JONAH INSIDE THE WHALE Inside the whale, Jonah entered into death to discover the mystery of Christ’s resurrection which is victory over death, and he gave us the most beautiful song of praise which expressed Christ’s redeeming work during the moments of His death on the Cross and His burial. Thus the Church sings that hymn at the beginning of the 12th hour of Good Friday following the chanting of Jeremiah’s Lamentations. So if the Lamentations express what bitterness our sins have done to the Lord, then Jonah’s hymn lifts up the partition to reveal God’s victory over Hades and His redeeming deed, which lifts the believers to the Holies in an unspeakable glorious joy. 1 - Jonah’s prayer from the fish’s belly. 1 2 - Between Hades and Heaven. 2-7 3 - Jonah, the Psalmist. 8-9 4 - The living Jonah. 10 1- JONAH’S PRAYER FROM THE FISH’S BELLY Who can express the hardship, which Jonah experienced? In the belly of the whale Jonah was enclosed as in a tomb; his egotistic thoughts, his might and his capabilities all died; he did not know what to do; he could not comprehend what could befall him. When the whale surfaced, Jonah could breathe in some fresh air and see a glimmer of light, then the whale would dive in and Jonah would find himself again in complete darkness; the whale would open its mouth and Jonah would be drowned in salty waters, then the whale would spit out the water and Jonah could breathe. Thus Jonah lived for a few days, and but for the grace of God and His care for him, every second of these days would resemble a heavy mountain that would break his spirit and he would have yearned for death. At any rate, in his tribulation, Jonah became one with the buried Lord through symbol and shadow. He rose in heart and mind beyond the whale to higher places, to God, praying as though he were in the heavenly holies: “Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish’s belly” [1]. Previously he called the Lord “God of heaven” (1:9), but in oppression he called God “the Lord, his God” [1] thus the Lord is attributed to Jonah as his God. He is the Lord of the oppressed and the sufferers as though He leaves His heaven and descends to help Jonah in his oppression. In other words, He transforms Jonah’s life to a heaven inhabited by the Lord His God. Our Lord, the Lord of Jonah is the Lord of every bitter spirit. St. John Chrysostom says: [We should not be obsessed with a certain place but we should think more of the Lord of the place. Jonah was in the whale’s belly and God heard his prayer. Pray, wherever you are, pray, do not demand a place to pray in, because your spirit is a temple1.] If the Church feels that a building is necessary as an icon of heaven, it is so that we carry heavenly trends in us, so we look up to internal spiritual building, and our eyes would be lifted up to the Holies which are implanted within us by the Holy Spirit, especially in times of affliction and pain. 1 PG 63, Eclogue on Prayer. 24 Affliction is Golgotha where we are crucified with our Lord Jesus, so that by Him we may attain His glory and be with Him and in Him in the bosom of the Heavenly Father in the Holy Spirit. 2- BETWEEN HADES AND HEAVEN “I cried out the Lord because of my affliction, and He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and You heard my voice” [2]. When Jonah was thrown in the salty water, he entered the belly of the whale, not to meet death but to witness through the shadows of death the Lord Jesus Himself thrown to affliction with us and for us. Thus when He adjures with His blameless life, the Father answers Him and He lifts us up with Him above all affliction. He descended to our lowly stays, He Who is without sin, so that we become in Him a source of happiness to the Father; He hears us in our affliction and raises us to Him. St. Jerome says: [God descended, He was humbled for us so that we may ascend in safety and in confidence1.] Jonah called on God in his affliction and was rewarded by an immediate response because he saw himself arising not only from the whale’s belly but from the depth of Hades with the Crucified Jesus Christ! At this point Jonah uses the past tense, “He answered me... You heard my voice” [2]. A manner of speaking which shows true enjoyment through symbolism and a confident manner, which has no doubt. Jeremiah, the Prophet, experienced the same feelings and comprehended the same concepts when he was thrown in the den: “I called on Your name, 0 Lord, from the lowest pit. You have heard my voice: Do not hide Your ear from my sighing from my cry for help” (Lam. 3:55-56). “For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me” [3]. Jonah realized that it was really God Who threw him into the sea and not the sailors; but amazingly enough when he did descend to the depth, he did not find himself pressured under the water with all its perils, but rather he found himself surrounded by the holy river irrigating it and blessing it with a multitude of spiritual fruits. This about which the psalmist says: ‘There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God” (Ps.46: 4). However in the midst of the bitter hardship ‘in the multitude of my anxieties within me, your comforts delight” (Ps. 94:19). Sweet river waters replace the bitter salty water, and instead of the weight of the water upon me I am surrounded with joy and happiness. The “heart of the sea” to which Jonah was thrown, to its bitter depths, is but the depth of the bitter Cross in which Christ entered as a redeeming sacrifice for the whole world. Through it He erupts the sweet waters of Baptism, granting life, thus a river surrounded Him, i.e. surrounded His Church which is His Body, the river of Baptism, or the river Jordan. This scene enraptured the hearts of the prophets. Ezekiel says of the Church of the New Covenant, or the new Temple: ‘Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and there was water, flowing from under the right side of the temple, south of the altar... and it was a river that I could not cross; for the water was too deep, water in which one must swim, a river that could not he crossed...when it reaches the sea, its waters are healed. And it shall be that every living thing that moves, wherever the rivers 1 On Ps. Horn 41. 