God proves here that He holds death and everything in His almighty hand and that it is an easy matter for Him to help us even in indescribable and desperate situations. This seems incredible to us. He is present everywhere, in death, in hell, in the midst of our foes, yes, also in their hearts. For He has created all things, and He also governs them, and they must all do as He wills. This story is recorded for our sakes, and God's omnipotence is here displayed so forcefully to induce us to trust and to believe Him, whether we find ourselves in the grasp of death or in the hands of our enemies. It was not necessary for God to have this story recorded for His own sake, nor for Jonah's own good. The world can talk glibly about divine omnipotence, and it seems easy for everyone to believe that God is almighty whenever this is asserted, but experience demonstrates how many really and genuinely believe this when it is a question of staking life and limb on God's omnipotence and when it is a matter of experiencing the truth of these words for oneself in death and in sin. To come by this truth is hard even for the greatest saints. And yet, to know this and to be familiar with examples illustrating it is comforting. Thus the prophet glories in Ps.
119:52: "When I think of Thy ordinances from of old, I take comfort, O Lord."
The people in the ship are convinced that Jonah must drown and die. This is evident from the fact that they pray God not to let them perish because of Jonah's soul nor to hold them responsible for innocent blood. Thereby they imply that they consider him dead; in fact, they themselves had to be instrumental in killing him, although reluctantly and only in compliance with God's will. However, now that Jonah has disappeared from sight, now that he has died to himself and to the world and that all hope for his life is abandoned, his life and the fruit of his death first begin; for in death he is mightily kept alive. And in that way the people in the ship are also delivered from death, also from unbelief and from sin, and they are brought to a knowledge of God so that they now become pious and true servants of God, such humble and timid servants that they even fear and stand in awe of sinning where they are in reality doing nothing but obeying God. They would like to preserve Jonah's life. They are apprehensive of murdering him by drowning him, although they see that God wants it that way. What pure, God-fearing, and Christian consciences these people now have! The same people who prior to this did not hesitate to commit murder and who were entirely indifferent to obeying God now proceed to make sacrifices to God and to make vows. The various gods on whom they had called earlier are all forgotten. And this was all effected by Jonah and his dying. A servant of God must prove himself so useful that there is nothing about him that does not accrue to the benefit and the welfare of others. We stated earlier12 that the fear of God is just another term for the service of God; for true service of God is to fear and to honor God. Thus these people, too, feared God, that is, they became God's servants and God-fearing men.
1. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying.
THIS does not mean that Jonah prayed these very words with his lips, that he uttered this well-chosen speech. His mood when surrounded by this horrible death was not so cheerful as to compose such a fine song. He merely indicates here how he felt, reproducing the thoughts his heart harbored when he contended with death. For as I have already said,1 we must peer into Jonah's heart prior to his delivery from his dire predicament and death. We must envisage him as doomed. For he was unaware of his delivery, and did not think any other way than that his death was certain and imminent. Thus he felt and tasted death; he died unremittingly. But later, after his recovery and his quickening, he relived the past and in retrospect committed this prayer to writing to the glory of God and the welfare of man. May those gather around here who are of a prying mind and are curious to know about the state of the dead. There are many who would gladly have questioned Lazarus about what he did, thought, felt, and saw during the four days he lay in the grave, John 11:44, as also other dead people whom Christ, the apostles, and prophets raised from the dead. Frivolous babblers appear on the scene and indite a description of the terrible things they beheld, so terrible that they could never regain a cheerful spirit to the end of their days.
Others content themselves with the statement found in Wisd. of Sol. 2:1, saying: "No one has been known to return from Hades" to inform us about conditions in yonder life. I will dismiss Lazarus and other deceased people from my mind and adhere to Scripture, which declares that they are asleep. It seems to me that this slumber dominates them so that they see and perceive nothing. They are more insensible than one is in natural sleep. When they are awakened, they are unaware of where they have been. We want to consider those who do not sleep in that manner and yet are dead, who feel death and hell in death, whom we know still to be alive. However, so far as their perceptions go—which, after all, must be considered,
- 30 and not our knowledge of them—they are dead and without life. These must reveal the real truth to us and satisfy our curiosity regarding the life hereafter, especially the life of the evil people.
