I don’t know about you, but when life is going well, my prayer life often slips because there’s no tragedy or difficult circumstance forcing me to rely on my Father. On the other hand, prayer has always been the easiest when times are the hardest because that’s when I realize just how acutely I need the Lord. Jonah found himself in the hardest of hard times—he was trapped in the belly of a fish. Certainly, it was time to pray!

Verses 4–6 record the first part of Jonah’s prayer. Here he models how to cry out to the Lord at our darkest moments—even if our own decisions caused the calamity. The most encouraging part of this prayer is Jonah’s opening, where he declares that the Lord heard his cries: “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry” (v. 2). What a joy that God heard Jonah’s cry and responded to him. And what joy that God hears our cries even “from deep in the realm of the dead” (v. 2)! In this sudden reversal, Jonah must have been relieved that he could not hide from God!

In verse 3 Jonah acknowledges God’s power and sovereignty—it was God who “hurled [Jonah] into the depths.” And in verse 4 Jonah expresses his trust that he would be rescued from the fish’s belly: “I will look again toward your holy temple.” Despite the gravity of Jonah’s situation, and even though he alone caused it, he knew the Lord would deliver him. In verse 6 he declares that “you, LORD my God, brought my life up from the pit.”

Donate to Today in the Word: https://give.todayintheword.org/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin called human nature “a perpetual factory of idols.” We are always looking for something or someone to worship, and it is all too rare that we acknowledge what Jonah says at the end of his prayer from inside the fish: “Salvation comes from the LORD” (v. 9).

But before Jonah comes to this bold declaration, he recounts that “when my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD” (v. 7). In contrast to praying to the Lord, Jonah declared that “those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them” (v. 8). Not many of us would consider ourselves the same sort of idolaters as the pagan sailors who repented and turned to the Lord in Jonah 1. After all, we might not bow down in worship to physical idols. But as John Calvin reminds us, we are constantly producing one idol after another. Perhaps that idol is wealth or work, alcohol or food—anything that we look to in order to fulfill us, to satisfy us, to save us.

Jonah, in his darkest hour, reminds us that “salvation comes from the LORD” (v. 9). The word in Hebrew for salvation is yeshua. We see this name for Jesus in Matthew chapter 1 when an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph to assuage his fears about Mary. The angel says, “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). This name, Jesus, is the English translation of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Jonah uses: Yeshua. Not only is Jonah’s salvation from the Lord, salvation for all of us is from the Lord, because Jesus lived a sinless life and died a substitutionary death on a Roman cross for our sins. What a gift!

Donate to Today in the Word: https://give.todayintheword.org/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot of people struggle with this part of Jonah’s story. How could a man live in the belly of a “huge fish” (v. 17) for “three days and three nights” (2:1)? Preposterous! But when I hear that, I shrug my shoulders and say, “Jesus is God in the flesh, and He lived a sinless life, died for my sins, and was raised to life on the third day!” Now that is preposterous! The God-man dying for the likes of you and me? The perfect Son of God willingly giving His life so we might once again draw near to the Lord? That’s wild—and it’s absolutely true!

In 1:17–2:1 we read that Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, and there he prayed to the Lord. We’ll read his actual prayer over the next few days, but first let’s focus on an exchange Jesus had with the Pharisees (read Matthew 12:38–42). The Pharisees demanded to see a miraculous sign from Jesus, something that would definitively prove that He was who He said He was—the Messiah and Son of God (v. 38). Jesus responded that the only sign they would get was “the sign of the prophet Jonah” (v. 39). Jesus continued, “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (v. 40). Then Jesus told the Pharisees that the Ninevites would condemn the Pharisees because “they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here” (v. 41). Jesus, of course, was talking about Himself! Jesus is greater than the reluctant Jonah, and if the Ninevites believed Jonah, then surely the Pharisees (and we today!) should believe Jesus’ message of repentance and trust in God.

Donate to Today in the Word: https://give.todayintheword.org/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“We did everything we could.” That’s the last thing you want to hear from a doctor because it means that they weren’t able to save the person’s life, despite how hard they tried. I’ve heard the phrase most often from television doctors, but it’s catastrophic when you hear it in real life.

In Jonah 1:13–16 the sailors on the ship found themselves in a situation where they had done “their best to row back to land” (v. 13). But nothing they did was getting them to safety. Instead, “the sea grew even wilder than before” (v. 13). Readers might expect the sailors to care little for Jonah’s life. After all, he was responsible for their deadly dangerous situation, and they were pagan sailors. Their concern for Jonah provides a stark contrast with his lack of concern for their lives when he boarded the ship. Put another way, these pagan sailors showed more love toward Jonah than the prophet Jonah showed toward them, even though Jonah is the one who claimed to “worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (v. 9).

Desperate for the lives, the sailors did what Jonah recommended and “threw him overboard” (v. 15), but not before they cried out to Jonah’s God, pled for mercy, and recognized His sovereignty: “You, LORD, have done as you pleased” (v. 14). Miraculously, “the raging sea grew calm” (v. 15). Having heard the truth about God from the reluctant prophet and having witnessed His power over the sea, “the men greatly feared the Lord” (v. 16). Here we see another contrast: Jonah confessed to fearing God in verse 9 (“worship” in the NIV translates the Hebrew word “fear”), but the sailors’ actions show that they truly fear the Lord.