25 go, will live...along the bank if the river, on this side and that, will grow all kinds of trees used for food; their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. They will bear fruit every month, because their water flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for medicine” (Ezek 47)1. Our sins cast Christ, out of His love for us, into the heart of the sea, to carry unto Himself, through the Cross, the Divine anger; exchanging the salty sea water for sweet river water. Thus granting us through the very same Cross, the flowing river of His Holy Spirit, which quenches the thirst in our souls, and makes it fruitful and grants it healing. Thus did the Cross depict two complete pictures: The one of the rage of God on sin which cost the Lord His life and that of God’s overwhelming love which ruptured fountains of abundant grace. St. Jerome says: [The Lord, our Saviour, was depicted in the Psalm, “I sink in deep mire, there is no standing; I have come into deep waters where the floods overflow me” (Ps. 69:3). Besides it was told of Him in another psalm: “But You have cast off and abhorred, You have been furious with Your anointed. You have renounced the covenant of Your servant; You have profaned his crown by casting it to the ground. You have broken down all his hedges...” (Ps.89: 38-40). Despite Christ’s being in the salty water, being tempted in everything, yet it was not salty (bitter) for Him because He was surrounded by a river, as it was said, ‘There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God...” (Ps. 46:4). St. Ambrose tells us about this river which surrounds us, seeing that it is the Holy Spirit who waters heavenly Jerusalem and who flowed over the Church with the Crucified Jesus Christ. [The Spirit is the abundant, great river, which is continuously flowing. Heavenly Jerusalem is not watered with an earthly river but rather with the Holy Spirit2]. Through the Cross we have been blessed with the river of the New Covenant instead of a well from the Old. St. Ambrose says: [The previous Covenant was a deep well from which water was drawn with great effort, it was not completely full; and then it was written: “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets, I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” (Matt. 5:17). However the New Covenant is not just a river, but, “...out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38), rivers of knowledge, meditation and spirituality3.] Thus, when the Lord sits with us by the well as He did with the Samaritan woman at noon, i.e., at the moments of the Cross, He erupts in us His waters like living joyous rivers. The Prophet Jonah continues his praise as though said by Christ, saying: ‘‘all Your billows and Your waves passed over me” [3]. St. Jerome comments on this phrase, saying: [Let us look into how these billows and waves passed over the Savior.., because there is no one who could bear all these trials, but He Who was tried in all things... all the hardships and tribulations which disturbed human race and which broke up ships, passed over Him...He endured the tempest and all disturbances so that others would experience the calm.] 1 The Author: Ezekiel, 1981, p. 47 (in Arabic). 2 Of the Holy Spirit. 1:16. 3 Ep 113:77. 26 If the waves refer to God’s sentences, as St. Cyril of Alexandria says, then our Lord took over all the sentences that God passed on us upon Himself. All the sentences fell upon Him to be executed in His Body, as the Psalmist said: “Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; all Your waves and billows have gone over me” Ps. 42:7. Thus the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to be paying all the debts like an exile from the eyes of the Father, while, in reality, He is the Intercessor Who lifts His people to the Heavenly Holies. Jonah then continues his soliloquy saying: ‘Then I said, “I have been cast out of Your sight; yet I will look again toward Your holy temple” [4]. It is a vivid picture of the Cross: on the one hand, the Savior appears like as exile, crying: “My God, My God, why You forsaken Me?” Matt.27: 46 and on the other, He carries humanity in His Body so that it would be glorified with Him. As St. Jerome says: [The Lord took your place as an outcast... so that He would lift humanity to be where He will be (John 17:2). He practices His work as the great High Priest, He enters the Heavenly Holy Temple carrying His Church to the very heavens, as the Apostle says: “For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the truth, but into heaven itself, to appear in the presence of God for us.” (Heb. 9:24). So while He is as outcast because