Jonah 2:8 Ulasan

INTRODUCTION TO JONAH 2 This chapter contains the prayer of Jonah, when in the fish's belly; the time when he prayed, the person he prayed unto, and the place where, are suggested in Jon 2:1; and the latter described as a place of great straitness and distress, and even as hell itself, Jon 2:2; The condition he was in, when cast into the sea, and when in the belly of the fish, which is observed, the more to heighten the greatness of the deliverance, Jon 2:3. The different frame of mind he was in, sometimes almost in despair, and ready to faint; and presently exercising faith and hope, remembering the goodness of the Lord, and resolving to look again to him, Jon 2:4. The gracious regards of God to him, in receiving, hearing, and answering his prayer, and bringing up his life from corruption, Jon 2:2. His resolution, let others do what they would, to praise the Lord, and give him the glory of his salvation, Jon 2:8; and the chapter is concluded with the order for his deliverance, and the manner of it, Jon 2:10.

And the Lord spake unto the fish,.... Or gave orders to it; he that made it could command it; all creatures are the servants of God, and do his will; what he says is done; he so ordered it by his providence, that this fish should come near the shore, and be so wrought upon by his power, that it could not retain Jonah any longer in its belly. It may be rendered (h), "then the Lord spake", &c. after Jonah had finished his prayer, or put up those ejaculations, the substance of which is contained in the above narrative: and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land; not upon the shore of the Red sea, as some; much less upon the shore of Nineveh, which was not built upon the seashore, but upon the river Tigris; and the fish must have carried him all round Africa, and part of Asia, to have brought him to the banks of the Tigris; which could not have been done in three days' time, nor in much greater. Josephus (i) says it was upon the shore of the Euxine sea; but the nearest part of it to Nineveh was one thousand six hundred miles from Tarsus, which the whale, very slow in swimming, cannot be thought to go in three days; besides, no very large fish swim in the Euxine sea, because of the straits of the Propontis, through which they cannot pass, as Bochart (k) from various writers has proved. It is more likely, as others, that it was on the Syrian shore, or in the bay of Issus, now called the gulf of Lajazzo; or near Alexandria, or Alexandretta, now Scanderoon. But why not on the shore of Palestine? and, indeed, why not near the place from whence they sailed? Huetius (l) and others think it probable that this case of Jonah gave rise to the story of Arion, who was cast into the sea by the mariners, took up by a dolphin, and carried to Corinth. Jonah's deliverance was a type of our Lord's resurrection from the dead on the third day, Mat 12:40; and a pledge of ours; for, after this instance of divine power, why should it be thought a thing incredible that God should raise the dead? (h) So is sometimes used, and is so rendered, Psal. lxxviii. 34. Job x. 10. See Noldius, p. 308, 309. (i) Antiqu. l. 9. c. 10. sect. 2. (k) Hierozoic. par. 2. l. 5. c. 12. col. 744. (l) Demonstr. Evangel. prop. 4. p. 294. Next: Jonah Chapter 3

"They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy." LXX: 'those that keep mistaken vanities lose their mercy'. By nature God is merciful and ready by his mildness to save those whom he can't save by justice. But because of our vices we lose the mercy which is reserved for us and is offered to us. Jonah did not say, "those who make vanities", for "vanity of vanities, all is vanity" [Eccl. 1:1], not to have an air of condemning everyone, and of refusing mercy to all mankind, but "those who keep vanities" or the lie "those who have come to love their heart" [Ps. 72:7], who are not happy with doing, but who keep their vanities as if they cherished them, thinking they have found some kind of treasure. Note too the greatness of the prophet's spirit: at the bottom of the sea, surrounded by an eternal night in the intestines of a great beast he is not thoughtful of his danger, but philosophises on the question of nature. "they will lose" he says "their mercy". Although mercy is offended and we can understand that it is God Himself: for "God is merciful and good, patient and full of pity" [Ps. 144:8], yet mercy does not abandon those who keep their vanities, she does not curse them, but waits for them to return, while they intentionally abandon the mercy which is before them, offered to them. This can also be prophesised for the Lord on the subject of the infidelity of the Jews, who think themselves to observe the precepts of mankind [Mk. 7:7] and the commandments of the Pharisees, this is vanity and a lie, and they have abandoned God who always had pity for them.

When my soul was fainting within me, I remembered the Lord; and let my prayer come to you, into your holy temple. For those who wish to be well-pleasing, toil is not without profit, nor would affliction be considered burdensome. And the blessed David will bear witness, saying, "In my affliction I called upon the Lord;" and another of the holy prophets, "O Lord, in affliction we remembered you." And it seemed very fitting to the divine Paul to accept and praise affliction, that is, the affliction that happens for the sake of virtue. For he said, "Because affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put to shame." So then, as the Prophet's soul was fainting, that is, enduring the toil that leads to danger and to the last extremities, something profitable was again being done. For not, as some, having immediately slipped into despondency, did he make a denunciation of the divine judgments, but he remembered the one who saves. For he cried out to him, he thirsted for help, not ignorant of his gentleness and the preeminence of his strength, he made his supplications to him, begging that his own life be delivered from death and corruption.

