CHAPTER TWO
2:1 “Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly.”
This beautiful prayer of Jonah’s is recorded for us by the Spirit of God so that we may learn from it of our Lord’s experience in death itself. It is similar in many ways to the Psalms and needs to be learnt by heart. It is a moving and fragrant portion of scripture, a petition and a tribute to the greatness of God. Our Lord Jesus taught us, “As Jonah – so the Son of Man.” Jonah is made to go into death and to come out again. The “fish” is the expression of eternal life. When the flood drowned all life in Noah’s day only the fish survived outside the ark, showing us that the fish symbolizes eternal life, that which the flood cannot destroy or harm in any way. So Jonah does not die, but is actually swallowed up by the great fish. When we go into death with our Lord Jesus Christ we do not die but are swallowed up by the greater eternal life. Even those who fall asleep in Christ cannot be mourned over as those without hope mourn, for we realize they have been swallowed up by eternal life, to reappear at the coming of the Son of Man. All this Jonah clearly teaches us, leaving no doubt of the greatness of our God, who prepared the great fish in the first place. But what we have to learn from Jonah is that our Lord actually went into death for us, that He lay three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, and Jonah’s prayer is the expression of His feelings , of the Lord’s feelings, and we may learn of our Lord Jesus by looking at Jonah’s prayer.
2:2 “Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly, and said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.”
Our Lord Jesus suffered on the cross of Calvary for us, dying the just for the unjust, and bearing our sins in His own body on the Tree. He was oppressed and He was afflicted yet He opened not His mouth. Silent and alone as the darkness deepened He bore the awful penalty for sin that should have fallen upon you and me. But in death He is shown to cry unto the Lord and be heard. “Out of the belly of hell cried I, and Thou heardest my voice.” Entombed in the earth, shut in by a great stone sealed, His body awaits His own resurrection. He is dead, for the body is lifeless, bound in its linen shroud, the face covered with the cloth, the figure anointed with spices. His spirit has returned to God His Maker, for He gave up the Ghost saying, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit,” and there is no doubt of that literal death. The soul is departed, and as the body without spirit is lifeless, so the soul must go to the place of the dead. Death lays claim to the soul, it belongs in the region of death, and into the kingdom of death truly the soul of the Lord Jesus had to come. The Missing Prophet is found in the kingdom of death, and He came and preached to the prisoners there. If in life He was the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, how much ore so is He there in the kingdom of death! It is the last enemy, the last barrier, the last hostile element in that hostility which began in Bethlehem of Judea.
