The Submarine Theologian Text: Jonah 2:1-9
Introduction: The Pursuing Grace of God
We come now to one of the most remarkable prayers in all of Scripture. It is a prayer offered from the most exclusive prayer closet in human history, the belly of a great fish. We must resist the temptation to domesticate this story, to turn it into a flannelgraph lesson for toddlers about listening to your parents. This is not a cute story. This is a terrifying account of a man being swallowed alive, descending into the abyss, and being entombed in a living submarine for three days and three nights. It is a story of divine judgment, profound desperation, and astonishing grace.
Jonah the prophet was a man on the run. He was running from a direct command from God. God said, "Go east to Nineveh," and Jonah immediately bought a ticket on a ship going west, to Tarshish, the farthest point on the known map. He was running from his calling because he hated the people God wanted him to save. He wanted Nineveh, the wicked capital of the Assyrian empire, to receive fire from heaven, not mercy from Yahweh. So he ran. But you cannot outrun the Hound of Heaven. God hurled a great storm at the ship, and in a scene of high drama, the pagan sailors, who proved to be more righteous than the prophet of God, threw him into the sea at his own request.
And this is where our story picks up. Jonah is not just in the water; he is in the grave. And it is from the grave that he finally does what he should have done in the first place. He prays. This prayer is not a simple plea for help. It is a dense, theologically rich psalm, composed almost entirely of quotations and allusions to other psalms. In the darkness, in the depths, with the digestive juices of a great fish as his immediate environment, Jonah becomes a theologian. He is a submarine theologian, and what he learns down there in the dark is the bedrock of all true faith: God's sovereignty in judgment and His unmerited grace in salvation.
This prayer is a perfect illustration of what it means to be brought to the end of yourself. It is a picture of what happens when God, in His mercy, wrecks all our rebellious plans. And most importantly, as Jesus Himself would later tell us, the experience of Jonah is a sign. It is a prophetic portrait of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. What Jonah experienced physically and covenantally, the Lord Jesus experienced fully and substitutionally. To understand this prayer is to understand the gospel.
The Text
Then Jonah prayed to Yahweh his God from the stomach of the fish, and he said,
"I called out of my distress to Yahweh, And He answered me. I cried for help from the belly of Sheol; You heard my voice.
For You had cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current surrounded me. All Your breakers and waves passed over me.
So I said, 'I have been driven away from Your sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.'
Water encompassed me to my very soul. The great deep surrounded me, Weeds were wrapped around my head.
I went down to the base of the mountains. The earth with its bars closed behind me forever, But You have brought up my life from the pit, O Yahweh my God.
While my soul was fainting within me, I remembered Yahweh, And my prayer came to You, To Your holy temple.
Those who regard worthless idols Forsake their lovingkindness,
But as for me, I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to Yahweh."
(Jonah 2:1-9 LSB)
A Prayer from the Grave (v. 1-2)
The prayer begins by establishing the setting and the theme.
"Then Jonah prayed to Yahweh his God from the stomach of the fish, and he said, 'I called out of my distress to Yahweh, And He answered me. I cried for help from the belly of Sheol; You heard my voice.'" (Jonah 2:1-2)
Jonah begins his prayer in the past tense. This is a prayer of faith, recounting what has already happened in the spiritual realm, even while he is still physically entombed. He rightly interprets his location. He is not just in a fish; he is in "the belly of Sheol." Sheol is the Old Testament word for the grave, the realm of the dead. Jonah understands that he is, for all intents and purposes, a dead man. He has been swallowed by death itself. This is the necessary starting point for any true prayer of repentance. You must recognize that you are utterly helpless, dead in your trespasses and sins, before you can cry out for resurrection life.
He cried out from his distress, from the grave, and he declares in faith, "He answered me... You heard my voice." How could he know this? Because he was still alive to pray. The fact that he was not instantly consumed, either by the sea or the fish, was itself an act of God's preserving mercy. He was in a place of judgment, but it was a judgment intended to save him, not destroy him. This is the nature of God's discipline for His children. It feels like death, it takes us to the very gates of Sheol, but its purpose is to bring us back to Him.
God's Sovereign Hand in Judgment (v. 3)
Here we find the theological core of Jonah's repentance. He identifies the true author of his calamity.
"For You had cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current surrounded me. All Your breakers and waves passed over me." (Jonah 2:3)
Notice who he credits. He doesn't say, "Those pagan sailors cast me into the deep." He says, "You had cast me." This is a monumental shift in perspective. Jonah now sees the hand of God not just in his rescue, but in his predicament. The sailors were the secondary cause, the instruments. God was the primary cause. He recognizes that the storm and the waves are not random forces of nature; they are "Your breakers and Your waves."
This is the beginning of all true wisdom. Until you can see the sovereign hand of God in your trials, you will remain a victim, full of bitterness and complaint. But when you understand that your circumstances, even the painful ones brought on by your own sin, are governed and directed by your covenant God, you can stop blaming others and start dealing with Him. Jonah takes a line directly from Psalm 42, a psalm of lament, and applies it to himself. He sees his personal disaster as an instrument in the hands of his personal God. This is not fatalism; it is faith.
