Yona 2 | The Fish and Yona’s Prayer

Yona is cast into the sea and swallowed by a great fish that God summoned for him. What role does this part play in the story? The straightforward understanding is that God saves Yona from drowning by means of the fish. But that alone is not enough to explain the entire chapter, since Yona is only spat out onto dry land at its end.

At the beginning of the book, after receiving God’s command, Yona embarks on a series of determined actions in order to flee. Later, when the storm reaches the ship, Yona becomes passive. The sailors wonder why he is not calling out to his God, in stark contrast to themselves – they are trying to pray and save their lives. Yona, meanwhile, goes to sleep. For him, calling out to God would be a defeat. He is trying to escape any relationship with God; in his view, death would be a victory – because that way, he would not have to carry out the mission assigned to him.

When Yona finds himself inside the fish, he is trapped. On the one hand, he is in deep distress, stuck in the belly of a fish for three days. On the other hand, even his wish to die has not come true. Prof. Uriel Simon writes about this in his commentary מקרא לישראל on Sefer Yona: “For three days and three nights the prophet was trapped and imprisoned, and his silence in the belly of the fish mirrored his silence in the depths of the ship. At first, he may have deluded himself that the fish had been sent not only to save him from drowning, but also to return him to land – and to hope that the fact he had preferred to die rather than fulfill the mission might prompt God to relieve him of it. But as the days and nights dragged on, the prophet came to truly understand his situation: the path of death and the path of life alike would not open before him except through the key of prayer. It was not the threatening waves of the sea that brought him back into contact with God, but the sealed belly of the fish; it was not the fear of death that opened his mouth, but the helplessness of this in-between state – between death and life.” Those three days in which Yona hovers between life and death inside the fish are indeed what lead him to offer the prayer to God in Chapter 2.

The content of Yona’s prayer is surprising: in his prayer, Yona thanks God for salvation, but it seems he has not yet been saved. And beyond that, it seems Yona does not even want this salvation – after all, he had preferred to die rather than engage in a relationship with God! Rav Shuki Reiss, in the attached article, suggests comparing Yona’s process to that of a rebellious teenager who runs away from home and does not want a relationship with his parents. At a certain point, the teenager breaks down, and his longing for his parents resurfaces. In the belly of the fish, a turning point occurs – and Yona begins once again to call out to God and rejoice in it. Dr. Yoshi Fargeon, in his lecture here, proposes the opposite approach. He points out that in his prayer (beyond expressing thanks for eventual salvation), Yona highlights his continual loyalty to God (verses 5, 9) even though God cast him out (verse 5) and nearly led him to destruction (verse 9). In doing so, Yoshi suggests we see Yona’s entrenchment in his position: Yona continues to claim that he is the one in the right, and that he is the one loyal to the values of truth. The continuation of the story, in the coming chapters, will examine whether Yona is truly bound to his rigid principles of truth – or whether, in the end, he too is flesh and blood, in need of compassion and salvation.