The Prayer of Jonah

What was the most distressing situation you ever faced? This life seems at times to be a minefield of difficulties and sorrows. When you look back over your journey, you might be able to point to a rough patch and say, “Wow, I am a survivor.” Upon looking back, I hope you can thank the Lord for bringing you through your trauma. One old hymn sought to strengthen believers going through hardships with these words:

After pain and anguish, after toil and care,

We shall see the King some day;

Thro' the endless ages joy and blessing share,

We shall see the King someday.

That is a wondrous view of the future. Yet at times it seems hard to see the joy and blessing through all the current experiences of pain, anguish, toil, and care. We are deep in the depths of overwhelming challenges, and we cry out to God for help.

Sometimes these experiences come from trying to run away from the Lord. The most famous runner in scripture was the prophet Jonah. After he was thrown off the ship amidst the storm caused by his disobedience, he was swallowed by the great fish (Jonah 1:15-17). Sometimes, in the excitement of the narrative of focusing on Jonah’s swallowing by the great fish, and then his dramatic expulsion from the belly of the beast onto the beach, we lose sight of Jonah chapter two. In Jonah, chapter two, we have one of the great prayers of the Old Testament. This prayer has much to teach us about enduring hardships if we open our hearts. I believe we can learn from the praying of Jonah. For Jonah teaches us how to pray in the belly of the beast.

This article surfaces three experiences that have the potential to help us through the seasons of the Lord’s testing in the belly of the beast. The first experience is heard in the rescue cry of Jonah.

The Rescue Cry 

From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. He said:

“In my distress I called to the Lord,
    And he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead, I called for help,
    And you listened to my cry.
You hurled me into the depths,
    into the very heart of the seas,
    and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
    swept over me. -Jonah 2:1-3, NIV

The prayer of Jonah is very much structured like one of the psalms of the Old Testament book of Psalms. The book of Psalms has many cries of distress. Here are also some examples of distress calls in Israel’s book of worship songs.

Answer me when I call to you, my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; have mercy on me and hear my prayer. -Psalm 4:1, NIV

In my distress, I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple, he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears. – Psalm 18:6, NIV

Look on my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins. -Psalm 25:18, NIV

In my distress, I groan aloud and am reduced to skin and bones. -Psalm 102:5, NIV

I call on the Lord in my distress, and he answers me. -Psalm 120:1, NIV

Jonah’s rescue cry brings to mind the modern distress call in seafaring lore. According to Boating Magazine, A Coast Guard distress call is the most urgent level of maritime emergency. Such a call is declared when a person or vessel faces grave and imminent danger. It requires immediate assistance, according to absolute priority to that distress call over all other radio communications.

Jonah is clearly in a state of distress! Prayer is his distress call! The belly juices of the beast are already bleaching his skin white, though this phenomenon reported from a 1891 case is somewhat disputed. In any event, we should notice the phrases Jonah used to dramatize his level of distress:

From deep in the realm of the dead, I called for help,
    And you listened to my cry.

Jonah is convinced he is about to die at one point, for he calls this the realm of the dead. The ancients had a term for the realm of the dead: Sheol. Sheol was a shadowy realm in the Old Testament, and not a hopeful place at all. This was the holding place of the spirits of the dead. There was a great deal of dread over the experience of going to this realm, conceived of as residing deep in the earth. 

Jonah also freely acknowledged that the Lord’s hand had placed him in his current predicament:

 You hurled me into the depths.

Here, Jonah is coming to terms with a lesson every believer needs to face at some point. The Lord disciplines His children! The book of Hebrews expands on this theme:

 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live!  -Hebrews 12:7-9, NIV

We must humble ourselves under the disciplinary hand of God at times. This strikes a blow at our human pride and makes us very aware of our frailty and weakness in the face of the ferocious beasts we must encounter.

Jonah also spoke of the terrifying environment of the ocean and its mighty force against his mortal frame. He cried out: “And the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers swept over me.”

Again, it is not nature against which Jonah is contending, but the Lord’s sovereign use of the force of nature as a reminder to him. Jonah is not in control here. God is the One whose voice we must hear above the crashing and terrifying waves.

