Jonah 2:5 - Still A Little Bit Softer Now
Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me, Weeds were wrapped around my head. (Jonah 2.5, NASB)
In much Christian preaching there is a doctrine or teaching that Jesus went to hell, but He went to the “good side” where Abraham and the believing Old Testament saints were awaiting His resurrection. As we have sunk our teeth into the sign of Jonah, we see that the foundation for that teaching is nowhere to be found in the belly of the whale. Here in verse 5, after he has called out to the Lord [Yahweh] in his distress, Jonah inculcates into his prayer a narrative of just what the belly of hell is like and there is no comfort there. Compare Luke 16:25 - “[Lazarus] is being comforted.”
In our past Jonah essays, we’ve seen that he is actually praying out psalms that are the prophetic voice of Jesus, Himself, e.g., psalms 18 and 69. Verse 5 is no different. A casual reading shows us that Jonah 2:5 continues the Jesus echo with verses in both psalm 18 and 69:
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. (Psalm 69: 1, 2, NASB)
The cords of death encompassed me, And the torrents of ungodliness terrified me. The cords of Sheol surrounded me; The snare of death confronted me. (Psalm 18:4-5, NASB)
In my previous essays, I’ve stuck to psalms that have been readily identified in the New Testament as the first-person voice of Jesus, i.e., psalms 40, 18, 16, 69, and 22. But if we have “ears to hear,” we see that there are even other psalms which bespeak of Jesus, His suffering, and His resurrection. While Psalm 116 has no explicit identifier in the New Testament, its echo of Jonah 2:5 is self-evident:
The cords of death encompassed me, And the terrors of Sheol came upon me; I found distress and sorrow. (Psalm 116:3, NASB)
Once we recognize Psalm 116:3 as the voice of Jesus, we see that the entire psalm is a piece of the mosaic (cf. Jonah 2:9 - “that which I have vowed I will pay” with Psalm 116:14 - “I shall pay my vows to the Lord.”). When we see the psalms’ mosaic in its proper light, the portrait of His suffering for us becomes breathtaking.
