Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the great fish
2
📚Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the fish’s belly, 2:1 This is surely the strangest place from which anyone ever prayed. But the true and living God can hear us no matter where we are, no matter how extreme our trouble or how great and desperate our need. In the prayer which follows it is significant that Jonah does not pray to get out of the fish’s belly. But since he is turning back to God, it seems that he assumed that God would deliver him – v 9. He may have realized that the fish was God’s way of deliverance from death in the sea.⚜
2 📚and said,
“I cried out 📖 to the LORD
because of my distress,
and he heard me 📖.
I cried out from the belly of hell 📖,
and you heard my voice.
3 📚For you 📖 cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas,
and the floods surrounded me.
All your billows and your waves 📖
passed over me.
4 📚Then I said, ‘I am cast out
of your sight.
Yet 📖 I will look again toward
your holy temple 📖.’
5 📚The waters surrounded me
to the soul.
The deep closed around me,
the weeds were wrapped
around my head.
2:5 Compare Ps 69:1-2.⚜
6 📚I went down to the bottoms
of the mountains.
The earth with its bars
were about to enclose me
forever.
Yet you have brought up
my life from the pit 📖,
O LORD my God.
7 📚When my soul fainted within me
I remembered the LORD,
and my prayer went up to you,
into your holy temple.
2:7 Verse 2; Ps 78:34-35; Hos 5:15. It is sad that people often wait until they are in the depths of trouble before they remember God and seek Him. But it is better to remember Him then than not to remember Him at all.⚜
8 📚Those who regard lying vanities 📖
forsake their own mercy 📖.
9 📚But I will sacrifice to you
with the voice of thanksgiving 📖.
I will pay what I have vowed 📖.
Salvation is of the LORD 📖”.
2:9 Though he is still in the fish’s belly (v 1), he has faith that God will deliver him and enable him to sing and offer sacrifices again.⚜
10 📚And the LORD spoke 📖 to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto the dry land.