Scripture Daily

Context No. 1638 of 4322 · Jonah

Context · Reflection

Jonah 2:1-10: in context

1Then Jonah prayed to the LORD, his God, out of the fish’s belly. 2He said, “I called because of my affliction to the LORD. He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried. You heard my voice. 3For you threw me into the depths, in the heart of the seas. The flood was all around me. All your waves and your billows passed over me. 4I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’ 5The waters surrounded me, even to the soul. The deep was around me. The weeds were wrapped around my head. 6I went down to the bottoms of the mountains. The earth barred me in forever; yet you have brought my life up from the pit, LORD my God. 7“When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the LORD. My prayer came in to you, into your holy temple. 8Those who regard vain idols forsake their own mercy. 9But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay that which I have vowed. Salvation belongs to the LORD.” 10Then the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah on the dry land.

Swallowed by the great fish, Jonah prays from inside it, from what he calls the belly of Sheol, the very depths. I called to the LORD out of my distress, he says, and he answered me; out of the belly of the grave I cried, and you heard my voice. He describes the depths that engulfed him, the waters closing over him, the weeds around his head, sinking to the roots of the mountains. And yet, he says, when my soul fainted within me, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you. Salvation belongs to the LORD. And the fish spits him out on dry land.

The wonder of Jonah's prayer is where it is prayed from and that it is heard. Jonah cries out from the belly of the fish, from what he calls the belly of Sheol, the lowest, darkest, most hopeless place imaginable, sinking in the depths of the sea, buried alive in a monster, as good as dead. And from there, from the very bottom, he cries to God, and God hears him. Out of the belly of the grave I cried, and you heard my voice. There is deep comfort in that for anyone who has been in the depths, in a place so low it seemed God could not reach or hear. Jonah's prayer says there is no pit so deep, no place so low and dark, that a cry to God cannot rise from it and be heard. He prayed from inside a fish at the bottom of the sea, and God heard; there is nowhere we can fall so far that our cry to God is lost. And notice what Jonah learned in the depths: salvation belongs to the LORD. It was in the lowest place, at the end of himself, that Jonah came to see clearly that rescue is God's to give, not ours to earn or arrange. Sometimes it is only in the depths, when every other help is gone, that we learn to cry to God alone and to see that salvation is his. Jonah cried from the belly of the grave, and God heard, and brought his life up from the pit. Whatever depth we are in, the cry can still rise, and God still hears.

When I am in the depths, in a place so low and dark it seems God could not hear, can I remember that Jonah cried from the belly of the grave and God heard him, that no pit is so deep the cry cannot rise from it, and that salvation belongs to the LORD?

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