Rector’s Reflections
Wednesday 19th February 2025
What’s in a story? Jonah and the Whale
In yesterday’s reflections, I introduced the Book of Jonah, which is found among the Minor Prophets in the Old Testament. The story is familiar, but it is also intriguing. How should it be interpreted? What might it to have to say to us about God? Is it nothing more than a fairy tale?
One approach to the story is to take it as a historical account of what happened to a historical character, namely Jonah the prophet, who lived back in the 8th century BC.
Could it be a straightforward piece of historical writing? This is a perfectly possible approach to the story. But there is an obvious problem: what about the story of the great fish or whale swallowing Jonah and then spewing him out again, some three days later? Surely this is the stuff of fairy tales?
The obvious answer is to say that this part of the story is a piece of make believe. No human being could be swallowed by a great fish and then spewed out again three days later. It’s ridiculous.
If we assume that story of Jonah being swallowed by the great fish is not intended to be taken literally, why is it included? Is the fish intended to have symbolic significance?
Many readers have looked at the great fish in symbolic terms. Some readers have seen the great fish as symbolising the exile of the Jewish people in the 6th century BC. According to this interpretation, “Jonah” stands for the Jewish people as a whole. The leaders of the Jewish nation were sent into exile following the capture of Jerusalem in 586 BC, and so this period of exile is symbolised by the time that “Jonah” spent trapped in the great fish. After some 70 years, the exiles were allowed to return to Jerusalem. This return is symbolised by the great fish spewing out “Jonah” after three days and three nights. There might seem a bit of a disconnect between the 70 years of the Exile and the “three days and three nights” which “Jonah” spent inside the fish, but in Hebrew the phrase “three days and three nights” was not intended literally – it meant simply a significant period of time.
Another interpretation of the great fish is to see it as referring to Jesus’ death and resurrection. There is a well-established Christian tradition of interpreting the Old Testament in terms of the New Testament. For many Christians, the New Testament provides the key to explain the true meaning of the Old Testament. So there has been a tradition of seeing Jonah’s “three days and three nights” in the great fish as pointing to the time Jesus spent in the tomb between his crucifixion and his resurrection. The Early Church preserved the tradition that Jesus himself made the connection between Jonah’s experience and his own death and resurrection. Jesus’ s own death and resurrection was a historical fact. Does this mean that Jonah’s experience inside the great fish must also have been a historical fact? This has been argued, but on the other hand Jesus may not have intended his reference to Jonah to be taken literally.
A final thought: is it possible that the story of Jonah and the great fish might refer to something which really did take place? Surely not, you may say. Well, the story goes that in 1758, in stormy weather, a sailor fell overboard from a frigate in the Mediterranean. A shark was close by, which, as the sailor was swimming and crying out for help, took him in his throat so that he disappeared. Someone on board the ship shot at the shark, so that the shark cast out the sailor which it had been holding in its mouth. The sailor was unharmed. The shark was then harpooned, killed and dried. The sailor took the dried shark on tour around various places in Europe. It was 20 feet long, and with its ended fins, 9 foot wide. It weighed 3924 pounds. Might Jonah have been taken by a similar sized shark? Or is the story from 1758 simply a tall tale told by an entrepreneur who had acquired a large dried shark, and who was eager to market his shark to a gullible public?
What are your thoughts? Did Jonah really end up inside a great fish for three days and three nights? Or is this meant to symbolize something else? The Exile of the Jewish People following the destruction of Jerusalem in 586BC? Might it point to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ? Or does it symbolise absolutely nothing at all? Might it just be a piece of fun?