2. I called to the Lord out of my distress, and He answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and Thou didst hear my voice.
Jonah begins by praising God's mercy and help and by thanking Him for His deliverance from distress. Thus he first of all holds God's goodness up before our view and then his own need from which he was helped. This first verse of Jonah's prayer teaches us two important and necessary lessons: first, that we must above all else pray and cry to God in time of adversity and place our wants before Him. For God cannot resist helping him who cries to Him and implores Him. His divine goodness cannot hold aloof; it must help and lend an ear. All depends on our calling and crying to Him. We dare not keep silent. Turn your gaze upward, raise your folded hands aloft, and pray forthwith: "Come to my aid, God my Lord! etc.," and you will immediately find relief. If you can cry and supplicate, then there is no longer any reason for worry to abide. Even hell would not be hell or would not remain hell if its occupants could cry and pray to God. It is vain to lament and to bemoan your condition and to fret and to worry about your sad estate and to cast about for a helper. That will not extricate you from your woes; it will only drag you in deeper. Listen and hear what Jonah does. He, too, consumed himself a long time with his distress before he resorted to prayer, as he himself will tell us later. If he had not delayed, he would presumably have been delivered sooner. He also bids and teaches you not to emulate his example in this respect, but he immediately states that he prayed and thus was granted deliverance.
No one will believe how hard and difficult it is to cry and to pray thus. To howl and to lament, to tremble and to doubt, and to cringe and to cower are easy for us; prayers, however, will not pass over our lips. Our bad conscience and our sins make them stick in our throats and weigh heavily on us. Moreover, we feel that God is angry. These are burdens that outweigh the entire world. In short, it is impossible for nature alone or for an ungodly person to throw off such impediments and at once to supplicate that same
God who is angry and who punishes and to refrain from running to someone else. Thus Isaiah declares (Is.
9:13): "The people did not turn to Him who smote them." Nature is far more adept at fleeing from God when He is angry and when He punishes, to say nothing of turning to Him and calling upon Him. It always seeks help from other sources; it will have nothing of this God and cannot abide Him. Therefore human nature forever flees, and yet it does not escape but must thus remain condemned in wrath, sin, death, and hell. Here you can glimpse a goodly portion of hell; you see how sinners fare after this life, namely, they flee from God's anger but never elude it, and yet they do not cry to God and implore Him.
On the other hand, we hear Isaiah's declaration in chapter 28:16: "He who believes [in the precious Cornerstone] will not be in haste." It is as if he were saying: "All ungodly people are forever fleeing from God and His wrath, and yet they fail to escape. The believers, however, are secure through Christ from such terrified fleeing."
It is impossible for nature to act or conduct itself contrary to what it feels. And now that it feels God's anger and punishment, it cannot view God otherwise than as an angry tyrant. Nature cannot surmount the obstacle posed by this wrath, it cannot subdue this feeling and make its way to God against God and pray to Him, while regarding Him its enemy. Therefore when Jonah had advanced to the point of entreating
God, he had gained the victory. And thus you, too, must be minded; thus you, too, must act. Do not cast your eyes down or take to your heels, but stand still, rise above this, and you will discover the truth of the verse (Ps. 118:5): "Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me." Take recourse to the Lord, yes, to the Lord, and to no other. Turn to the very One who is angry and punishes, and resort to no other. The Lord's answer consists in this, that you will soon find your situation improved; you will soon perceive the wrath abating and the punishment lightened. God does not let you go unanswered so long as you can call upon Him, even if you can do no more than that. He does not ask about your merits. He is well aware that you are a sinner deserving of His anger. If it were not for that, God would not punish us.