The Turn of Faith (v. 4)
Having acknowledged his state and God's sovereignty, Jonah now makes the great turn of faith.
"So I said, 'I have been driven away from Your sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.'" (Jonah 2:4)
He first states the grim reality of his condition. To be "driven away from Your sight" is the essence of the covenant curse. This is what Adam and Eve experienced when driven from the Garden. It is what Cain experienced. It is the cry of the damned. Jonah is experiencing a taste of hell, a total separation from the presence and favor of God.
But then comes that glorious, defiant word of faith: "Nevertheless." Despite my feelings, despite my circumstances, despite what I deserve, "I will look again toward Your holy temple." Where is the temple? In Jerusalem. Where is Jonah? In the belly of a fish at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. He cannot physically see the temple, but he turns the eyes of his heart toward it. Why the temple? Because the temple was the place of sacrifice, the place of atonement, the place where God had promised to meet with His people and forgive their sins. In looking to the temple, Jonah was looking away from himself and his sin and looking toward God's provision for sin. For us, the temple is no longer a building of stone; it is the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we are in the depths, we must do as Jonah did: look away from our sin and look by faith to Christ, our temple and our sacrifice.
The Depths of Death and the Hope of Resurrection (v. 5-7)
Jonah now elaborates on the totality of his "death," which makes his rescue all the more glorious.
"Water encompassed me to my very soul... I went down to the base of the mountains. The earth with its bars closed behind me forever, But You have brought up my life from the pit, O Yahweh my God." (Jonah 2:5-6)
This is rich, poetic language for being well and truly dead and buried. The weeds wrapped around his head are like a burial shroud. He has sunk to the very foundations of the world. The "bars" of the earth have locked him in forever. From a human perspective, there is no escape. This is the end of all self-reliance. Jonah cannot swim his way out. He cannot negotiate his way out. He is utterly and completely helpless.
And right there, at the point of absolute hopelessness, comes the second great "But" of the prayer. "But You have brought up my life from the pit, O Yahweh my God." He gives God the glory for his resurrection. He addresses God personally and covenantally, "Yahweh my God." The one who cast him down is the only one who can lift him up. This is the gospel pattern: death and resurrection. We are buried with Christ in baptism so that we might be raised to walk in newness of life.
Verse 7 tells us the trigger for this whole realization: "While my soul was fainting within me, I remembered Yahweh." At the very point of giving up, when his own strength was completely gone, he "remembered" God. This is not a simple mental recall. In Hebrew, to remember is to act upon the covenant. He remembered God's promises, God's character, and God's faithfulness. And his prayer, launched from the abyss, found its target in God's holy temple.
The Folly of Idols and the Foundation of Salvation (v. 8-9)
"Those who regard worthless idols Forsake their lovingkindness, But as for me, I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving... Salvation belongs to Yahweh." (Jonah 2:8-9)
Here is the lesson Jonah learned in the deep. He diagnoses the root of his rebellion. He had been regarding a "worthless idol." What was his idol? His own nationalistic pride, his hatred for the Ninevites, his own will set against God's will. An idol is anything you serve and trust in place of the true God. And Jonah sees the terrible price of idolatry: those who cling to idols "forsake their lovingkindness." The word is hesed, God's covenant loyalty, His steadfast, faithful love. To choose an idol is to walk away from the only source of mercy in the universe. It is spiritual suicide.
He renounces this idolatry. "But as for me..." He sets himself in opposition to the idolaters he once was. He vows to offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving and to pay his vows, meaning he will now fulfill his prophetic commission. He is not trying to bargain with God. He is responding to a grace already received.
And he concludes with one of the most profound statements in all of Scripture, the central theme of the entire Bible summed up in three Hebrew words: Yeshua l'Yahweh. "Salvation belongs to Yahweh." Salvation is of the Lord. It is not a cooperative venture. It is not God doing His part and us doing ours. It is God's work from beginning to end. God provides the Lamb, God strikes the blow, God accepts the sacrifice, and God raises the dead. Jonah learned in the belly of a fish what every Christian must learn: we contribute nothing to our salvation but the sin that made it necessary.
The Sign of Jonah
We cannot leave this passage without remembering why Jesus said it was so important. The scribes and Pharisees asked for a sign, and Jesus told them the only sign they would receive was "the sign of the prophet Jonah."
"For 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).
Jonah's prayer is a dress rehearsal for the work of Christ. Jesus was the one truly cast into the deep by the Father. On the cross, all of God's breakers and waves of wrath against our sin passed over Him. He was the one truly driven from God's sight, crying out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" He descended into the pit, into the heart of the earth. The bars of the earth closed behind Him.
But God brought up His life from the pit. On the third day, He was resurrected, and in His resurrection, He secured our salvation. Jonah was saved from the fish to go preach repentance. Christ was raised from the dead to grant repentance and eternal life.
Therefore, if you find yourself in the belly of some great fish, if you are overwhelmed by your circumstances, your sin, your despair, the way out is the way of Jonah. Acknowledge the sovereign hand of God in your trial. Look away from yourself and look to your Temple, Jesus Christ. Renounce your worthless idols. And confess with Jonah, and with the whole company of the redeemed, that salvation, from first to last, belongs to the Lord.