Donate to Today in the Word: https://give.todayintheword.org/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot of relief comes when we finally own up to our sins and face whatever consequences may come. I’ve felt that relief, I’ve seen the relief on my kids’ faces, and I’m sure you’ve felt that relief as well. I imagine Jonah felt a similar way when he finally told the sailors, “I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you” and then, “throw me into the sea” (v. 12).

Jonah seemed to finally acknowledge his sin and was ready to intercede for the sailors, even if he was not quite ready to go to Nineveh. Even so, Jonah’s response to the sailors’ question about how to calm the storm raises some questions that the book of Jonah doesn’t answer.

First, does Jonah’s response reveal a repentant heart? Or was he simply conceding to the Lord’s overwhelming power with no desire to actually change his ways? Second, was Jonah’s command to toss him overboard done out of selfishness or compassion? That is, did Jonah really want to rescue the sailors by sacrificing his own life? Or did he simply want to die so he did not have to obey God’s call to preach repentance to Nineveh? And finally, did Jonah really think the Lord would let him die in the storm-tossed sea, or did he know, deep down, that God would rescue him so he could fulfill his mission to preach to Nineveh?

The passage raises these questions, but it does not answer them for us. Rather, these verses (and the rest of the book) invite us to meditate on Scripture, to roll these questions around in our minds and to put ourselves in the place of Jonah.

Donate to Today in the Word: https://give.todayintheword.org/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Have you heard the phrase that God can hit straight with a crooked stick? That might be the most apt description of Jonah and his interactions with both the sailors in this passage and the people of Nineveh later in the book. Despite Jonah’s flight from Yahweh and his reluctance to obey God’s calling, the Lord “hits straight” when Jonah opens his mouth to tell the truth about the true God.

In today’s passage the sailors decide to “cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity” (v. 7). Casting lots is similar to throwing dice; it was a common mechanism in the ancient Near East for getting your questions answered by the gods. The idea was that since the person casting the lots cannot control how they land, people could be certain that their outcome was determined by the gods. The Old Testament described a similar tool for determining God’s will, called the Urim and Thummim (see Ex. 28:30). In the case of the sailors, God graciously showed them that Jonah was the culprit, even though they did not yet know the Lord.

Jonah, to his credit, does not shy away from the truth about who he is and who God is. He states, seemingly without hesitation, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (v. 9). This terrifies the sailors, who “knew he was running away from the LORD, because he had already told them so” (v. 10). We can take a few lessons from this interaction. First, God is gracious to show pagan sailors the truth about Jonah and the storm. Second, Jonah’s message to the sailors isn’t fancy or even particularly compelling, but it still pierces the sailors’ hearts.

Donate to Today in the Word: https://give.todayintheword.org/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Growing up in Arkansas, I’ve lived through my fair share of tornado warnings. As a child, I viewed them as barely a blip on my radar. As an adult with my own family, tornado alarms were much more serious for me because I had the responsibility to care for the people around me.

In today’s passage, we find Jonah on a ship to Tarshish, where he believes he can escape God’s call to preach repentance to the Ninevites. Meanwhile, the Lord “sent a great wind on the sea” that caused “a violent storm” (v. 4) The sailors aboard the ship—pagans who did not know the Lord—were terrified and did what they knew to do. They began tossing cargo overboard and “each [was crying] out to his own god” (v. 5). Meanwhile, Jonah, God’s prophet and the only person aboard who knew the Lord—and the reason for the storm!—was below deck, fast asleep. Just as he showed no concern for the people of Nineveh in 1:1–3, here he shows no concern for the rest of the men aboard the ship. When the ship’s captain found Jonah asleep during the storm, he shook him awake and demanded that Jonah “call on your god” (v. 6).

Notice the irony here: the pagan sailors are trying to rescue the ship and save their lives as they pray fervently to gods who cannot help them, while God’s own prophet is in a “deep sleep” (v. 5). The captain, also a pagan, has to wake Jonah up and tell him to take note of the danger they’re in and to do something about it. Although Jonah cannot flee God’s presence, he seems to be far, far away from the God he serves.

Donate to Today in the Word: https://give.todayintheword.org/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When we reach a certain age, we take for granted the concept of object permanence, the reality that objects continue to exist when we can’t see them. Babies aren’t born with that knowledge, which is why they love the game of peek-a-boo—they are delighted to see an object disappear and then suddenly reappear again.

Jonah 1:3 tells us that “Jonah ran away from the LORD.” In some ways, Jonah was like a grown man playing peek-a-boo with God because he hadn’t quite grasped the concept of object permanence or the reality that God saw him no matter where he was. We know Jonah was familiar with the Scriptures because he quotes from Exodus later in the book (see Jonah 4:2). Surely Jonah knew that no one could hide from God. He must have also been familiar with King David, who just a few centuries earlier had penned the famous Psalm 139, asking the Lord, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” (v. 7).

In Psalm 139, we find the answer to David’s question, ensuring that readers know the question is rhetorical. God is in the “heavens” and even in the greatest “depths” (v. 8). The word translated “depths” is the word Sheol—the place of the dead—in Hebrew. In other words, not even the dead can hide from God. David declares that God will be near him even if he’s “on the wings of the dawn” or “the far side of the sea” (vv. 9–10). God is present across the entire world! Further, not even “darkness” can obscure the Lord’s view, for “darkness is as light to” God (v. 12).

Like grown men playing peek-a-boo, Jonah demonstrates a laughably ridiculous attempt to flee from God’s presence. His strategy is doomed to failure, because God is not limited by sight or knowledge.

Donate to Today in the Word: https://give.todayintheword.org/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.