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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Jonah 2:5 - 2:5
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
5 Waters surrounded me even to the soul: the flood encompassed me,
Sea-grass was wound round my head.
6 I went down to the foundations of the mountains;
The earth, its bolts were behind me for ever:
Then raisedst Thou my life out of the pit, O Jehovah my God.
7 When my soul fainted within me, I thought of Jehovah;
And my prayer came to Thee into Thy holy temple.
This strophe opens, like the last, with a description of the peril of death, to set forth still more perfectly the thought of miraculous deliverance which filled the prophet's mind. The first clause of the fifth verse recals to mind Psa 18:5 and Psa 69:2; the words “the waters pressed (בָּאוּ) even to the soul” (Psa 69:2) being simply strengthened by אֲפָפוּנִי after Psa 18:5. The waters of the sea girt him round about, reaching even to the soul, so that it appeared to be all over with his life. Tehōm, the unfathomable flood of the ocean, surrounded him. Sūph, sedge, i.e., sea-grass, which grows at the bottom of the sea, was bound about his head; so that he had sunk to the very bottom. This thought is expressed still more distinctly in Psa 18:6. קִצְבֵי הָרִים, “the ends of the mountains” (from qâtsabh, to cut off, that which is cut off, then the place where anything is cut off), are their foundations and roots, which lie in the depths of the earth, reaching even to the foundation of the sea (cf. Psa 18:16). When he sank into the deep, the earth shut its bolts behind him (הָאָרֶץ is placed at the head absolutely). The figure of bolts of the earth that were shut behind Jonah, which we only meet with here (בְּעַד from the phrase סָגַר הַדֶּלֶת בְּעַד, to shut the door behind a person: Gen 7:16; 2Ki 4:4-5, 2Ki 4:33; Isa 26:20), has an analogy in the idea which occurs in Job 38:10, of bolts and doors of the ocean. The bolts of the sea are the walls of the sea-basin, which set bounds to the sea, that it cannot pass over. Consequently the bolts of the earth can only be such barriers as restrain the land from spreading over the sea. These barriers are the weight and force of the waves, which prevent the land from encroaching on the sea. This weight of the waves, or of the great masses of water, which pressed upon Jonah when he had sunk to the bottom of the sea, shut or bolted against him the way back to the earth (the land), just as the bolts that are drawn before the door of a house fasten up the entrance into it; so that the reference is neither to “the rocks jutting out above the water, which prevented any one from ascending from the sea to the land,” nor “densissima terrae compages, qua abyssus tecta Jonam in hac constitutum occludebat” (Marck). Out of this grave the Lord “brought up his life.” Shachath is rendered φθορά, corruptio, by the early translators (lxx, Chald., Syr., Vulg.); and this rendering, which many of the more modern translators entirely reject, is unquestionably the correct one in Job 17:14, where the meaning “pit” is quite unsuitable. But it is by no means warranted in the present instance. The similarity of thought to Psa 30:4 points rather to the meaning pit = cavern or grave, as in Psa 30:10, where shachath is used interchangeably with בּוֹר and שְׁאוֹל in Jon 2:4 as being perfectly synonymous. Jon 2:7 is formed after Psa 142:4 or Psa 143:4, except that נַפְשִׁי is used instead of רוּחִי, because Jonah is not speaking of the covering of the spirit with faintness, but of the plunging of the life into night and the darkness of death by drowning in the water. הִתְעַטֵּף, lit., to veil or cover one's self, hence to sink into night and faintness, to pine away. עָלַי, upon or in me, inasmuch as the I, as a person, embraces the soul or life (cf. Psa 42:5). When his soul was about to sink into the night of death, he thought of Jehovah in prayer, and his prayer reached to God in His holy temple, where Jehovah is enthroned as God and King of His people (Psa 18:7; Psa 88:3).
But when prayer reaches to God, then He helps and also saves. This awakens confidence in the Lord, and impels to praise and thanksgiving. These thoughts form the last strophe, with which the Psalm of thanksgiving is appropriately closed.