Jonah teaches us how to pray in the belly of the beast. So when we go through hard times, one question we need to ask is this: Am I in any way trying to run away from the Lord? Like Jonah, we find that to save us, God may discipline us for a time, causing us to cry out with our own great rescue cry. That is the initial experience of being hurled into a sea or swallowed by a beast. There is a second experience of Jonah that we, too, may undergo. This is the remembrance of the Lord’s Presence.

The Remembrance of the Lord’s Presence  

I said, ‘I have been banished

    from your sight;

Yet I will look again

    toward your holy temple.’

The engulfing waters threatened me,

    The deep surrounded me;

    Seaweed was wrapped around my head. -Jonah 2:4-5, NIV

Jonah gives voice to a terrifying thought that struck his heart as he felt the innards of the great sea beast pressing him on all sides:

I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight!’

This is a common feeling among believers who are undergoing God’s discipline. They suddenly are smitten with the thought that God has abandoned them, or that God is no longer watching out for them any longer. This sense of abandonment has been noted by Christian mystics and God-seekers for many centuries: Augustine, John of the Cross, John Bunyan, Amy Carmichael, Mother Teresa, and countless others, only the Lord could name, swell the ranks of those who have undergone such a crisis of faith.

What this painful yet necessary stage is teaching us is not to rely on feelings for a true assessment of our situation. For even if I may feel that I have been banished from God’s sight, this does not make it true. Faith must overcome feelings in this moment and recall truthful beliefs about God. For God is all-seeing and all-knowing. There is no suspension of these attributes of God as He tests us.

Thankfully, Jonah realizes this. Immediately, a powerful resolution gets hold of his mind, and he makes a mental move that is so vital to surviving the belly of the beast. He pledges:

‘Yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’

In Jonah’s world, the temple was the key visual symbol of God’s presence. Recall Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple, in 1 Kings 8:48-49. If any of God’s children rebelled against the Lord and realized their sin, they could look toward the temple and pray for God’s mercy. God’s sovereignty over space is represented by the temple, according to scholar N. T. Wright. Thus, the belly of the beast is not the permanent place for a child of God. No, a return to the center of worship, to the temple, and to the community of God’s children, the great worship assembly, this is what recalibrates Jonah’s mind amid the terrifying distress of his trauma. For the New Testament Christian, the temple is the body, and the presence of the Lord is the promised indwelling Holy Spirit!

Jonah is not finished yet with his peril, and the memory of the temple was a brief respite. Now he returns to the current threat:

The engulfing waters threatened me, 
    The deep surrounded me;
    Seaweed was wrapped around my head.

The book of Psalms may have sprung to the mind of Jonah. There is a highly relevant section in Psalm 107 to the person who is caught in a raging sea storm.

Some went out on the sea in ships;
    They were merchants on the mighty waters. 

They saw the works of the Lord,
    His wonderful deeds in the deep.
For he spoke and stirred up a tempest
    that lifted high the waves.
They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths;
    In their peril, their courage melted away.
They reeled and staggered like drunkards;
    They were at their wits’ end.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
    And he brought them out of their distress.
He stilled the storm to a whisper;
    The waves of the sea were hushed.
They were glad when it grew calm,
    and he guided them to their desired haven. -Psalm 107:23-30, NIV

The connecting point is the act of crying out to the Lord in trouble, something Jonah is attempting to do in his prayer. When we get to our wits’ end, that is when we cry out to the Lord in our trouble and distress. I often wonder why many people seem to need to sink to such a depth, sometimes called rock bottom, before they turn around and cry out to the Lord. But that seems to be a common feature of human nature. We love to try and solve our own problems, naively assuming we can crawl our way out of the belly of the beast. But alas, we must have God’s help. The very God who stilled the storm to a whisper in the psalm later said, “Peace, be still” from the boat with His apostles (Mark 4:39). Jesus Christ is the calmer of our storms. Are we willing to cry out to Him? 

Jonah continues his prayer:

To the roots of the mountains I sank;
    The earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you, Lord my God,
    brought my life up from the pit. -Jonah 2:6, NIV

Yes! Now Jonah realizes it is not the temple, but the God who is worshiped at the temple, who is his helper. God does not stay in the temple, but reaches down into our pit to pick us up and lift us out and preserve our lives. Praise His name!

The remembrance of God’s presence after the rescue cry is two essential experiences for both Jonah and us. There is yet a third experience we need to undergo with Jonah.