But nature cannot but constantly insist on contributing something to the conciliation of God; however, it can find nothing. Nature does not know and does not believe that it suffices to call upon God to appease
His wrath, as Jonah teaches us here. All men are constituted thus. When God holds His anger in check and His punishment in abeyance and fills our wants and treats us well, we are so insolent, bold, arrogant, and saucy that no one can get along with us. No menace of God, no alarm of God, no example of His anger avail there. We meet everything with mockery and contempt. And on the other hand, when God does
- 31 punish us, we grow so dejected and despondent that no consolation, no kindness, no mercy is able to revive our courage and to strengthen us. No matter how God deals with us, we are obnoxious. Behold, how haughty the peasants and how abject the lords were in the recent horrible uprising.2 Attempts to plead with and to frighten the peasants availed not, nor did consolation and exhortation serve their purpose with the lords. And today the lords' defiance and arrogance again knows no bounds. Again, to threaten and to alarm is useless. They will not mend their ways until they again feel God's wrath. For human nature will ever remain the same.3
The second lesson that we derive from this is that we must feel that our crying to God is of a nature that God will answer, that we may glory with Jonah in the knowledge that God answers us when we cry to Him in our necessity. That means nothing else but to cry to God with the heart's true voice of faith; for the head cannot be comforted, nor can we raise our hands in prayer, until the heart is consoled. And as I have already said,4 the heart finds solace when it hastens to the angry God with the aid of the Holy Spirit and seeks mercy amid the wrath, lets God punish and at the same time dares to find comfort in His goodness.
Take note what sharp eyes the heart must have, for it is surrounded by nothing but tokens of God's anger and punishment and yet beholds and feels no punishment and anger but only kindness and grace; that is, the heart must be so disposed that it does not want to see and feel punishment and anger, though in reality it does see and feel them, and it must be determined to see and feel grace and goodness, even though these are completely hidden from view. Oh, what a difficult task it is to come to God. Penetrating to Him through His wrath, His punishment, and His displeasure is like making your way through a wall of thorns, yes, through nothing but spears and swords. The crying of faith must feel in its heart that it is making contact with God, just as Christ felt that "a power had gone forth from Him" when He had stopped a woman's flow of blood (Mark 5:30). One perceives that the Spirit's words and works hit their mark and do not miss. But if we cry and pray indifferently, hit or miss, we accomplish nothing. That is rather mockery and hypocrisy in the sight of God.
The second part of this verse is a repetition of what has already been said. For to call on God in the hour of need and to be answered, or to call on God in the belly of hell and to have the voice heard, is really one and the same thing. But Jonah relates this twice to make it more sure and to induce us to believe more firmly that God deals with man as he said. For it is not unusual for Scripture to repeat a truth in order to emphasize it and to make it doubly sure. According to Gen. 41:25, Joseph interpreted the two dreams of Pharaoh identically to show that his interpretation was sure, etc. When Jonah speaks of "the belly of Sheol," he means the belly of the fish. He calls it the belly of Sheol not because the fish is hell, but because the fish's belly was as dreadful as hell to him; Jonah experienced hell in it. He might have used the term "the belly of death"—not because the fish was the same as death, but because Jonah was suffering the agonies of death in it. Jonah is here describing not the fish but his emotions in the fish, namely, that he seemed to be descending into hell when he entered the belly of the fish. Therefore he might have said "out of the belly of my Sheol" or "out of that which was my Sheol."
I am not so sure what hell is like before the Day of Judgment. The notion that hell is a specific place, now tenanted by the souls of the damned, as artists portray it and the belly servers preach it, I consider of no value, for we know that the devils are not yet in hell, but as Peter declares (2 Peter 2:4), they are "in ropes of nether gloom." And St. Paul speaks of "powers and world rulers in the heavenly places" (Eph.
6:12). Christ also terms the devil "the ruler of this world" (John 14:30). To dominate the world, to commit so much villainy, and to create so much misery would be impossible for the devils if they were confined to hell. The agony of hell would surely deter them from this. Scripture also says of many saints that they went down into hell, as Jonah does here. Thus we hear this of Job (Job 17:13), and Jacob laments (Gen.
37:35): "I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning." Scripture uses the word "Sheol" graphically to describe the anxiety and the agony of the dying. It adapts itself to their mood and feelings. And the dying do feel as though they were descending into hell, that is, into God's wrath, although they know of no specific place to which they are departing. Everybody carries his hell with him wherever he may be so long as he feels the final anguish of death and God's anger. In conformity with this, St. Peter in Acts 2:27 interprets Ps. 16:10 as spoken by Christ: "Thou dost not give Me up to Sheol, etc.," and he says (v. 24) that God "loosed the pangs of death." St. Peter wants us to think of "Sheol" as the pain of death that Christ felt when He died on the cross and when He departed this life and passed into the power of God.
