What kind of fish is capable of swallowing a human?
My morning men’s group recently finished reading Tozer’s Obedience To Christ. The brother who “leads” was on business trips and vacations for a month, so we finished Tozer without him and then put a vote out to the group as to which video we should watch next. It was a short list, and one of the options was The Book of Jonah by ERIC MASON. I am very familiar with the Book of Jonah, and this seemed like it would have been better than the other options; it was not.
What problems did I have with this version of Jonah?
The primary thing is that Eric sermonized every segment of his video teaching. An example from the group questions download reads like this: You have to spend an extra moment trying to ascertain who the “he” represents (clue: it is all about Jonah).
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He hated Assyria, of which Nineveh was a major urban center.
If you have read your scriptures, then you should know that there was a deep hatred of the Assyrians within the Jewish community. Considering what scripture tells us about the Assyrians, Jonah’s lifetime of harmful interactions with the Assyrians would understandably feed into his racism and hatred.
What are you trying to tell me when you say Nineveh was a major urban center? You make it sound like we have communities separated by nothing more than a mere stone’s throw. How about hundreds of miles?
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He feared how the people would treat him.
Which people group is Pastor Eric talking about, the Jews or the Assyrians?
If it is the Assyrians, a Jew might expect to be violently killed.
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He saw Israel as more deserving of God’s love than Nineveh.
We are not told this by the scriptures, so we are left with only assumptions. However, the Jews express thoughts like this with consistency.
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He had the right theology but the wrong disposition.
How deeply inset was the Torah that they chose to call it theology? Probably none; it was the Law. If I must look at Jonah and wrap him in religious clothing according to his disposition, what would that have been?
Up to the point God asked him to take a message of destruction to the Assyrians, there was NO disposition that any of us would have seen.
Take note, disposition is a reflection of your temperament.
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His personal preferences conflicted with God’s character.
Amazingly, most people miss this obvious point, although, even today, most people do not understand God’s character. If the Ninevehites had not reacted as they did, God would have burned them to the ground, just as He did with Sodom and Gomorrah. Something that falls under the assumption is that we all hold beliefs about God.
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He refused to love the unlovable.
It seems rather evident that we don’t see Jonah’s end, and therefore, anything we say about him is an assumption with no legitimate basis.
Essentially, everything Pastor Eric Mason said was comparable to handing out a study guide on Jonah, similar to what most churches pass out to their Sunday school classes. These study guides are designed to elicit thinking in a certain way while eliminating any notion of free or spirit-led thought. Well, now that you have a feel for how I feel about this video teaching, let’s look at what the scriptures tell us.
Jonah
Dr. Frank Turek, a Christian Apologist, points out that one of the main things that makes God’s word believable is that God makes sure that you are aware of the hiccups, glitches, and things that appear to be failures.
A couple of those would be:
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Adam’s fall (some would call what Adam did treasonous) in the garden, and, in what seems like moments later, Cain, the firstborn under “sin,” killed his brother Abel. (Read Genesis 3.)
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And how Moses, the man who led Israel out of Egypt, killed an Egyptian, was found out, and ran to the desert for forty years.
“The word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying,”
Jonah 1:1 NAS95
Jonah’s background is shown to us in 2 Kings 14.
“In the fifteenth year of Amaziah, the son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of king of Israel became king in Samaria, and reigned forty-one years. He did evil in the sight of the LORD; he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin. He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, which He spoke through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher.”
2 Kings 14:23-25 NAS95
From this, we know: Where Jonah hails from – Gath-hepher; Who his father is, Amittai – if that helps you; and what his only reference is – he prophesied that “the border of Israel, from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of Arabah, would be restored,” and it was by the hand of Jeroboam, the son of Joash king of Israel.
