If you are in the habit of praying regularly, especially in the privacy of your own heart,
you will surely have noticed that some of your prayers are more coherent and
composed than others, depending on circumstances, distractions and the level of
distress you are experiencing at the time.
This is fairly normal, I think, and gives us cause to be thankful for the Spirit
of God, who helps
us in our weakness.
Given his
circumstances, Jonah’s prayer in chapter 2 appears to be composed with
unusual care, building to its conclusion logically and even drawing on the Davidic
psalms for much of its imagery.
I don’t
think we need to assume that these were precisely the words Jonah spoke to the
Lord in the order he spoke them from the belly of the great fish where he was
captive, and neither do many commentators. Benson, for example, says, “several
of David’s Psalms were probably composed after his trouble was over; but in a
manner suitable to the thoughts he had at the time of his affliction.” That something
similar occurred with the prayer in chapter 2 of Jonah sounds like a reasonable
supposition to me, though it is certainly not impossible that the prophet
spent parts of three days and nights in the belly of the great fish
pondering how to express himself to his God, and then gave voice to his
thoughts as articulately as we see here.
Jonah 2:4-10 — Jonah’s Prayer (cont.)
“ ‘Then I said, “I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.” The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!’And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.”
Your Holy Temple
Almost half of Jonah’s prayer is given over to describing
the awful experience of drowning from which God has recently saved him, but the
other thought that recurs in these verses is Jonah’s love for the holy temple
of the Lord in Jerusalem, his desire to see it again and his conviction that he
will.
Like much of Jonah’s prayer, the words “holy temple” are
most frequently used in the Psalms to describe the dwelling place of God among
men, the word “holy” signifying that the temple in Jerusalem was uniquely set
apart to God in a way no other building on earth could claim. Local deities
were common among the nations of that period, but in associating God’s face or
presence with an earthly location, Jonah is not in the least claiming to serve
the same sort of limited, local deity the nations believed in. These same
psalms of David which Jonah is referencing in his prayer say things
like this:
“The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven.”
The ancient Israelites well understood that the temple in
which their priests and Levites ministered to the God of heaven and everything
within it were only copies
or shadows of the corresponding heavenly realities. In preparing to build
the tabernacle, Moses was repeatedly told to ensure that he followed the
pattern shown to him on the mountain. So while it could truly be said that
the Lord was to be found and worshiped in his holy temple in Jerusalem in a
unique way, that same God remained simultaneously enthroned in heaven.
Jonah understood this too. He declared it to the mariners in
chapter 1 when he referred to “the Lord, the God of heaven”, and it is only
because his God is no mere local deity that he can speak here of a prayer made
from the depths of the ocean coming “to you, into your holy temple”. This is manifestly not the “holy temple” in
Jerusalem of which he is speaking the second time he uses the phrase.
It’s a reminder to the Christian reader of something we know
very well but often fail to reflect in our language and behavior when we gather:
that our God is both specially present with us when we gather and at the same
time gloriously enthroned in the heavens. The building in which we worship is
quite irrelevant.
Regarding Vain Idols
One blog writer critiques
Jonah’s prayer for referring to “those pagan people” without apparent
empathy. While it is evident Jonah still didn’t share his God’s compassion for the
idol worshipers in Nineveh and would go on wrestle further with his bitterness against
the Assyrian people in chapter 4, what he says in here is perfectly true:
those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. Salvation
belongs to the Lord, and to nobody else. In choosing to venerate objects of
wood and stone rather than the Living God, the pagans are willfully rejecting
the love of God and all opportunity of relating to him personally.
Let’s suppose for a moment that Jonah had served the same
sort of ineffectual local fiction his fellow mariners worshiped. If so, he
would have perished in the ocean and been forgotten. Instead, he recognizes he
has experienced the “steadfast love” of the Lord, the love that, as the
hymnwriter put it, “will not let me go”. Jonah has come to the place of
recognizing the futility of running from God.
What I Have Vowed I Will Pay
In the process of repenting, Jonah makes the statement that
he intends to pay “what I have vowed”. That wording may seem a little
peculiar since the book has so far made no mention of a vow. Again, we have the
apparent association with the temple in Jerusalem, where solemn promises to
YHWH were generally made and the fulfillment of them consummated.
So then, on the one hand Jonah may be speaking of fulfilling
a vow he had previously made (and violated by his rebellion) to obey the Lord
and carry out his mission to Nineveh. More likely, he may be saying that he vows
to journey to the temple in Jerusalem to offer a public sacrifice of
thanksgiving to the Lord there for the salvation he has received.
Either way, the prophet’s will is broken. Emphasizing the
difference between his God and all other false gods, Jonah determines to obey
the God he has professed to serve.
Back to Dry Land
The Lord responds to Jonah’s prayer by speaking to the fish,
causing it to vomit Jonah out “upon the dry land”. Talk about door-to-door
service! Not to read too much into this statement, but its placement directly
after the prayer suggests it is a responsive action: that is to say, Jonah
voices his repentance and thanksgiving, and God immediately releases him.
Apparently during the time Jonah was working himself up to offering his prayer,
God had been undoing the results of his rebellion. However far the ship may
have brought Jonah out into the sea, the fish had brought him back, something
Jonah could never have accomplished on his own.
There is maybe a reminder here that only God can truly restore
the failed servant. Salvation of any sort is not accomplished by human works.
If it was, it would not be called salvation. So then, it is not a matter of us
mustering the effort of will to bring ourselves back to the place we should
always have been. Rather, God himself must take us up and restore us if we are
to be truly useful to him.
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