[Originally published in The Fort Bend Herald]<\/p>\n
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\u00a0Perhaps no Old Testament narrative receives quite the beating Jonah does by those who are unable to accept its account.\u00a0 It is, after all, the story of a great miracle.\u00a0 Strangely enough, most of those who reject it as truth are denying the wrong miracle altogether, as Jonah\u2019s story is not the commonly cartooned account of a man making s\u2019mores inside the belly of a whale by campfire.<\/p>\n
The key issue of the account by most who reject it seems to be oriented around the fact that a man cannot live for three days in the digestive system of a great fish.\u00a0 Of course, that which cannot be done \u2013 yet is \u2013 is the very essence of a \u201cmiracle.\u201d\u00a0 Yet, the real miracle of Jonah has nothing to do with a man living in a fish.\u00a0 It is, for the doubter, actually much worse.<\/p>\n
If one looks carefully at the Hebrew text of the story, the book in no way depicts a man \u201cliving\u201d in a fish for three days, but rather a man dying and being resurrected three days later.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0The miracle of Jonah is resurrection, not extreme survival \u201cfish edition.\u201d<\/p>\n
The gist of the story is commonly upheld correctly:\u00a0 Jonah, in disobedience to God\u2019s call to preach to Nineveh (a large Syrian city, Israel\u2019s greatest enemy of the time), flees by ocean in the opposite direction where he is cast overboard and swallowed by a great fish.\u00a0 He prays to God and is three days later regurgitated onto dry ground by the fish, after which he returns to complete his mission.\u00a0 Jonah was alive when cast from the boat.\u00a0 He was alive when he was regurgitated onto dry ground.\u00a0 The incorrect assumption is thus that he was alive for the duration of the ordeal.\u00a0 He was not.<\/p>\n
Chapter two accounts that Jonah, \u201cprayed to the LORD\u2026from the belly of the fish.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, Jonah was in the belly of the fish, but his account goes on to inform the reader that his body was in fact quite dead there while his spirit went to the \u201cplace of the dead.\u201d\u00a0 Verse 2 notes Jonah\u2019s prayer (after the fact), \u201cout of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.\u201d\u00a0 Sheol is the Hebrew name for the spiritual abode of the dead.\u00a0 While the term can<\/i> be used metaphorically, continued reading of this text informs us that a literal usage of Sheol is in fact what Jonah intended.\u00a0 Verses 3-5 note Jonah being surrounded by flood waters, which \u201cclosed in over me to take my life\u201d (v5) and that weeds (which would be on the bottom of the sea) \u201cwrapped about my head.\u201d\u00a0 Finally, in verse 6 he notes \u201cI went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pit\u201d is translated from the Hebrew term shahat<\/i> (shakh\u2019-ath), which is another term related to Sheol in the Old Testament (Ps 55:23, Isa 51:14).\u00a0 It is where the spirits of dead people went; the \u201cplace of the dead.\u201d\u00a0 Jonah clearly depicts his condition as that of having drowned, then having been swallowed by a fish, and then having been \u201cbrought up from the pit,\u201d or resurrected at some point (likely immediately) before being spit out onto dry ground by the fish.<\/p>\n
The story of Jonah is that he died and was resurrected on the third day.\u00a0 Any other understanding misses the whole point of what Jesus later said to the Pharisees:<\/p>\n
(Matthew 12:39-40 (ESV))\u00a0 <\/b>\u2026\u201cAn evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. Jesus did not build a campfire and make s\u2019mores in the grave any more than Jonah did.\u00a0 He was dead and raised, just as Jonah was dead and raised.<\/p>\n The message of Jonah is one of resurrection from death.\u00a0 For this reason alone it was a worthy archetype for Christ to fulfill in full view of his generation of unbelieving Jews.<\/p>\n May our generation understand that denying one miracle \u2013 especially in light of Jesus\u2019 own acceptance of it \u2013 is to deny the power of the same God who performed the latter as its fruition in Christ.<\/p>\n To deny Jonah because of its miraculous claims is to deny Christ of his.\u00a0 But if one can believe Christ was dead and three days later raised to life, one should have no problem with Jonah \u2013 whose story Christ referenced as his own script.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [Originally published in The Fort Bend Herald] \u00a0Perhaps no Old Testament narrative receives quite the beating Jonah does by those who are unable to accept its account.\u00a0 It is, after all, the story of a great miracle.\u00a0 Strangely enough, most of those who reject it as truth are denying the wrong miracle altogether, as Jonah\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/returningking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/returningking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/returningking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/returningking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/returningking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/returningking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/returningking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/returningking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/returningking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1311"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/returningking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=1311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n40 <\/sup>\u00a0For just 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.<\/i><\/p>\n