for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Matthew 12:40 (NASB)
If you ever have a chance to sit in on a sermon on Jonah, you most likely will hear that Jonah died in the whale:
If you read chapter 2 literally and consult the original language you’ll have to conclude that Jonah died and while his body remained inside the whale, his spirit went to Sheol, the abode of the dead. Sheol is a Hebrew word translated Hades in Greek, or Hell in English. Grace of Truth, Children’s Stories for Adults.
If we applied Grace of Truth’s reasoning, it seems as if Jesus missed it. In Matthew 12:40, he expressly states that Jonah was in the whale for the entire three day period. If Jonah indeed died and went to Sheol for a while then it appears that Jesus really needed to flesh out the “sign of Jonah” to the scribes and Pharisees listening to him in the same way he described the rich man in Luke 16 (Luke 16:22-23: “the rich man also died and was buried. In Hades he lifted up his eyes). If we go back to the structure of Jonah, itself, the narrative is clear that Jonah was swallowed one day and didn’t leave the belly of the fish until he was vomited out onto dry land:
And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish. Jonah 1:17; 2:1 (NASB)
[Jonah’s Prayer 2:2-9]
Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land. Jonah 2:10 (NASB)
Even just a quick reading of the end of Jonah 1 to Jonah 2:10 shows us that Jonah didn’t die in the fish or enter into some kind of soul sleep. Jonah 2:2-9 contains only the prayer of Jonah and there is no complementary narrative that says that he ever left the fish, died, or entered into a coma-like soul sleep until the fish puked him out on the beach.
In his discourse in Matthew 12:40, Jesus uses the term “hosper” (“just as”) when comparing Jonah’s experience in the whale to his own three days. “Hosper” is a marker of emphatic similarity which means that when we take a closer look at Jonah’s prayer, we’ll see all of the markings of Jesus’s own soulish experience in the “heart of the earth.”
[Note: In previous posts in this series, I have delved into the “Redemptive Voiceover” and some of the first-person prayer psalms of Jesus. As we get into Jonah’s prayer, you might familiarize yourself with those posts as they lay a good foundation for the proper treatment of Jonah 2:2-9.]
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