Jonah 2:3 - A Little Bit Louder Now
For You had cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current engulfed me. All Your breaches and billows passed over me. (Jonah 2.3, NASB)
In our last essay, we demonstrated that Jonah’s prayer(s) in the belly of the whale was not just that of a repenting prophet, but was actually the echo of Jesus’s own first-person prayer psalms. Here, in verse 3, we see the echo getting louder. Verse 3 is an echo of Psalm 69.1-2, 14-15:
Save me, O God, For the waters have threatened my life. I have sunk in deep mire, and there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and a flood overflows me… . Deliver me from the mire and do not let me sink. May I be delivered from my foes and from the deep waters. May the flood of water not overflow me, Nor the deep swallow me up, Nor the pit shut its mouth on me. (NASB)
In our previous essay, John 2.21-22 - The Redemptive Voiceover, we showed that Psalm 69 is scripturally considered the voice of Jesus. This is confirmed and supported by Paul’s writing in Romans 15:3 where he cites Psalms 69.9, “The reproaches of those who reproached You fell on me,” as Jesus’s own words without any qualification.
We also see the quiet traces of the Jesus echo of Jonah 2.3 in Psalms 42 and 88:
Deep calls to deep at the sound of your waterfalls: All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me. (Psalm 42.7, NASB)
Your wrath has rested upon me, And you have afflicted me with all Your waves. (Psalm 88.7, NASB)
Some might want to quibble with my inclusion of Psalm 88, saying that it’s quite a stretch to say that psalm is an echo of Jonah’s prayer. Is it? Psalm 88.7 speaks of God’s “wrath” resting on the petitioner and when we turn over to Isaiah 53.10, we read these words:
But the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief. (Isaiah 53:10, NASB)
In Acts 9.26-35, we have the account of Philip being led of an angel to speak to an Ethiopian eunuch who had come to Jerusalem to worship. As he was returning to Ethiopia, he was sitting in his chariot reading Isaiah. Philip heard the eunuch reading Isaiah 53.7:
He was led as a sheep to slaughter; And as a lamb before its shearer is silent, So he does not open his mouth. In humiliation His judgment was taken away; Who will relate His generation? For His life is removed from the earth. (Acts 9:32-33, NASB)
The eunuch asked Philip, “Please tell me, of whom does this prophet say this? Of himself or of someone else?” Verse 35 tells us, “Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this scripture he preached Jesus to him.” Philip didn’t need a theological committee to make the connection between Jesus’s acts and the book of Isaiah. He, like Paul and Peter, understood the redemptive voiceover to Old Testament scripture.
When we open ourselves to the harmony of scripture, in this instance from Jonah 2.3 all the way through to Acts 9, we see that many of David’s psalms are masterful reflections of the “sign of Jonah.”
