Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible · Jonah Kabanata 2

Jonah 2:1. Then Jonah prayed, &c.— The following prayer was conceived and formed, as to substance, in the belly of the fish, and probably afterwards digested and written in its present mode; a thanksgiving for his deliverance being added at the end of it. Houbigant very properly reads the verbs in the following verse in the present tense, because, says he, Jonah is said to pray when in the belly of the fish. By the belly of hell, is meant the lowest parts of the deep, or place which was to Jonah as the grave.

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Jonah 2:4. Then I said, I am cast out, &c.— "My first apprehensions were, that as I had justly forfeited thy favour for my disobedience, so thou wouldst cast me out of thy protection. But, upon recollecting myself, I thought it my duty not to despair of thy mercy, but to direct my prayer toward thy heavenly habitation: for I have the strongest confidence, since thou hast thus far saved me, that I shall look again towards thy holy temple." There is a great similarity between this prayer of Jonah and many expressions in the Psalms.

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Jonah 2:5. The waters compassed me, &c.— Jonah, as we have before observed, speaks this in the bowels of the fish; therefore they seem to mistake the matter, who say that Jonah speaks this in the midst of the sea, before he was swallowed by the fish. The fish swallowed up Jonah, when first he fell to the bottom of the sea, involved with sea-weed, into which he fell. Houbigant. But why may not this (as well as the following verse, which must necessarily be so) be understood figuratively and poetically, describing his situation in the deep, when in the belly of the fish?

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Jonah 2:6. The earth with her bars was about me, &c.— Houbigant connects the word rendered for ever, with bars, and reads, The earth, with her everlasting bars, was about me, &c. But others give the passage another turn, and render it thus, The earth with her bars would have been about me for ever; but thou broughtest up, &c.

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Jonah 2:8. Forsake their own mercy, &c.— "They who worship idols abandon the mercy of God, render it useless, and reject it, even though offered to them and always ready to save them." Houbigant reads the last clause, Have forsaken their benefactor: and he supposes that Jonah applies this to the mariners who prayed to their gods, before they knew that the true God of heaven and earth, who had raised the storm, was the same who appeased it.

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Jonah 2:9. But I will sacrifice unto thee— Not to other gods, as the mariners did to their deities. Salvation is of the Lord, and not of those false gods to whom these idolatrous sailors (except in the instance here recorded) offered their vows and prayers. See Psalms 50:14.Hosea 14:2; Hosea 14:2.

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