The path of obedience is the path of blessing. Peace and communion are found therein. Disobedience and self-will may seem to prosper for a time, but He who loves us infinitely will not suffer His own to continue thus. Disaster ensues from His all-wise, chastening hand. In the midst of the storm, while others were praying, Jonah was sleeping. Conscience was being stifled by his self-will. How different it was with the Lord Jesus! When the storm burst upon the Sea of Galilee, He slept peacefully in the stern of the vessel. As the perfect Man of faith, He could repose His weary head, assured of the Father's care. His sleep astonished the disciples as much as Jonah's sleep astonished the heathen mariners, but how great the contrast between the fugitive prophet and the man Christ Jesus!
When Jonah was cast out of the ship, a great fish swallowed him. "Prepared" does not mean specially created for the purpose, (although that would be an easy matter for the Maker "of the sea and the dry land"); it simply means that the fish was "appointed" for this service. The same word is thus rendered in Dan. 1:5 with reference to the food intended for Daniel and his companions. Much labor has been expended upon the great fish, as to what it was, and also upon Paul's thorn in the flesh, as to its precise nature (2 Cor. 12); in both cases there are spiritual lessons of the highest importance, which such discussions tend to obscure. Jonah could certainly have said after his weird experience, "Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept Thy word." Psa. 119:67.
“Jonah prayed unto Jehovah his God out of the fish's belly." Notice that it was "His" God, for all sense of relationship was not lost. (Contrast 1 Sam. 16:21; 1 Kings 17:12; 18:10.) From many unlikely quarters, prayer has ascended to God through the ages, but never anything quite like this. Prisons, caves and mountains have resounded with cries of anguish, but not the belly of a fish! The chastened prophet owned the divine hand in what had befallen him. Jonah 1:15 says of the sailors, "they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea," but in Jonah 2:3, Jonah says to God, "Thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas." He thus owned the divine hand, and humbled himself under it. He put into practice 1 Peter 5:6, 7 several centuries before the verses were penned. He was thus in the way of recovery. Deliverance can only come to souls in distress when the hand of God is acknowledged. Jonah, although in the belly of the fish, looked in faith towards God's holy temple, and he was sure that He who dwelt therein would hearken to his cry. "When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto Thee, into Thine holy temple." Jonah 2:7. This is very beautiful, as showing that even when a saint gets into a backsliding condition, he knows to Whom to turn in his trouble and is confident that God will not forsake him.
The prophet's reference to the temple is remarkable in another way. Jehovah's temple stood in Jerusalem, and Jonah belonged by birth to the ten tribes who had turned away from God's center, and who were identified with idolatrous sanctuaries in Bethel and Dan. (1 Kings 12:25-33; Amos 7:13.) Nevertheless, in-spite of the religious confusion which disgraced Jehovah's land in his time, Jonah's heart turned towards the center which was divinely established in happier days. To Solomon, Jehovah said at the dedication of the temple, "Mine eyes and Mine heart shall be there perpetually." 1 Kings 9:3. The glory-cloud still remained there, and thither the hearts of the faithful ever turned, wherever might be their abode. It was in this spirit Elijah set up an altar of twelve stones, although Carmel was in the territory of the ten tribes. (1 Kings 18:31.) God's principles and the thoughts of His heart towards His people, although in grievous failure, influenced both Elijah and Jonah.
In like manner, souls who today are taught of God, maintain "there is one Body, and one Spirit," (Eph. 4:4) and firmly refuse to recognize any other religious unity of any kind whatsoever. For His saints now, God's center is not a material structure, but the name of the Lord Jesus. (Matt. 18:20.) Do our hearts respond to this?
Jonah's prayer in his second chapter is largely made up of quotations from the Psalms. His mind was evidently saturated with the written Word. Is this true of us also? It was not a day of pocket Bibles, nor indeed were the Scriptures all yet written, but if Jonah was unable to read in his strange prison, he could feed upon the Word already learned and stored up in his mind and heart. Let us not be behind him in this. The whole revelation of God is in our hands, containing wonderful counsels of grace and glory unknown in Old Testament dispensations. Shall we not seek to possess the whole in our inmost souls, so that if ever our Bibles are torn from us, we shall still have that which will nourish and sustain our faith?
Meditation upon the Psalms and the deliverances wrought for the writers, gave Jonah confidence. In his apparently hopeless condition, he expressed his confidence in God-given terms. He was sure of deliverance! He was persuaded that he would once more worship in the house of the Lord! "Salvation is of the Lord," was his triumphant finish!
The work was done; the lesson had been learned; pride and self-will had received a heavy blow; the prophet was at the end of his resources, and his hope was in God alone. Every sinner has to learn this when he first draws near to God, and the erring saint has to come back to it whenever he goes astray.
W. Fereday