What follows is information derived from Dake’s Bible notes.
a [word of the LORD]The word of Jehovah came to Jonah, the contents of which are stated in Jon_1:2. The same message was repeated with little variation when the prophet was finally ready to obey (Jon_2:2). This or a similar expression is found seven times in the book (Jon_1:1;Jon_2:10;Jon_3:1,Jon_3:3;Jon_4:4,Jon_4:9,Jon_4:10).
b [Jonah]Jonah was a historical character (Jon_1:1;2Ki_14:25)—the only man so-named in the O.T.—which adds to the fact that he was a type of Christ. The name is spelled “Jonas” in the N.T. (Mat_12:39-41;Mat_16:4;Luk_11:29-32). Peter’s father was named “Jona” or “Jonas” (Joh_1:42;Joh_21:15-17). Both Peter and Jonah (2Ki_14:25) came from Galilee, so the statement of the Pharisees in Joh_7:52 is not true.
Date and place: Written in Palestine about 853-824 B.C.
Author:Jonah (Jon_1:1;Jon_2:1;Jon_4:1;2Ki_14:23-27;Mat_12:39-41;Mat_16:4;Luk_11:29-30).
Theme: The book is a story of a bigoted Jew who, after being chastened by the Lord for disobedience, preached to and converted the whole city of Nineveh.
Purpose: To show why the destruction of Nineveh and the Assyrian empire was delayed by God for almost a century; to illustrate the fact that God’s mercy and salvation are for both Jews and Gentiles who will repent and turn to Him; and to typify and illustrate the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as seen in notes on Matthew_12:40.
Pastor Eric Mason seemed to imply that Jonah’s message was meant to bring about the salvation of the Ninevehites.
I suppose that was God’s intent, even though there was nothing stated to describe how they should demonstrate their salvation. Fortunately, we serve a merciful God who looks at the heart, but even though they put on sackcloth and ashes, their “salvation” only lasted about a hundred years.
The Biblical Illustrator tells us.
“We read, in the Second Book of Kings, about Jeroboam II., the powerful and able and sinful ruler of the Northern tribes under whom Amos and Hosea lived and preached, that “he restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God which He spake by the hand of His servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher.”
God’s command to Jonah.
“Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and proclaim to it that their wickedness has come to my attention.”
Jonah 1:2 CJB
At this point, there is NO explanation of what will happen to Nineveh. Watch how Jonah responds to this directive.
“But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the face of Jehovah. And he went down to Joppa, and he found a ship going to Tarshish. And he gave its fare and went down into it in order to go with them to Tarshish, from before the face of Jehovah.”
Jonah 1:3 LITV
Upon receiving his orders, Jonah flees to Tarshish, thinking that God won’t be able to find him there. (What gave you that idea?)
Dr. J Vernon McGee gives us this.
"Instead of going in that direction (to Nineveh), he does a very strange thing. He goes down to Joppa and buys a ticket on the first boat for Tarshish. Tarshish was a city founded by the Phoenicians on the southern coast of Spain. It was the jumping-off place of the west."
” And (Jonah) went down into it in order to go with them to Tarshish.”
He found out where the ship was going, paid the fee, and went down into the hold to take a long nap. If you have ever been fishing on a modern boat, you would know that there are always particular smells, like diesel fuel, fish, and bleach. This, of course, is not primarily a fishing boat, and there was no diesel engine to foul the air or bleach to wash the decks, but there had to be smells associated with an older boat and the familiar rocking of the ship that is working to get you seasick. Sleeping seems to make all that go away.
If you don’t believe that he went below, stay tuned. Scripture will soon support my assertion.
Before I go another step, I want you to remind yourself, who is writing this narrative?
The obvious answer would be Jonah.
Would you dump your failures on your future audience?
Shockingly, God has Jonah do just that. I have heard it said that such honesty is one of the things that make the Biblical narratives so believable.
“The LORD hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up.”
Jonah 1:4 NAS95
Parts of the story to hold on to:
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A great wind;
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an associated storm on the sea;
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and the fact that the ship was about to break up.
If you recall, the Apostle Paul was being taken to Rome when the ship he was on did break up, but that had more to do with stormy conditions that were throwing the ship into the rocky coastline. In the case of Jonah, there was no rocky coastline, it was merely the severity of the deep water conditions that were about to tear the ship apart. How he managed to sleep through this I will never know.
“Then the sailors became afraid and every man cried to his god, and they threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship, lain down and fallen sound asleep.”
Jonah 1:5 NAS95
The things I have heard in studying this book with others. There the assumptions that every one on the ship were devout Jews.
