Whale / Great Fish

When Jonah fled from God and was cast into the sea, “the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah,” and he lay in its belly three days and three nights. The creature was not Jonah’s destroyer but, astonishingly, his rescue and his prison at once.

From inside the fish Jonah prayed a psalm of repentance from “the belly of hell,” and God “spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.” The episode shows God’s sovereignty even over the chaos of the sea and the disobedience of his prophet — appointing a sea-monster as a means of grace.

Jesus gave it the deepest meaning, calling it “the sign of the prophet Jonas”: as Jonah was three days and nights in the whale’s belly, so the Son of Man would be three days and nights “in the heart of the earth.” The great fish became a foreshadowing of the burial and resurrection of Christ.