great (in any sense) · adjective, masculine singular absolute
fish
דָּ֣גdag
H1709
a fish (often used collectively) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
up
לִבְלֹ֖עַliv.Lo.a'
H1104
to make away with (specifically by swallowing) · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct
Jonah
יוֹנָ֑הyo.Nah
H3124
Jonah · proper noun, a man's name
Jonah
יוֹנָה֙yo.Nah
H3124
Jonah · proper noun, a man's name
belly
בִּמְעֵ֣יbim.'Ei
H4578
used only in plural the intestines · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct
fish
הַדָּ֔גha.Dag
H1709
a fish (often used collectively) · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
three
שְׁלֹשָׁ֥הshe.lo.Shah
H7969
three · noun, common both genders singular absolute
days
יָמִ֖יםya.Mim
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
three
וּשְׁלֹשָׁ֥הu.she.lo.Shah
H7969
three · conjunction + noun, common both genders singular absolute
nights
לֵילֽוֹתlei.Lot
H3915
properly · noun, common feminine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Matthew 12:40 For as Jonas 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 th…
Luke 11:30 For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation.
Matthew 16:4 A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he…
Psalms 104:25-26 So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.
Habakkuk 3:2 O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in…
Jonah 4:6 And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief…
Genesis 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Jonah 1:11–end
It is plain that Jonah is the man for whose sake this evil is upon them, but the discovery of him to be so was not sufficient to answer the demands of this tempest; they had found him out, but something more was to be done, for still the sea wrought and was tempestuous (Jon 1:11), and again (Jon 1:13), it grew more and more tempestuous (so the margin reads it); for if we discover sin to be the cause of our troubles, and do not forsake it, we do but make bad worse. Therefore they went on with the prosecution.
I. They enquired of Jonah himself what he thought they must do with him (Jon 1:11): What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm to us? They perceived that Jonah is a prophet of…
prepared a great fish--not created specially for this purpose, but appointed in His providence, to which all creatures are subservient. The fish, through a mistranslation of , was formerly supposed to be a whale; there, as here, the original means "a great fish." The whale's neck is too narrow to receive a man. BOCHART thinks, the dog-fish, the stomach of which is so large that the body of a man in armor was once found in it [Hierozoicon, 2.5.12]. Others, the shark [JEBB]. The cavity in the whale's throat, large enough, according to CAPTAIN SCORESBY, to hold a ship's jolly boat full of men. A miracle in any view is needed, and we have no data to speculate further. A "sign" or miracle it is e…
Now the Lord had prepared a great fish - דג גדול dag gadol.
This could not have been a whale, for the throat of that animal can scarcely admit a man's leg; but it might have been a shark, which abounds in the Mediterranean, and whose mouth and stomach are exceedingly capacious. In several cases they have been known to swallow a man when thrown overboard. See the note on Mat 12:40 (note), where the whole subject of this verse is considered at large. That days and nights do not, among the Hebrews, signify complete days and nights of twenty-four hours, see Est 4:16, compared with Est 5:1; Jdg 14:17, Jdg 14:18. Our Lord lay in the grave one natural day, and part of two others; and it is most lik…
The Church Fathers
Did Jonah, then, on this account, think that repentance was unnecessary for the pagan Ninevites, when he tried to avoid his duty of preaching? Or was it not, rather, that he foresaw that the mercy of God would be poured out on the heathen also, and so feared it would prove him a false prophet? Actually it was because of a pagan city, which did not yet know God and which sinned in ignorance, that the prophet was almost lost. And he would have been lost, were it not for the fact that what he endured was a type of the Lord's suffering, by which pagan penitents also would be redeemed.
It is also your duty, O bishop, to follow the examples of those that have gone before and to apply their judgments skillfully to the cases of those who want words of severity or of consolation. Besides, it is reasonable that in your administration of justice you should follow the will of God. As God deals with sinners and with those who return, you should act accordingly in your judging. Now did not God by Nathan admonish David for his offense? And yet as soon as he said he repented, God delivered him from death, saying, "Be of good cheer; you shall not die." So also, when God had caused Jonah to be swallowed up by the sea and the whale upon his refusal to preach to the Ninevites, when yet he prayed to God out of the belly of the whale, he retrieved his life from corruption.
The last question is about Jonah, and it is not put as if it were taken from Porphyry but as if it were a laughingstock of the pagans. It is expressed thus: "Please tell me what we are to think about Jonah, who is said to have been three days in the belly of a whale. It is improbable and unbelievable that he should have been swallowed up with his clothing and should have been inside the fish. If it is figuratively said, please explain it.… I have noticed that this sort of question is a matter of much jest and much laughter to pagans. The answer to this is that either all the divine miracles are to be disbelieved or there is no reason why they should not be believed. We should not believe in Christ himself and that he rose on the third day, if the faith of the Christians feared the laughter of the pagans.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Fish · .Jonah swallowed by — .Jonah swallowed by
Jonah · Di — Di
Types Of Christ · Jonah — Jonah
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah,.... Not from the creation of the world, as say the Jews (p); for this is to be understood, not of the formation or making of it; but of the ordering and disposition of it by the providence of God to be near the ship, and its mouth open to receive Jonah, as soon as he was cast forth from thence: and a great one it must be, to take him at once into its mouth, and swallow him down its throat, and retain him whole in its belly; and such great fishes there are in the sea, particularly the "carcharias", or dog fish; the same with Triton's dog, said to swallow Hercules, in which he was three days; and which fable perhaps took its rise from…
Jonah 1:17
17. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
17. Et paravit Jehova piscem magnum ad vorandum Jonam; et fuit Jonas in visceribus piscis tribus diebus et tribus noctibus.
What the Prophet here briefly relates ought to be carefully weighed by us. It is easily passed over, when we read in a few words that Jonah was swallowed up by a fish, and that he was there three days and three nights: but though Jonah neither amplified or illustrated in a rhetorical manner what is overlooked by us, nor adopted any display of words, but spoke of the event as though it were an ordinary thing, we yet see what th…
(Heb. Ch. 2:1). "And Jehovah appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah." מנּה does not mean to create, but to determine, to appoint. The thought is this: Jehovah ordained that a great fish should swallow him. The great fish (lxx κῆτος, cf. Mat 12:40), which is not more precisely defined, was not a whale, because this is extremely rare in the Mediterranean, and has too small a throat to swallow a man, but a large shark or sea-dog, canis carcharias, or squalus carcharias L., which is very common in the Mediterranean, and has so large a throat, that it can swallow a living man whole.
(Note: The aqualus carcharias L., the true shark, Requin, or rather Requiem, reaches, according to Cuvier, the…
Some critics consider it impossible that Jonah could be delivered from death in the belly of a great fish. In making this judgment, they oppose themselves to one of the book’s main theological themes—that God is supremely sovereign over nature. If God exists, and he created and controls nature (1:9, 16; see also Gen 1:21), a miraculous event of this magnitude is not unfathomable. The book presents the fish episode as a historical event. • No indication is given as to the species of the fish, nor is identifying a species crucial to validating the significance of the account. Granted God’s creative power, the fish that swallowed Jonah might well have been specially formed and appointed by the…