Momentarily we will see that Jonah had gone incognito so that the captain and the men would NOT ask too many questions.
Notice that these guys prayed to their particular god. Since that did not seem to be helping, they began to throw the cargo overboard as though lightening the load would help. All the while, Jonah slept.
“So the captain approached him and said, "How is it that you are sleeping? Get up, call on your god. Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish."
Jonah 1:6 NAS95
“So the captain approached him and said, "How is it that you are sleeping?”
Unless you are very tired, it takes a lot to fall asleep through all that rocking and yelling. I am quite sure that they were yelling at each other.
“Get up, call on your god. Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.”
The captain did not let him sleep. There was no need for Jonah to call upon god, as he knew why the ship men were taking a beating; and, besides that, Jonah did not want god to know where he was or why. How foolish, God knows everything.
As the narrative progresses we will see that Jonah knew that God did care about people, especially those that are innocent.
“Then the sailors said to each other, "Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity." They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.”
Jonah 1:7 NIV
“Cast lots”? This is the Greek word gôrāl: The Word Study Dictionary tells us it is “a masculine noun indicating a portion or lot. A lot was cast, probably a stone or stones, to decide questions or appoint persons for various reasons; for apportioning land (Numbers 26:55; Numbers 33:54; Joshua 18:6, Joshua 18:11)”
It comes across like they were throwing dice.
“They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.”
Isn't that amazing how that happened.
“Then they said to him, "Tell us, now! On whose account has this calamity struck us? What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?"
Jonah 1:8 NASB
“Then they said to him, "Tell us, now! On whose account has this calamity struck us?”
What a bizarre way of thinking. I suppose we are to simply ignore their barbaric technique for extracting information and the assignment of responsibility.
At this time, the primary method of identifying that someone was a Jew was the tassels that hung below their clothing. Google's AI overview tells us that “Jewish people wear tassels, or tzitzit, as a reminder of the commandments of the Torah.”
Jonah did not want them to know he was a Jew. I assume because as a Jew he carried great responsibility, and he chose to not have anything – namely the tzitzit that would have exposed his identity.
They demanded, “tell us, now! On whose account has this calamity struck us?”
“Jonah answered, “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.”
Jonah 1:9 NLT
Look at what Dr. J Vernon McGee tells us about this.
"I am a Hebrew"—that meant a lot. The Hebrews were known to be monotheistic; that is, they worshiped one God, never an idol. They had no other gods before them but worshiped the God, who is the Creator. Jonah says, "I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land." Jonah tells them that he worships the God who made the ocean which they could see right before them being so stirred up by the storm. He made the sea, and He made the dry land also. I think these sailors knew about Israel, but they were pagan and had no knowledge of the living and true God.”
How did they react to what Jonah told them?
“Then the men became extremely frightened and they said to him, "How could you do this?" For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them.”
Jonah 1:10 NASB
At this assertion by Jonah, “the men became extremely frightened.” “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.”
They said to Jonah, “how could you do this?”
The passage tells us that Jonah told them exactly why he was on the ship, which explains how they suddenly knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord.
“So they said to him, "What should we do to you that the sea may become calm for us?"--for the sea was becoming increasingly stormy.”
Jonah 1:11 NASB
Is this like throwing a baby into the mouth of a volcano and hoping that the volcano stops rumbling?
Not very logical. Moving on.
“For the sea was becoming increasingly stormy.”
When the narrative begins, Jonah has gone down into the hold and gone to sleep.
In time, as the boat was at sea, a storm came up and the crew did there best to deal with it, but the storm was severe enough to begin breaking the boat apart. After the captain awakened Jonah, Jonah responded with this bizarre reply.
“He (Jonah) said to them, "Pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm for you, for I know that on account of me, this great storm has come upon you."
Jonah 1:12 NAS95
What promise from God was Jonah leaning on that prompted him to tell the crew to throw him into the sea, from which there would be no coming back?
A passage that Jonah may have known comes from King David.
“When David saw the angel, he said to the LORD, “I am the one who has sinned and done wrong! But these people are as innocent as sheep—what have they done? Let your anger fall against me and my family.”
