The waters encompassed me, to the soul The deep was round about me, The weeds were wrapped about my head.
Jonah prays from inside the fish and looks back at the moment he sank. The words fit a drowning man exactly. Commentators also read them as the low point of a runaway prophet and as a picture of the death of Christ.
The verse turns inward. It is not only the sea around him. The words "to the soul" point past what water can do to a body.
Here we find desperate reality. It was not only the waters about him on the outside, but those dark waters of death entered into his very soul… Words like "The waters encompassed me, to the soul" tell of an even deeper suffering than the outward sufferings that came from man.
G C Willis (older translations read "even to the soul"; the ESV renders it "the waters closed in over me to take my life")
Jonah does not blame the storm or the sailors who threw him overboard. He looks straight past them to God.
Jonah at this moment thought neither about the storm nor about the sailors. It was the Lord who had cast him into the deep… All the figures he uses — the seas, the floods, billows and waves — were literally true in his case, and they also show that the Lord's hand was upon him for judgment. Everywhere in the Scriptures these are the symbols of God's judicial wrath. The effect was that he felt cast out of God's sight, and his soul fainted within him… He came to see his utter nothingness before God, and all the more so because of his own sin.
Jonah keeps going down. At this point, though, he is no longer the one choosing the direction.
Three steps, says Jonah, I took myself — down to Joppa, down to the ship, and down into its sides to sleep. But when God took hold of me, I went deeper down still — "down to the bottoms of the mountains."
Jonah had refused to preach to Nineveh, a foreign city he looked down on. Now look where his flight has landed him.
Could Gentile Nineveh be in a worse plight? … A Jew and a prophet in the depths of the sea, with the weeds wrapped about his head, because of the displeasure of Jehovah! Surely someone in such a state may well stop his boasting, and no longer despise others. Could anyone sink lower? Proud Adam was behind the trees of the garden; proud Jonah is at the bottom of the sea… In the belly of the fish he finds out that, Jew as he was, he needed the salvation of God just as much as any Gentile could need it.
Jonah's prayer borrows its words from the Psalms, and one writer follows those words to the cross. He draws the parallel down to what was on the head.
Our Lord went into the jaws of death and died the sinner's death, the substitute of sinners. Most of the Psalm passages Jonah wove into his prayer foretell the sufferings of Christ. He cried to God for deliverance, and God heard Him. The answer was His resurrection. … While Jonah's head was wound about with the seaweeds of the deep, our Lord bore the crown of thorns, the emblem of the curse, upon His blessed head.
The parallel has a limit. What Jonah said about himself, Christ endured in fact.
Some people would tell us that the Lord Jesus only thought God had forsaken Him, as in Jonah's case: "I said, I am driven away from Your sight." But it was very different with our Lord and Saviour. There on the cross He bore our sins. With all those mountains of sins upon Him, God must turn away from Him. He truly did utter that awful cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"… Here, indeed, the waters surrounded Him, to the soul.
- Down — Jonah took three steps away from God. Then God's hand took over and carried him lower still.
- Deeper — the water did not stop at his skin. It reached the soul, and that is the suffering the verse is about.
- Judgment — in Scripture, seas and floods picture God's wrath. Jonah is describing a sentence, not just a shipwreck.
- Levelled — pride ends at the sea bed. A prophet with weeds round his head needs God's salvation as much as the city he despised.
- Deeper still — Christ went into far deeper waters. Jonah only thought he was shut out of God's sight. Christ, bearing our sins, was forsaken in fact.
I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; The bars of the earth [closed] upon me for ever But thou hast brought up my life from the pit, O Jehovah my God.
Jonah 2:6 is the lowest point of the book: a man sunk to the roots of the mountains, shut in by bars for ever. In the same breath he praises God for bringing his life up out of the pit.
Jonah's descent had a pattern. He chose the first three steps himself. God took the rest, lower than his own will ever planned — and low enough to be saved.
We must notice one more step down for poor Jonah. He had gone down of his own accord, down to Joppa, down into the ship, down into the sides of the ship: three sad steps down. God had brought him down into the sea, then down into the fish, and now God brings him down further still: "I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever." Now Jonah was down about as far as he could go. It is well for us when we are down… It is when God brings us down, when He brings our pride low, that He is able to save us. As soon as Jonah reached the very bottom he said this. Then at once we read, "yet you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God." Jonah's pride was broken. He was as low as he could get.
"The earth with her bars" is the language of a locked prison. One writer notes the word appeared — the permanence was real to Jonah's feelings, not to his God, and his eyes went upward anyway.
The prophet's eye of faith was looking from the depth of his prison and his distress straight upwards, to a higher temple — to God's sanctuary. He "lifted up his eyes to the hills," the only place his help could come from, and it did come… He had gone down to the roots of the mountains, and the earth with its bars appeared to be around him for ever. His soul fainted within him. He was very close to hopeless despair.
Jonah never blames the storm or the crew. Every image he piles up — sea, floods, billows, waves — carries one meaning throughout Scripture, and he takes it from God's hand.
He did not get tangled up in second causes, as we so often do — and by that we lose all the blessing of the Lord's dealings with us… And what rest of soul it gives to take everything that happens to us from the hand of the Lord Himself! It stills every complaint. It opens the ear to God's voice. It puts the soul in a fit state to profit from the discipline it is passing through. He also confesses that the Lord's hand was on him in judgment. All the figures he uses — the seas, the floods, billows and waves — were literally true of him, and they explain this too: everywhere in Scripture they are symbols of God's judicial wrath.
Notice the tense: "you brought up my life." Jonah says this while still inside the fish. The quote below uses the older wording "corruption" where the ESV has "the pit."
Like every city of refuge, the whale's belly was Jonah's shelter in the middle of judgment — the place of life to him in the region of death. And there he talks of salvation. "You have brought up my life from corruption," he says, "O Lord, my God… salvation belongs to the LORD." Earlier, in the ship, he had heard the thunder of judgment. Now, in the fish's belly, it is the still small voice of mercy. He knows salvation with as much certainty of heart, though not with the same comfort, as if he were on dry land again.
One writer sets Jonah's depth beside a far deeper one.
The waters God sent the prophet Jonah into were deep indeed… But the waters of death that the obedient Son of God went down into for our disobedience were deeper — deeper beyond compare. "Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls." Not only were the waters of death beneath Him and around Him; all the waves and billows of God's wrath went over Him.
The bars could not hold Him either, and for a reason Jonah never had:
But, blessed be God, Christ went down into death. As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so the Son of Man went down into the heart of the earth for the same length of time. But who could prevent His rising again? It was death here that was without strength, and not man.
One writer reads the sign of Jonah on two levels at once: the Saviour, and the nation.
Jonah, as a sign, suits both the Lord Himself and Israel as a nation, as the Gospels let us know. Israel must go through death and resurrection… Jonah's own death and resurrection is a real picture, a pattern, of his nation's history and of his Saviour's history.
- Down — Jonah chose the first three steps. God took the last ones, lower than his own will ever planned.
- Bottom — the low place is not the end of the story. When pride is broken, God can save.
- Bars — the prison only appeared to hold him for ever. Faith looked up from inside it.
- Up — Jonah praises for rescue while still in the fish. The place of judgment had become a shelter: life in the region of death.
- Higher — the Son of God went down further, under wrath as well as water. Death had no strength to hold Him. The same sign covers Israel's resurrection too.