The Renewal of the Vow of Service

“When my life was ebbing away,

    I remembered you, Lord,

and my prayer rose to you,

    to your holy temple.

“Those who cling to worthless idols

    turn away from God’s love for them.

But I, with shouts of grateful praise,

    will sacrifice to you.

What I have vowed, I will make good.

    I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’” -Jonah 2:7-9, NIV

Sometimes, married couples on a special anniversary will ask for a renewal of their vows. It is a reminder that marriage is a covenant. The covenant between a believer and the Lord is the first and most fundamental covenant the Christian experiences. This becomes the foundation of a life well-lived, a purposeful life that attends to God’s calling. In the restoration movement, we take the Lord’s Supper each Lord’s Day. This, in a sense, is our covenant renewal under the New Covenant.

Jonah has run away from his calling. He has abandoned his covenant obligations. So now, in the belly of the beast, Jonah has a reckoning with his need. He needs to renew his vow of service to the Lord.

“When my life was ebbing away,
    I remembered you, Lord,
and my prayer rose to you,
    to your holy temple.”

Life was ebbing away for Jonah. The breath was being squeezed from his lungs. He knew he did not have long. Then his thoughts returned to the Lord, he prayed to the God of heaven and earth, and he recalled the temple in Jerusalem. For the central symbol of the covenant, the covenant in need of renewal, was the temple, which contained the ark of the covenant, the symbol of God’s presence. Jonah prays:

“Those who cling to worthless idols
    turn away from God’s love for them.”

Here is an acknowledgement of how Jonah got into his predicament. His error was abandoning the message of God’s forgiving love for those caught in the sin of idolatry. Remember, God had called Jonah to go to Nineveh, and to turn the wicked Ninevites, Israel’s archenemies, away from their worthless idols and toward the Living God. Yet Jonah let his nationalistic fervor, his desire to keep hating Israel’s enemies, overwhelm the love of God that should have been in his heart.

If Jonah is to escape the belly of the beast, he must surrender hate and give in to God’s love, even if it means loving his enemies.

“But I, with shouts of grateful praise,
    will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed, I will make good.
    I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”

In the conclusion of Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the beast, we finally get the words we need to hear from Jonah. Jonah begins to praise the Lord. His praise goes beyond words, however, and enters into a commitment. He pledges that he will sacrifice to the Lord. Here, he envisions his future return to the temple, but I think another sacrifice is arguably also in view. He must sacrifice his bitter rage toward his enemies and orient himself afresh to the Lord’s priorities. He must go to Nineveh and, in the Power of the Spirit, proclaim repentance and forgiveness to some of the most ruthless, evil people on the face of God’s earth. For our God prioritizes saving sinners from their sin.

 “Salvation comes from the Lord,” Jonah cries out. He notes what we as Christians also should affirm. Salvation does not come from our own efforts or from the nation or family we are born into. Salvation only comes from aligning ourselves by faith with the Lord and His plan for us. God is a God of grace who has supremely shown His grace by sending His only begotten Son to die for people from every tongue, and tribe, and people, and nation. 

Conclusion:

Jonah teaches us how to pray in the belly of the beast. In many ways, we live in the belly of the beast. Church attendance is declining dramatically. The fastest growing cohort in belief surveys today is the category of “No religion at all,” called the N O N E S, or the nones. For some, this is because people have not heard the gospel yet. For others, the problem is that the gospel they hear has been distorted by cultural priorities that are not aligned with God’s priorities. The gospel has been warped by a lack of authenticity. People have met too many Jonahs, that is, religious folks who reject them because the love of God and the salvation of God have not sufficiently grabbed their hearts with God’s overwhelming compassion for the lost. 

God wants to deliver us out of the belly of the beast so we can proclaim the greatest message on earth. To get there, maybe we must make the rescue cry. We must cry out to the Lord to rescue us. To get there, maybe we need a remembrance of God’s Presence. Baptized believers have the blessed gift of the Holy Spirit—are we attuned to the Spirit’s promptings? Finally, we need a renewal of our vow of service to the Lord. 

Do you need to make the rescue cry? Call out to the Lord today!

Do you need a remembrance of God’s living presence? Remind yourself of Him today!

Do you need a renewal of your vow to serve Jesus? Rededicate yourself to His blessed cause today!