taken with this kindness from the Lord his God that he repeats it and celebrates it a second time. Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice] The whale’s belly he calleth hell’s belly, because horrid and hideous, deep and dismal. Thence he cried, as David did, De profundis, from the depths, and was heard and delivered. Yea, had hell itself closed her mouth upon a praying Jonah, it could not long have held him, but must have vomited him up. A mandamus commission from God will do it at any time, Psalms 44:4, and what cannot faithful prayer have of God? there is a certain omnipotence in it, said Luther.
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, Ποταμοιο 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, Ecclesiastes 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 figure of speech by which the impression is intentionally conveyed that a thing is less in size, importance, etc., than it really is. ŒD