2 Samuel 24:17 NLT
The Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament is bold enough to tell us this.
“He (Jonah) willingly endures the punishment, desiring to perish and not let others perish on his account,” Jonah confesses that he has deserved to die for his rebellion against God, and that the wrath of God which has manifested itself in the storm can only be appeased by his death. He pronounces this sentence not by virtue of any prophetic inspiration, but as a believing Israelite who is well acquainted with the severity of the justice of the holy God, both from the law and from the history of his nation.”
I am not so sure that we can assign such nobility to Jonah, especially if we have read the entirety of the narrative. They heard what Jonah said, and, for the moment ignored it.
“However, the men rowed desperately to return to land but they could not, for the sea was becoming even stormier against them.”
Jonah 1:13 NAS95
You almost get the impression that they thought he had lost his mind. The obvious factor was the severity of the storm and the associated waves. Anyone going in that water is not going to live.
Up to this point, I have avoided the terminology suicide, and why?
Because the religious connotations are that those who do such commit self-murder and, therefore, are lost to hell's flames forever. I know this because it was a rant that I heard frequently in my household.
And so, what do we do?
We avoid and dance around the obvious because it is too uncomfortable to talk about.
And yet, how do we see God handle this case with Jonah?
He brings Jonah back to life and uses Jonah as an example of the course of action that Jesus would have to travel to bring salvation back to humanity. Jesus angrily retorted to the scribes and pharisees.
“Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, "Teacher, we want to see a sign from You." But He answered and said to them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.”
Matthew 12:38-41 NKJV
We had this discussion during the course of Pastor Eric Mason's video teaching, how that this was NOT Pinocchio, nor did Jonah have a card table and a candle that never gave up it's light. The leader of our group, almost as if he was trying to admonish me, said Jonah was made to live for three days in the belly of that fish. If you insist on buying into that claim, then you might as well pull Matthew chapter 12 from your bibles, as you are scoffing in the face of God's power and Jesus's activity from the cross to the throne.
If this challenges you, then you need to rethink death. Killing the body is only a passing thing, and since the body carries the genetics passed on from Adam, then to us. Sorry, but this body must die because we cannot take this sin-broken body into eternity with us. That is why the soul is preserved, and we are given new bodies.
Romans 6:4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
Romans 6:9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.
And one day soon, death will no longer have mastery over us.
1 Corinthians 15:21 For since by a man (Adam) came death, by a man (Jesus) also came the resurrection of the dead.
If you are still breathing, then this resurrection is primarily symbolic through the acceptance of Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:26 The last enemy that will be abolished is death.
To abolish something is to permanently get rid of it; this will only happen at the Bema seat of Christ, which is an aspect of our being caught up to be with Jesus.
What I just gave you was the shortlist, as this theme is an integral part of our life in Christ.
Do you know why Jesus did not approach Lazarus's tomb until the fourth day after death?
Because the Jews wholeheartedly believed that the soul stayed in the body until the third day. The fact that Jonah is spoken of in this manner allies itself with Jesus' own death that was to come and how He, too, was thoroughly dead when He came off that cross.
Read the eleventh chapter of John's gospel, and you can take in the entirety of the story, but pay close attention to these words.
“So when Jesus came, He found that he had already been in the tomb four days.”
John 11:17 NKJV
Jesus waited so that there would be no questions as to whether He, through the power of God, raised Lazarus from the dead or if it was just a fluke. As Monty Python used to say in several of their comedy skits, he's only half dead.
This discussion would be null and void if Jonah had been anything other than dead.
“Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to return to land, but they could not, for the sea continued to grow more tempestuous against them. Therefore they cried out to the LORD and said, "We pray, O LORD, please do not let us perish for this man's life, and do not charge us with innocent blood; for You, O LORD, have done as it pleased You." Jonah 1:13-14 NKJV
They understood that Jonah would die in those waves. Isn't it odd that there is no talk about suicide or the aftermath of murder?
Maybe God is not as focused on that as we are with our religious ideals and traditions.
And so, into the ocean, went Jonah.
A thought that keeps running through my mind is the number of people who commit suicide by police officers. While most of us realize that running at a police officer with a knife or a pellet pistol is a sure way to die, few of us call it suicide.