of us, He carries us within Him so that we may earn God’s favor and joy. Jonah was not a priest who had access to the Holies, or a High Priest who could enjoy seeing the Holy of Holies once a year. However in the depth of the sea, as an outcast, he was deemed a symbol of the Lord Jesus Christ Who was an outcast and meanwhile entering His Heavenly Holies. As St. Jerome says [In the sea depths he beholds the Temple of the Lord, and in prophetic spirit, he found himself there meditating in other things.] “The waters encompassed me, even to my soul; the deep closed around me,...yet You have brought up my life from the pit, 0 Lord my God” [5-6]. The Lord Jesus descended into Hades and became like one engulfed in water even to the soul; but the waters could not swallow Him. On the contrary, He set free those who were swallowed and drowned by the waters. He descended to the depth to surface with those who had drowned; and as the Apostle says, “Now this, He ascended - what does it mean but that He also first descended in the lower parts of the earth? He Who descended is also the One Who ascended far above all the Heavens, that He may fill all things” (Ephes. 4:9-10). St. Augustine1 sees in the waters that engulfed the Lord Jesus to the soul, an expression of what happened at the Cross. Everybody rose against Christ like sea waves and in His humility He submitted willingly for our sake. He says, “I have come into deep waters where the floods overflow me” (Ps. 69:2). He did not resist the strong words nor the harsh treatment, but in patience He dealt with it “and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the Cross” (Phil. 2:8). The Savior who walked on the sea (Matt. 14:26) lowered Himself into the water to be temporarily engulfed in it and surrounded by it; so that He would carry the believers on the water, with the Cross as their vessel, and takes them safely to heavenly Jerusalem. Again he says: “When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer went up to You, into Your holy temple” [7]. Jonah lost all hope in salvation 1 Ser. on the N.T. 35:7. 27 through human means because he became trapped in the whale’s belly. No salvation but by God, hence he says, “I remembered the Lord” as though he sings with the Psalmist, “My father and my mother have forsaken me and the Lord has embraced me” As St. Jerome paraphrases. It, [I found myself imprisoned inside the whale and all my hope was in the Lord.] This expression corresponds with our suffering Jonah (Jesus) who cried in the flesh: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death...O My Father, if it is possible, let the cup pass from Me” (Matt. 26:38-39). This hardship, which the Lord endured for our sake, was solely for Him to practice His priestly work through the sacrifice of atonement and ask the Father on our behalf, “and my prayer went up to You, into Your Holy Temple.” As St. Jerome says: [He is like a priest who begs for the liberation of His people in Him.] 3- JONAH, THE PSALMIST “Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own Mercy. But I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.” [8-9]. There appeared at the foot of the Cross those who regarded falsehoods, those who followed the falsehoods of the Pharisees and thus deprived themselves from the Lord Himself, Who is their Grace. They denied Christ, their Savior, and became like a satanic song whose message is but lies and blasphemy. On the other hand, Jesus Christ who was persecuted gave Himself as a song of praise and a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Father. If Jonah offered a sacrifice of praise inside the whale, it was but a symbol of Christ, the Lord, who found those around Him unite against Him. However, in love He paid his vow to the Father by paying His life for many, including those who persecuted Him. Through Christ Jesus, the Victim, our lives are transformed into a harp in the hands of the Holy Spirit, to play a symphony of praise and thanksgiving to the Father, not merely by word but by all our actions. If Jonah became a hymnist in the belly of the whale, it was only to announce what Christ does in us through His suffering. He creates in us a grateful nature, which affects our whole being in place of ungratefulness, which mars our lives. 4- THE LIVING JONAH ‘So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah into dry land” [10]. St. John Chrysostom sees that God taught Jonah several consecutive lessons about having pity on people. The whale had swallowed him, then threw him out without any harm, so should not he have compassion on his fellow humans even if they were Gentiles? [The waves welcomed him without suffocating him, and the whale caught him and he did not perish.., so it would have been only normal for him to be gentle and merciful, not to be more cruel than a wild animal, or the ignorant sailors or the strong waves1.] St. Jerome sees that the expression, “threw out” represents the victorious life emanating from a place of death. Thus it was impossible for the depth of Hades to hold 1 Conc. Stat. 5:18 28 down Our Jonah or for corruption to affect him. The Psalmist says: “For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption” (Ps. 16:10). He arose from the dead as a forerunner for us, i.e. to rise up with Him. St. Jerome says: [He Who died to free the bonded of their shackles of death, is able to lead many to life.]
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