It has been justly remarked by Canon Cheyne that this passage may be considered as the intervening link between the original form of the myth and the application of it made in the story of Jonah.[1530] To this the objection might be offered that in the story of Jonah the _great fish_ is not actually represented as the means of the prophet’s temporary destruction, like the monster in Jeremiah li., but rather as the vessel of his deliverance.[1531] This is true, yet it only means that our author has still further adapted the very plastic material offered him by this much transformed myth. But we do not depend for our proof upon the comparison of a single passage. Let the student of the Book of Jonah read carefully the many passages of the Old Testament, in which the sea or its monsters rage in vain against Jehovah, or are harnessed and led about by Him; or still more those passages in which His conquest of these monsters is made to figure His conquest of the heathen powers,[1532]—and the conclusion will appear irresistible that the story of the _great fish_ and of Jonah the type of Israel is drawn from the same source. Such a solution of the problem has one great advantage. It relieves us of the grotesqueness which attaches to the literal conception of the story, and of the necessity of those painful efforts for accounting for a miracle which have distorted the common-sense and even the orthodoxy of so many commentators of the book.[1533] We are dealing, let us remember, with poetry—a poetry inspired by one of the most sublime truths of the Old Testament, but whose figures are drawn from the legends and myths of the people to whom it is addressed. To treat this as prose is not only to sin against the common-sense which God has given us, but against the simple and obvious intention of the author. It is blindness both to reason and to Scripture.
These views are confirmed by an examination of the Psalm or Prayer which is put into Jonah’s mouth while he is yet in the fish. We have already seen what grounds there are for believing that the Psalm belongs to the author’s own plan, and from the beginning appeared just where it does now.[1534] But we may also point out how, in consistence with its context, this is a Psalm, not of an individual Israelite, but of the nation as a whole. It is largely drawn from the national liturgy.[1535] It is full of cries which we know, though they are expressed in the singular number, to have been used of the whole people, or at least of that pious portion of them, who were Israel indeed. True that in the original portion of the Psalm, and by far its most beautiful verses, we seem to have the description of a drowning man swept to the bottom of the sea. But even here, the colossal scenery and the magnificent hyperbole of the language suit not the experience of an individual, but the extremities of that vast gulf of exile into which a whole nation was plunged. It is a nation’s carcase which rolls upon those infernal tides that swirl among the roots of mountains and behind the barred gates of earth. Finally, vv. 9 and 10 are obviously a contrast, not between the individual prophet and the heathen, but between the true Israel, who in exile preserve their loyalty to Jehovah, and those Jews who, forsaking their _covenant-love_, lapse to idolatry. We find many parallels to this in exilic and post-exilic literature.
_And Jonah prayed to Jehovah his God from the belly of the fish, and said:—_
_I cried out of my anguish to Jehovah, and He answered me; From the belly of Inferno I sought help—Thou heardest my voice. For Thou hadst[1536] cast me into the depth, to the heart of the seas, and the flood rolled around me; All Thy breakers and billows went over me. Then I said, I am hurled from Thy sight: How[1537] shall I ever again look towards Thy holy temple? Waters enwrapped me to the soul; the Deep rolled around me; The tangle was bound about my head. I was gone down to the roots of the hills; Earth _and_ her bars were behind me for ever. But Thou broughtest my life up from destruction, Jehovah my God! When my soul fainted upon me, I remembered Jehovah, And my prayer came in unto Thee, to Thy holy temple. They that observe the idols of vanity, They forsake their covenant-love. But to the sound of praise I will sacrifice to Thee; What I have vowed I will perform. Salvation is Jehovah’s._