Whatever their nationality, these men knew that there was a responsibility for the insupportable death of a human.
“So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice to the LORD and took vows.”
Jonah 1:15-16 NKJV
However, they picked up Jonah, and he, like Jesus, went compliantly.
What was the idea behind Jonah being thrown overboard?
I believe that God fully intended to halt Jonah's escape and change his direction. God also used Jonah as a future analogy for Jesus—this is where Jonah's death played a role.
Look, you can try to sell people fairy tales, but the reality is that God made the laws of physics. Apply vicious winds to any large body of water, and you will have waves sufficient to sink boats. I have seen this on two occasions, and I had to steer our little fishing boat out of one of them.
Even if you could stop the wind, it would still take several minutes for the waves to calm down.
Does information like this make the Bible a book of lies?
Hardly, but what it does show us is the influence humanity has upon the telling of the story. In the case of Jonah, did he, as he was splashing wildly in the deadly waves, time the situation in order to relate how long it took for the seas to calm? I scarcely think so as he had other things on his mind, especially since most people who commit suicide really don't want to and will try to fight what they have done. And we are about to meet an extremely large fish that had been specially ordered for the purpose of taking Jonah into its mouth.
“Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”
Jonah 1:17 NKJV
How long can you stay alert without oxygen?
About 15 seconds.
How long can your brain live without oxygen?
About 4 minutes.
to be a man-eater, it can undoubtedly open its mouth wide enough to suck a human inside. Considering that a human is merely an annoyance to a fish that feeds on krill, it becomes evident that God had to motivate this fish to grab Jonah, hang on to him (underwater) for three days, and then spit him out (dead) on a beach, most likely in the region of Aleppo Syria. I would imagine that it was a short conversation.
Here, we end chapter one of Jonah, but I have inserted several provocative terms and assertions, such as suicide, murder, and the death of Jonah.
Why?
I have had these discussions with “fellow believers,” and I am aware that many choose to believe that Jonah remained alive in that fish for three days. This false belief, based on tradition and a lack of knowledge, forces you to ignore logic, reason, and physical laws that govern our ability to live and breathe—which God made and integrated into our daily lives.
When it comes to death, there are several forms and applications.
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Physical death, which is the cessation of breath, is what most of us associate with death.
No doubt, there is a loss of friendship and companionship.
Does your inability to breathe kill your spirit?
The answer is no, although I suspect many people have, in a sense, killed their spirits.
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The other death has everything to do with your spirit or soul. The perplexity is that the soul is eternal, made in the image of God, who is a spirit. So, death, as far as God is concerned, is eternal separation from God.
The more important question you need to answer is, what kind of death did Jonah experience?
Obviously, he ceased to breathe, and yes, his body died because of that action. Held in the mouth of that big fish, Jonah began to decompose. Another obvious problem that feeds into our traditional supposition is that Jonah remained alive inside that fish. A part of our being able to understand what the book of Jonah is telling us lies in how he writes. This takes us into Jonah chapter 2, where he speaks as though he is alive. Ask yourself, could God have given him an in-depth review of his life in those moments on the beach where he regained his mental capabilities? Could Jonah have been given a recollection of what happened to him in those first 15 seconds before he blacked out?
Think about the unimaginable possibility of a dead Jonah getting spewed upon a beach and then having any awareness of what had just happened. The most reasonable solution is that God deposited all these thoughts into Jonah’s head and heart, including the events that brought Jonah to the beach in Syria. Many of you see this as nothing short of preposterous, but that is exactly what I think when you try to convince me that Jonah remained alive inside the belly of this massive shark.
Consider Moses. Scripture implies that the history of humanity on earth was passed on to Moses, and he re-conveyed that information to us through the books of Genesis and Exodus. If you were to be honest, you would have to say that there are things in Genesis alone that can make your head swim, such as Cain, who, having killed Abel, says, surely people will find me and kill me. People, where did he get the idea of people? I say this because the false but common understanding is that there are now only three people on the earth.
Surely, Moses struggled to understand the things he was asked to write, and even more incredulous, he was asked to believe them.
This can only be God.
