{"id":1014,"date":"2009-04-13T11:19:27","date_gmt":"2009-04-13T15:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielgoepfrich.com\/?p=1014"},"modified":"2022-07-15T14:27:40","modified_gmt":"2022-07-15T18:27:40","slug":"jonah-2-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/jonah-2-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonah 2 (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ok, ok, I know – in your Bible the fish is actually mentioned in chapter 1, verse 17. However, in the Hebrew text, chapter 2 actually has 11 verses, not 10, and begins with our 1:17. This actually makes more sense because it keeps the whole fish story in one section.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>That said, Jonah 2<\/a> has suffered more criticism than almost any other passage of the Bible. I mean, think about it – a person swallowed whole by a fish, staying alive for three days, then puked out on land ready to walk several hundred miles and preach! That’s ridiculous!<\/p>\n

As we have already seen in “Jonah (intro)<\/a>“, we have several valid reasons to believe that this event literally happened as recorded. It contains historical names and places; Jesus used it as historical fact, and even drew a parallel to himself; and his listeners accepted it as fact when he referenced it.<\/p>\n

The story itself is actually very short: After the Phoenician sailors threw Jonah overboard,<\/p>\n

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The LORD sent a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and nights. … Then the LORD commanded the fish and it disgorged Jonah on dry land. (Jonah 1:17<\/a>; 2:10<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That’s it – that’s the whole fish story. (Quite a bit shorter than I remember from Sunday School as a kid.)<\/p>\n

There are only a couple of things that I want to consider in this chapter, and I’ll do it in two posts.<\/p>\n

What about the fish?<\/h3>\n

I know, it seems crazy, but it’s actually physically, scientifically possible. The Hebrew phrase translated “huge fish” here is\u00a0dag gadol<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0It actually means “huge fish”. The secret, though, is that dag<\/em>\u00a0refers to “fish animals” as opposed to land animals, sky animals, or humans. So basically it’s a generic word that can mean anything that lives in the sea. Another good translation, then, would be “huge sea creature” or “sea monster”. Whatever it was, it was big.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>There are at least a couple of sea creatures living today that could fit that generic description – sea creature with a big enough mouth to swallow a man whole (preferably without chewing or ripping him to shreds). \u0627\u0648\u0646 \u0644\u0627\u064a\u0646 \u0643\u0627\u0632\u064a\u0646\u0648<\/a> One is the sperm whale<\/a> (from Moby Dick<\/a><\/em>\u00a0fame; picture at the top). It’s definitely big enough, but it could also chew him to death.<\/p>\n

A better option (from the creatures we can observe today) would be the whale shark<\/a> (picture above). As a filter feeder, it sucks in huge amounts of water and filters it back out, keeping just the food in its huge mouth before swallowing. \u0644\u0639\u0628\u0629 \u0631\u0648\u0644\u064a\u062a \u0645\u062c\u0627\u0646\u064a<\/a> It definitely has the capacity to suck a man into its mouth.<\/p>\n

I found this quote on several sites (though I can’t find the source itself). It supposedly comes from an article by University of Maryland marine biologist, Eugenie Clark, in a 1992 National Geographic<\/em>\u00a0magazine:<\/p>\n

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“The whale shark’s unusual digestive anatomy lends itself to Jonah stories. It is easy to imagine yourself being inadvertently sucked into a whale shark’s mouth\u2026<\/p>\n

Sharks have a nonviolent way of getting rid of large objects of dubious digestibility they swallow accidentally. In a process known as gastric eversion, a shark can slowly empty its cardiac stomach by turning it inside out and pushing it through the mouth. bwin sport<\/a> ”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It sounds a lot like the Biblical account of what happened to Jonah.<\/p>\n

There seems to be a couple of important things to take away from this part of the story:<\/p>\n

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  1. Regardless of the type of sea creature it was, God commanded it to do something, and it did it. This is one of the things the sailors noticed – Jonah’s God could control nature. For them it was the wind and the sea; for Jonah it was the fish. Don’t forget that God’s plan and power are not limited by your circumstances.<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. This also reminds us that God is creative. The old saying is that God works in mysterious ways<\/em>. That’s true, but I prefer to remember it as\u00a0God thinks and acts in ways that we can’t<\/em>. Even when our situations seem completely hopeless, God’s plan and power are not limited by your logic or abilities.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0<\/p>\n

    Posts in this series:<\/strong><\/p>\n