However, on the Last Day this will assume a different aspect. Then hell will be a particular place and the - 32 abode of those consigned to it and the eternal wrath of God. But let this suffice. It is not very important whether or not one pictures hell as it is commonly portrayed and described. The fact remains that hell is far worse now—and will be even worse than it is now—than anyone is able to say, depict, or imagine.
3. Thou didst cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood was round about me; all Thy waves and Thy billows passed over me.
Now Jonah comes forward with statements that reveal the emotions that his heart felt before he cried to God. Here we behold his faith embattled and all but defeated. Now he is oblivious of the people who cast him into the sea, saying that this was done by God. "Thou didst cast me into the deep," he says. For that is the way it feels in our conscience, that every misfortune that befalls us reflects God's wrath. Every creature seems like God and God's anger, even though it be but a rustling leaf, as Moses says, Lev. 26:36:
"The sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight." Is this not amazing? Nothing more than a dry leaf lying on the ground, over which little worms creep and which is too weak to protect itself from a speck of dust, shall do this. Job could not think of anything more insignificant and trivial when he wanted to depreciate himself, before God than to compare himself with a withered leaf in the sight of God (Job
13:25). Yet when the hour is at hand, rider and mount, spear, armor, kings, princes, the power and panoply of armies, and such defiant, fussing, and fuming tyrants as otherwise cannot be terrified with hell, God's wrath, and judgment, but who only grow more arrogant and hardened, shall be startled by a rustling leaf.
What valiant fellows we are! We do not stand in awe of God's anger but remain unmoved, and yet we fear and flee from the anger of a frail, withered leaf. The rustling of such a leaf must make earth too confining for us and must become an angry God for us who dared a moment before to challenge and defy heaven and earth. We surely have scant reason to boast of our strength and might! If a dry leaf sways us so, how much more might the deep sea do, of which Jonah speaks here? Yes, what power will the fire of hell and the majesty of God Himself together with all angels and creatures exert on us on the Day of Judgment?
Jonah does not simply say: "The waves and the billows passed over me," but: "Thy waves and Thy billows, etc.," for he feels in his conscience that the sea with its waves and billows serve God and His wrath for the punishment of sin. And so he says: "All Thy waves and Thy billows passed over me," for it seems to him that every wave in heaven and on earth were encompassing him and that God's wrath had concentrated solely on him and that all creatures were in league with God against him. Thus others, too, who are in great distress say: "It seems to me that heaven and earth are pressing down upon me." That is the truly agonizing experience awaiting sinners after this life. Thus the anger of God and His judgment begin and endure forever. This verse bears a resemblance to the word spoken by the prophet in Ps. 42:7:
"All Thy waves and Thy billows have gone over me." It is possible that Jonah borrowed his speech from that psalm.
4. Then I said: I am cast out from Thy presence; how shall I again look upon Thy holy temple?
Now punishment visits the conscience. For Jonah intended to flee from the face of the Lord in order to evade his mission to Nineveh. This was his sin of disobedience. Now he feels that he is really cast out from the Lord's countenance in punishment for his sin that he did not wish to remain in His presence, and he dislikes the thought. Now his heart throbs and tells him: "Look, it seems to me that you have really fled afar from the Lord and have put distance enough between the Lord and yourself." Now sin begins to sting him, and anguish of heart also oppresses him. Jonah's words "I am cast out from Thy presence" may admit of a twofold interpretation. In the first place, it may be understood in a physical sense. Jonah's heart may have told him that he had to die. He may have despaired of ever returning to land alive again and of moving about before God among his people in the land of Israel, from which he had fled. As we heard earlier,5 Jonah's "to flee from the presence of the Lord" meant to flee from the land of Israel, where God had His abode and where He was worshiped. Similarly, we often read in the Second Book of Kings that God removed Israel from His sight and that He threatened to do the same with Judah, that is, to banish the people from the country where His Word and worship prevailed (2 Kings 17:18; 24:20). This interpretation is supported by the subsequent statement of Jonah that he would not again be able to look upon God's holy temple, that is, the temple in Jerusalem. That proves that he was in the throes of death, that he was convinced he was about to die. Here his faith was assailed by great distress and anxiety. There was little room for ewing to God; this was despair of life. And this is not surprising; for who could entertain much hope for life when engulfed in the depth of the ocean and, in addition, when swallowed by a whale?
