Daily Devotional Wednesday 20th April 2022
by William MoodyJonah 2
Jonah’s Prayer
2:1 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, 2 saying,
“I called out to the LORD, out of my distress,
and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and you heard my voice.
3 For you cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas,
and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows
passed over me.
4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away
from your sight;
yet I shall again look
upon your holy temple.’
5 The waters closed in over me to take my life;
the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped about my head
6 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.
7 When my life was fainting away,
I remembered the LORD,
and my prayer came to you,
into your holy temple.
8 Those who pay regard to vain idols
forsake their hope of steadfast love.
9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Salvation belongs to the LORD!”
10 And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
(ESV)
Jonah is rescued from drowning by a great fish in whose stomach he remained three days and three nights. Here Jonah prayed this prayer recorded for us. He speaks of how when he was drowning in the sea and the weeds were wrapping around him, he cried to the Lord (v2-6).
Jonah had to be brought so low, to the very brink of death, so that he would turn once more back to God. Sheol (v2) is the place of the dead.
Often God has to use trials and suffering to cause us to seek Him and listen to His voice. Trials come to the Christian because God loves us and wants to prepare us to receive His best. As trials come, we mustn’t just desire for them to be removed, we need to seek what it is God wants to achieve through them. (see Hebrews 12:5-8, James 1:2-5)
Jesus used Jonah’s time in the fish as being symbolic of His time in the tomb (see Matthew 12 v40). The difference between Jesus and Jonah was that Jesus was innocent and willingly endured His suffering to save.
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