Was Jonah truly swallowed by a whale?

In the present case then we have one authority weighing infinitely more than all the difficulties which have been mustered by unbelief. For it is plain that our Lord Jesus singles out the particular point of greatest difficulty and affixes to it His own almighty stamp of truth. Can you not receive the words of the Lord Jesus against all men that ever were? What believer would hesitate between the Second man and the first? The Lord Jesus has referred to the fact that Jonah was swallowed up by the great fish, call it what you will: I am not going to enter into a contest with naturalists whether it was a shark, a spermaceti whale or another. This is a matter of very small account. We will leave these men of science to settle the kind; but the fact itself, the only one of importance for us to affirm, is that it was a great fish which swallowed and afterwards yielded up the prophet alive. This is all one need stand to — the literal truth of the fact alleged. There is no need to imagine that a fish was created for the purpose. There are many fishes quite capable of swallowing a man whole: at any rate such have been. If there was one then, it is enough. But the fact is not only affirmed in the Old Testament, but reaffirmed and applied in the New by our Lord Himself. Any man who disputes this must give an account of his conduct before the judgment seat of Christ ere long.

The highest authority that Jonah lived, and had the experience recorded in this account is the Lord Jesus Christ. The words which He spoke, who is the Truth, are plain and unimpeachable. There can be no secondary meaning; "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, a greater than Jonah is here" (Matthew 12:40-41). Our Lord tells us that there was a prophet by the name of Jonah and that he had the experience related in the book which bears his name. To deny this is tantamount to denying the knowledge and the truthfulness of God. This is exactly what sneering critics do. They have even gone so far as to say that if our ever blessed Lord knew better than He spoke, He acted thus for expediency's sake, so as not to clash with the current opinions among His contemporaries. Others boldly say that He did not know, for He had not access to the sources which are at our command today. In other words the destructive critic claims to have more knowledge than the Lord Jesus Christ possessed in His days on earth.

Especially the great fish and the conversion of the people of Nineveh have often been doubted. But the Lord Jesus confirms both as historical facts (Matt. 12:40-41).

The book of Jonah has been assailed again and again by the opponents of Christianity because of the marvellous nature of the facts which it narrates. These facts, however, have received special authentication from the Lord Jesus Himself. Sceptics have asked: How could Jonah be for three days and nights inside the whale? But the Lord Jesus affirmed that he was "three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish" (Matt. 12:40).

Our Lord believed the story of Jonah and the great fish. The Higher Critics tell us that the book of Jonah is not historical, but simply a story of pious fiction to teach good moral lessons. But our Lord believed that Jonah was a historical person, and that he was actually three days and nights in the belly of the great fish. Modernists scoff at miracles, but if men can make a submarine, that can keep alive twenty or thirty men for days at the bottom of the ocean, is it impossible for God, who made man, to make a great fish capable of receiving Jonah into its belly, and carrying him as a passenger for three days and three nights? Moreover our Lord used this incident as a sign of Himself. We read His own words,

Jonah sacrificed himself in order to save those who were about to perish. But how much greater His sacrifice! Jonah's fate came upon him on account of his sin and disobedience. The Lord Jesus Christ did not suffer for His sins, for He had none, being the Holy, the Sinless One. He died exclusively for others and died for the ungodly. But did Jonah actually die? Did death fasten upon him? Was his body miraculously preserved so that it did not see corruption? Was it a literal resurrection when the fish vomited him out? Jonah did not die physically. But his experience typifies the death and the burial of Christ, and also His physical resurrection. How could Jonah have prayed and cried to the Lord out of the belly of the fish if his physical life had ceased? It was a miracle, however, that Jonah was kept alive.

The three days and three nights have troubled a good many expositors. Not a few teach that in order to bring together the three days and three nights during which our Lord was in the grave, He must have died either on Wednesday or Thursday. The three days and three nights must be interpreted according to Hebrew usage. In Luke 24:21 we read that the two who met the risen Lord said, "And beside all this, today is the third day since these things were done." That was on the first day of the week. Reckoning back, Saturday would be the second day and Friday the first day, the day on which Christ died.