- 33 In the second place, these words may be taken in a spiritual sense. Jonah may have felt that he, by reason of his disobedience, was eternally east out from God like one of the damned. David often expresses that thought in the Psalter, for instance, when he says in Ps. 31:22: "I had said in my alarm, 'I am driven far from Thy sight.' " In one's conscience sin surely gives voice to such thoughts, particularly in the anguish of death. Therefore Jonah, too, surely felt this as he contended against his despair of God's grace and mercy before he regained his faith and called on God again. All kinds of instances of God's anger and of His punishment of sinners must have come to his mind, for example, Adam and Eve, Cain, the Deluge,
Sodom and Gomorrah. This is one of the types of the real pain of hell that will overtake the ungodly after this life. These two interpretations portray to you what the sinners will do and think after this life; they demonstrate that nothing but dread and fear of death, trembling, and despair will be in store for them eternally. These thoughts of despair came to Jonah when he felt the wrath and the punishment of God physically and externally, as he was cast into the deep and as the waves and the billows passed over him.
This he told us in v. 3 above and continues to tell us in what follows.
5. The waters closed in over me, the deep was round about me; weeds were wrapped about my head.
"How might I be comforted and be hopeful of life with the waters encompassing me round about in the midst of the sea and with weeds wrapped about me and covering my head?" This is like saying: On the shores of the sea, of large lakes, and of ponds it is common to find reeds and cane, and he who is submerged in the ocean is covered by the reeds, that is, he is under the water in which the reeds grow.
Thus everything on the banks of the water and in the water covers him, also the earth of the shoreline.
This is indicated by the words that follow.
6. I sank beneath the roots of the mountains. The earth's bars closed on me forever.
All oceans, seas, and other deep bodies of water are situated in valleys between mountains. They cannot remain on level ground. Thus "the roots of the mountains" are the deepest vales and holes in the sea, where the mountains come together below. Jonah utters all of this as a person drowning in the ocean and pondering his fate, or as a person who witnesses the drowning of another and who reflects on his fate.
As he thinks about himself, he beholds the waves closing in over him and sees the shore on both sides, the reeds, and the land, or the earth. As he is drawn down, it seems as though he were sinking to the very bottom of the mountains. And down there the earth "has closed its bars on him forever," that is, he cannot but think that he must remain down there forever and will never get out again. Like a person confined to a dungeon or prison, with doors and windows barred, so also a person sinking into the ocean's depth is doomed to remain there. In this way the bars of the earth, that is, the mountains between which the ocean lies, have closed on him, that is, the water has trapped him and held him captive and cut off his escape.
There you behold again what kind of thoughts Jonah harbored in the belly of the whale. To food and drink and all else he gives no thought as he grapples with nothing but thoughts of death. Indeed, he despairs entirely of life and gives himself over to death. Crying to God under those circumstances is still out of the question.
Yet Thou didst bring up my life from the Pit, O Lord, my God.
Now the situation is improving. Different thoughts come to mind. Faith again raises its head and strives to win the victory. The despondent thoughts abate. "Just when I lay in the depth of death, when hope was at lowest ebb, yes, when it seemed impossible that I should live, then You appeared on the scene with Your might and miracle and led my life way from death and perdition." The rope breaks when it is at its tightest. Therefore God is called a Helper in need, because He lends His aid when our position is desperate and impossible. But what are the circumstances that are attendant upon God's help? Listen to this!
7. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to Thee, into Thy holy temple.