When a person has completely abandoned the world, it seems to one that one is living in a remote desert, full of wild beasts. One is filled with unutterable fear and indescribable trembling, and cries to God like Jonah from the whale, from the sea of this life, or like Daniel from the pit of the lions and the fierce passions, or like the three children from the burning furnace and the flames of innate desire, or like Manasseh from the brazen statue of this earthly mortal body. The Lord hears that person and delivers him from the abyss of ignorance and love of this world, just like the prophet who came out of the whale, never to go back again.

This chapter (except the first verse and the last, which make a part of the narrative) contains a beautiful prayer or hymn, formed of those devout thoughts which Jonah had in the belly of the great fish, with a thanksgiving for his miraculous deliverance.

They that observe lying vanities - They that trust in idols, follow vain predictions, permit themselves to be influenced with foolish fears, so as to induce them to leave the path of obvious duty, forsake their own mercy. In leaving that God who is the Fountain of mercy, they abandon that measure of mercy which he had treasured up for them.

JONAH'S PRAYER OF FAITH AND DELIVERANCE. () his God--"his" still, though Jonah had fled from Him. Faith enables Jonah now to feel this; just as the returning prodigal says of the Father, from whom he had wandered, "I will arise and go to my Father" (). out of the fish's belly--Every place may serve as an oratory. No place is amiss for prayer. Others translate, "when (delivered) out of the fish's belly." English Version is better.

observe lying vanities--regard or reverence idols, powerless to save (). mercy--Jehovah, the very idea of whom is identified now in Jonah's mind with mercy and loving-kindness. As the Psalmist () styles Him, "my goodness"; God who is to me all beneficence. Compare , "the God of my mercy," literally, "my kindness-God." Jonah had "forsaken His own mercy," God, to flee to heathen lands where "lying vanities" (idols) were worshipped. But now, taught by his own preservation in conscious life in the fish's belly, and by the inability of the mariners idols to lull the storm (), estrangement from God seems estrangement from his own happiness (; ). Prayer has been restrained in Jonah's case, so that he was "fast asleep" in the midst of danger, heretofore; but now prayer is the sure sign of his return to God.

"Jonah prayed to Jehovah his God out of the fish's belly." The prayer which follows (Jon 2:2-9) is not a petition for deliverance, but thanksgiving and praise for deliverance already received. It by no means follows from this, however, that Jonah did not utter this prayer till after he had been vomited upon the land, and that v. 10 ought to be inserted before v. 2; but, as the earlier commentators have shown, the fact is rather this, that when Jonah had been swallowed by the fish, and found that he was preserved alive in the fish's belly, he regarded this as a pledge of his deliverance, for which he praised the Lord. Luther also observes, that "he did not actually utter these very words with his mouth, and arrange them in this orderly manner, in the belly of the fish; but that he here shows what the state of his mind was, and what thoughts he had when he was engaged in this conflict with death." The expression "his God" (אלהיו) must not be overlooked. He prayed not only to Jehovah, as the heathen sailors also did (Jon 1:14), but to Jehovah as his God, from whom he had tried to escape, and whom he now addresses again as his God when in peril of death. "He shows his faith by adoring Him as his God" (Burk). The prayer consists for the most part of reminiscences of passages in the Psalms, which were so exactly suited to Jonah's circumstances, that he could not have expressed his thoughts and feelings any better in words of his own. It is by no means so "atomically compounded from passages in the Psalms" that there is any ground for pronouncing it "a later production which has been attributed to Jonah," as Knobel and De Wette do; but it is the simple and natural utterance of a man versed in the Holy Scripture and living in the word of God, and is in perfect accordance with the prophet's circumstances and the state of his mind. Commencing with the confession, that the Lord has heard his crying to Him in distress (Jon 2:2), Jonah depicts in two strophes (Jon 2:3 and Jon 2:4, Jon 2:5-7) the distress into which he had been brought, and the deliverance out of that destruction which appeared inevitable, and closes in Jon 2:8, Jon 2:9 with a vow of thanksgiving for the deliverance which he had received.

8 They who hold to false vanities Forsake their own mercy. 9 But I will sacrifice to Thee with the call of thanksgiving. I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is with Jehovah. In order to express the thought emphatically, that salvation and deliverance are only to be hoped for from Jehovah the living God, Jonah points to the idolaters, who forfeit their mercy. משׁמּרים הבלי־שׁוא is a reminiscence of Psa 31:7. הבלי־שׁוא, worthless vanities, are all things which man makes into idols or objects of trust. הבלים are, according to Deu 32:21, false gods or idols. Shâmar, to keep, or, when applied to false gods, to keep to them or reverence them; in Hos 4:10 it is also applied to Jehovah. חסדּם signifies neither pietatem suam nor gratiam a Deo ipsis exhibitam, nor "all the grace and love which they might receive" (Hitzig); but refers to God Himself, as He whose government is pure grace (vid., Gen 24:27), and might become the grace even of the idolatrous. Jonah, on the contrary, like all the righteous, would sacrifice to the Lord beqōl tōdâh, "with the voice or cry, of thanksgiving," i.e., would offer his sacrifices with a prayer of sincere thanksgiving (cf. Psa 42:5), and pay the vow which he had made in his distress (cf. Psa 50:14, Psa 50:23). These utterances are founded upon the hope that his deliverance will be effected (Hitzig); and this hope is based upon the fact that "salvation is Jehovah's," i.e., is in His power, so that He only can grant salvation.