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Jon_1:17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Ver. 17. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish] A whale, Mat_12:40, which is a great fish indeed. Pliny tells of one taken that was six hundred feet in length, and three hundred and sixty in breadth; when they swim and show themselves above water, annare insulas putes, saith the same author, you would think them to be so many islands. So many mountains, saith another; who also addeth, that when they grow old they grow to that size and weight, that they stay long in a place. Insomuch as ex collectis et condensatis pulveribus frutices erumpere cernantur, the dust and filth gathered upon their backs seems to be an island, which while shipmen are mistaken and think to land at, they incur a great deal of danger (Sphinx Philid.).
Such a great fish God prepared] Either at first, when in creating of whales, creavit vastitares et stupores, as one saith; or he now commanded this great fish to be ready to ship Jonah to the shore, and to afford him an oratory in the mean while.
And Jonah was in the belly of the fish] Where interpreters note a concurrence of these four miracles. 1. That he was not there consumed, but that the concoctive faculty of the fish’s stomach was so long time kept from doing its office. 2. That he could in such a close prison breathe and live without the common use of air and light. 3. That he was not killed up with intolerable stench in so loathsome an outhouse. 4. That he could there frame such an excellent prayer, or rather song of thanksgiving; for Jonah was the true Arion whom the poets feign to have been a minstrel cast into the sea by the mariners, and saved by a dolphin.
Three days and three nights] Part of them at least; as Christ was in the grave, Mat_12:40, where, in the history of Jonah, he descrieth the mystery of his own death, burial, and resurrection; teaching us thereby to search the Scriptures, to search them to the bottom ( åñåõíáôå ); as those that dig for gold content not themselves with the first or second ore that offers itself, but search on till they have all. The Rabbis have a saying that there is a mountain of sense hangs upon every apex of the word of God. And so great is the depth of the Holy Scriptures, saith Augustin, that I could profit daily in the knowledge thereof, though I should set myself to search them from my childhood to decrepit old age, at best leisure, with utmost study and a far better wit.