First God grants grace and spirit to cheer the heart, He reminds it of God's mercy, dismissing thoughts touching on God's wrath, turning the heart from God the Judge to God the Father. But this does not lie in the power of man; for Jonah says here that his soul fainted within him and that faintheartedness was the strength and power of his soul. But the fact that he thinks about himself and begins to have faith is not the work of his soul. The Spirit, and no one else, can bring the Lord to mind. And when it comes to pass that the heart is reminded of the Lord, a new light flares up, life again raises its head, and the heart is emboldened to cry in supplication; and thus its petition also surely finds an ear. That is what Jonah wants
- 34 to tell us when he says in v. 2: "I called to the Lord out of my distress, and He answered me." Now death, wrath, sin, hell, and every vestige of perdition come to an end; all are overcome and consumed by faith based on God's mercy.
When Jonah declares: "My prayer came to Thee, into Thy holy temple," he again refers to the temple in Jerusalem, where God at the time dwelt bodily. The people of Israel were enjoined to pray nowhere but at God's dwelling place, which He had chosen and designated. Thus God declares in Ex. 20:24: "In every place where I cause My name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you." Therefore all who lived in the land or outside the land were obliged to address their prayers and fix their hearts to the place where God sojourned bodily through His Word, to assure that they would worship no other God than Him who sat enthroned over the cherubim on the mercy seat. All prayers had to be directed thither, just as today in the New Testament our petitions must be addressed to Christ, who is our mercy seat, lest we acknowledge any other god, pray to him, and worship him besides Him who dwells bodily in the Man
Christ Jesus. And, in fact, there is no other God.
8. They who observe lying vanities forsake mercy.
The Hebrew text reads: "They forsake their own mercy." However, since this lends the impression in German that Jonah is referring to mercy which is man's own, mercy that he himself shows, I have omitted the word "their own" and for the sake of clarity have used only the word "mercy." For Jonah here speaks of God's mercy and goodness, which is ours, that is, which is offered, promised, and presented to us. It is as though I were to say of Christ: "Who forsake their Christ, or their faith, or their Gospel, etc." After all, not one of these is ours but God's alone, who gives them to us. And yet they are called ours because they are offered and given to be accepted and appropriated by us. With this verse Jonah rebukes the foolish work-righteous and hypocrites, who do not rely solely on God's grace but on their own works. He rebukes the same people because they do not know what faith is, because they have never been in distress where they might have learned how beneficial faith is and how ineffective good works are, and because they do not change but they depreciate grace and appreciate their own doing. Jonah declares that this is vanity. In German this means: "It is nothing and avails nothing before God. Before Him nothing counts but His goodness and mercy, apprehended and confessed by true faith and given us without any work and any merit." It is futile for them to rely on such vanity, he says; it is in vain, and it is lost effort. For it is of no help to them, since their trust and reliance are as invalid as their actions and their vanity are on which they depend. Jonah alludes particularly to his people of Israel, who relied on the Law and on works and who not only snubbed the Gospel or God's grace but also persecuted it, even though it should have been theirs before all other people, for they were the ones to whom it was promised.
9. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to Thee; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the Lord.
Here Jonah again refers to the Jews with their sacrifices and their works. He joins as it were in the words of Ps. 50:13: " 'Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?' They assume that they have discharged their full duty when they have sacrificed bulls and goats. But I hold that a sacrifice of thanksgiving is the truly acceptable offering before God, whereby we praise, extol, and proclaim God's goodness, granted to us unworthy people." Jonah says here: "Because help has been given to me."6 The others, however, do not praise God but rather want to be praised and acclaimed by God for having served and benefited Him greatly with their works. Jonah had possessed this knowledge of the grace of God also prior to this, although not in the same measure in which he has now acquired it in the tempest. For here he truly realizes that God respects no person and no merit, since He helps such unworthy sinners. Before this
Jonah was also steeped in the delusion that God esteemed the person and his work, particularly that of the people of Israel. Even now he has not entirely divested himself of this.
9. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to Thee; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the Lord.
Here Jonah again refers to the Jews with their sacrifices and their works. He joins as it were in the words of Ps. 50:13: " 'Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?' They assume that they have discharged their full duty when they have sacrificed bulls and goats. But I hold that a sacrifice of thanksgiving is the truly acceptable offering before God, whereby we praise, extol, and proclaim God's goodness, granted to us unworthy people." Jonah says here: "Because help has been given to me."6 The