The word tannin, Gen. 1:21; Job 7:12; Ezek. 32:2; and κῆτος Matt. 12:40; refer to any sea monsters, without defining any particular one. In the case of Jonah the Hebrew word is dag, or dagah, a fish; it may not have been a whale: sharks have been known to swallow men entire, and whatever fish it was that swallowed him, it was a miracle that preserved him alive, and caused him to be safely landed on shore again. It is only by denying the miracle that any difficulty arises. The Hebrew word tannin is also translated in the A.V. 'dragon,' 'sea monster,' and 'serpent.'

The result for Jonah was far different from what any man could have expected: "And Jehovah prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." Jehovah's eye was on that parting scene on the deck of that little vessel amidst the storm. Jehovah's eye (an eye and a heart of love and grace) was on His erring servant as he sank under those angry waves; and there where he least expected it, he found a place of refuge — in the belly of the fish. If those dark and stormy waters spoke of death, surely the belly of the fish tells us of the grave. We know that this is so, for our Lord Jesus Christ tells us plainly that Jonah at this time was a type of Himself. "Even as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish three days and three nights thus shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights." (Matt. 12:40) Little did Jonah know the honor that was being put upon him at this moment, in that he was for ever after to be a sign of how his Lord and Master would later on go down voluntarily into death and the grave, in order to save others.

Notice, also, that the Word of God says that God "prepared a great fish." It is true that in the ordinary English Bible, the word "whale" is used in Matthew 12:40, in this connection; yet it is worthy of note that in this passage, the New Translation uses the same word "great fish" as that used in the Book of Jonah. When we shut God out of His own universe we are immediately in difficulties, but when we accept what God says, just as He says it, there is no difficulty whatsoever. God is well able to prepare a great fish, to preserve His servant's life; he is able to have that special fish ready, waiting outside the boat, in exactly the right place, and at just the right time. This is not one miracle only, this is a combination of many miracles, and to the one who knows God, and His ways, there is nothing impossible, or even improbable in what happened here, but rather just what we might expect our gracious God to do for one of His own. This great fish is the first thing the book tells us that Jehovah prepared for His servant, but it was by no means the last. The gourd, the worm, and the sultry east wind, were each in turn specially prepared by God, and each one was just as truly a miracle of God, as the great fish.

Jonah in the Fish's Belly.

We are accustomed to the well-known expression, "Jonah in the whale's belly;" but the Hebrew text makes no mention either of a whale or a shark, speaking only of a "great fish." It was in all probability a miraculous fish, the same as with the miraculous tree in the last chapter. The sceptic and the rationalist, who possess no insight into the word of God except through their scientific spectacles, and whose faith does not go beyond their telescopes and microscopes, object that there is no fish existing with a mouth large enough to swallow a man. As if God, Who created the world out of nothing, could not have prepared a fish large enough to swallow Jonah! "Jehovah prepared" [not "sent"] the miraculous fish. It was even a fish which God had "prepared," we are assured, especially for the occasion, as He did the miraculous tree in the last chapter.

The shipmaster aroused him from his sleep, asking him why he slept and demanded that he call upon his God. The lot is cast and it fell upon Jonah. He might have confessed before but he waited as long as he could. The questions they asked him he answers readily. He confesses that he is a Hebrew, that he fears the Lord, the God of heaven, the creator of sea and land. His confession filled them with fear; they also knew that he had been disobedient for he told them about it. It was a noble confession and shows that though he had fled from the presence of the Lord his heart still clung to Him. He answered the question, what shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? by pronouncing his own sentence. "Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you; for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you." Again we must say these are noble words. He is ready to sacrifice himself and trusts the Lord and His mercy. After the mariners made an unsuccessful attempt to row the ship to land, and calling upon the Lord not to lay upon them innocent blood, they cast Jonah into the raging sea, and the sea became calm. As a result the heathen sailors feared Jehovah exceedingly, offering a sacrifice unto Him and making vows, while the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, in whose belly Jonah remained three days and three nights. Some have stated that the Lord created a special sea-monster for this purpose, but the Hebrew word does not mean "create", it means "appoint." It certainly was not a whale, for whales rarely ever are seen in the Mediterranean sea, nor can a whale swallow a human being on account of the narrowness of its throat. It was probably a species of sea-monster frequently found in that sea and known by the scientific name squalus carcharias, which can easily swallow a human being whole. But the miracle was not that such a fish came up from the depths of the sea and swallowed the prophet, but that Jonah was miraculously preserved in the fish.