RUSSELL SANDERS
8-20-2020
JONAH PART 11
CH. 1 VS. 17
In Jonah 1:17 it says, “Now the LORD had prepared a great (huge) fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”
God had a plan. He was not going to let Jonah perish in the sea. He had a mission to complete. God’s word must be delivered to Nineveh, and His prophet Jonah was elected for the job. God sent a “great (big) fish” to swallow Jonah and keep the prophet “in the deep” for three whole days and three whole nights, a prophetic foreshadow of Jesus’ three days and three nights in Hades as His body lay in a tomb.
In Matthew 12:39-40, Jesus says, “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign (rather than faith). And there shall be no sign given to it, (except) the sign of the prophet Jonas (Jonah). For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (hell).”
There are two “myth busters” in this Matthew passage. Jesus stated he would be in the grave three days and three nights. If the long-established church tradition of “Good Friday” were true, it would be impossible to get three days and three nights in before sunrise, approximately 36 hours after Jesus’ death. Clearly, “Good Friday” is a false teaching. You can learn more about that by going to my article on 4-8-2020 Passover Lamb is Slain and read it.
The second myth to bust is that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. It was a huge fish, not a whale. The Matthew 12:40 verse in the KJV that says, “whale’s belly” was a mis-translation. Jesus said “fish” not “whale” as shown in the NKJV, NIV, MEV, Young’s Literal Translation and many others. The Hebrew word in Jonah 1:17 is “dag” which means “fish” (Strong’s H1709). The original Greek word in Matthew 12:40 is “Ketos” which means “fish” (Strong’s G2785), not whale. Jesus, Himself, called it a fish. So why did the men who translated it say “whale”? It is because they could not think of any fish large enough to swallow a man whole. Only a sperm whale could possible do that according to their reasoning. Therefore it “must have been” a whale. They used their own “human wisdom” instead of translating what it actually said.
But if so, what kind of “fish” could swallow a man? Well there is one: a whale shark. It is a fish, a true shark. It is called “whale” shark because of its enormous size. It is the largest non-mammal creature on earth. It can grow up to forty feet long and has a mouth five feet wide. The average weight is over twenty tons (40,000 pounds) and can even get to 25-30 tons. It could have enough room to probably swallow three Jonahs.
God miraculously preserved Jonah’s life in that belly for three days and nights. God had a plan. Jonah was to be the first Jewish missionary to a foreign people. God’s plan had to go forth.
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