V. 2. And Jonah prayed to the Lord his God in the body of the fish, saying.
(1) Not that he spoke these words with his mouth and put them in such order. For he was not so well in such a gruesome death that he could have composed such a fine little song; but he indicates with it.
How he was afraid and what thoughts his heart had when he was in such a battle with death. For, as I have said, we must look into Jonah's heart before he comes out of the distress, since he is still in death, and consider him badly as a dead man. For he did not know
of his salvation, but did not think otherwise than that it must have died, and thus tasted and felt death, and died without ceasing. But after that, when he recovered and came to life again, he thought behind him and wrote such a prayer in writing, to praise God and for the benefit of men.
2 Now come here, whoever is so forward and would like to know how the dead are. For there are many who would have liked to ask Lazarum what he had done, thought, felt and seen when he lay four days in the grave, John 11:44, and also other dead people whom Christ and the prophets and apostles raised from death. But some reckless talkers come in and write how they have seen such a horrible thing, so that they have never been happy all their lives. The others leave it at the saying Weish. 2, 1: "No one has ever come from the dead" to tell us how things are there.
(3) But I will leave Lazarum and other dead men here, and keep the scripture, which saith, They sleep. For methinks that such sleep hath them so completely inward, that they neither feel nor see anything, much less as one feels in natural sleep; and when they are raised, let it happen unto them, that they know not where they have been. Let us take these before us, who do not sleep like this, and yet are dead, and in death feel death and hell, which we still consider to be alive; but to reckon by their feeling (according to which it is to be reckoned, and not according to our appearance) they are dead, and there is no more life; let them tell us the right truth, and atone for the presumption, as it goes after this life, especially the wicked.
V. 3. I called upon the Lord in my affliction, and he answered me. I cried out to my God in the belly of hell, and you heard my voice.
4 First, he begins to praise God's grace and help, and to give thanks that he has helped him out of his distress, thus holding us up first to God's goodness, then to his distress, from which he has been helped. And this first verse teaches us two great and necessary lessons. The first, that one must first of all go to God.
Run and cry out to him in distress and complain to him. For God cannot leave it alone, he must help him who cries out and calls; his divine goodness cannot abstain, it must hear. It is only a matter of calling and crying out to him, and do not remain silent; only straighten up the head, and lift up the hands, and quickly call out: Help God, my Lord etc., and you will soon feel that it will be better. If you can call out and cry out, there is no more need. For even hell would not be hell, nor would it remain hell, if one cried and screamed to God in it. For if thou wilt weep and wail much, and be long in biting and gnawing with affliction, or look about thee for help, it is lost: thou shalt not get out of it, but in deeper. Listen to what Jonah did. He was also lukewarm with fear before he cried out, as he himself will say later. Otherwise he would have been saved sooner. He is also called and teaches you not to do this, and to follow him, but quickly he starts at the front, as he has called, and so is redeemed.
But no one can believe how difficult it is to do such crying and screaming. We can weep and lament, tremble and doubt, and put ourselves in the most terrible position, but we will not cry out. For there the evil conscience and sin presses under us and lies on our necks; there it strikes that we feel God's wrath. These are such burdens that the whole world is not so heavy. In short, it is impossible for nature alone or for an ungodly person to stand up against such a burden and immediately call upon God Himself, who is angry and punishes, and not run to anyone else. As Isaiah writes many times that the people did not turn to God who struck them [Isa. 9:13]. Nature is rather clever that it flees from God when he is angry or punishes, let alone that it should turn to him and call upon him, and always seeks help elsewhere, and does not want this God, and cannot stand him; therefore it also flees forever, and yet does not escape, and thus must remain damned in anger, sin, death and hell.
6 And here you see a great piece of hell, how sinners fare after this life, namely, that they flee God's wrath,
and never escape, yet do not cry out to him nor call out to him. But again Isaiah Cap. 28:16: "He that trusteth in Christ the cornerstone shall not flee." As if to say, "All the wicked flee forever from God and His wrath, and yet cannot escape; from which fearful fleeing the faithful are safe through Christ.
(7) Nature can neither do nor be suitable in any other way than how it feels. But now that she feels God's wrath and punishment, she thinks no differently of God than of an angry tyrant, cannot rise above such wrath, or leap above such feeling, and through it, against God, reach out to God and call. Therefore, when Jonah came so far away that he cried out, he had won. So think and do thou also. Do not bow down your head or blubber, but stand still and think about yourself, and you will know that this verse is true [Ps. 118:5]: "I cried out to the Lord in my anguish, and he answered me." To the Lord, to the Lord, and nowhere else, even to Him who wraths and punishes, and to no one else.
But the answer is that it will soon be better, and you will soon feel that the wrath will be soothed and the punishment softer. He will not leave you unanswered, if you can only call, and no more than you can call. For he does not ask about your merits, knows well that you are a sinner and deserve the wrath. He does not punish you otherwise. But nature cannot leave that either: it always wants to bring something that reconciles God, and finds nothing. For it believes and does not know that calling alone is enough to appease God's wrath, as Jonah teaches us here.
(9) Thus are all men done. If God neither wraths nor punishes, but gives enough and does us good, we are so bold, daring, proud and meager that no one can get along with us. No scorn, no terror, no example of God's wrath helps, it is all mockery and contempt. But again, when God punishes, we are so despondent and stupid that no consolation, no kindness, no grace can raise us up or strengthen us. Thus, as God does with us, we are of no use. Behold, how proud the peasants, how despondent the lords
were in this next horrible uproar. Neither pleading nor terror helped the peasants, neither consolation nor admonition helped the lords. Now again, there is no measure of their defiance and arrogance among the lords, but once again, neither entreaty nor terror helps until they feel God's wrath again. Kind does not leave kind.
(10) The other teaching is that we should cry out in such a way that we also feel in our hearts that it is such a cry that God answers, and also may boast with Jonah that God answers us when we cry out in distress. Now this is nothing else than calling with right faith of the heart; for the head cannot be lifted up, nor the hands lifted up, but the heart is lifted up first. Whoever thus aligns himself, as I have said, that he runs to the wrathful God by the help of the Spirit, and seeks mercy under the wrath, lets God punish him, and yet may comfort himself at the same time with His goodness. Then notice what a sharp face the heart must have, which is surrounded with vain anger and punishment from God, and yet sees and feels neither punishment nor anger, but grace and goodness, that is, it does not want to see or feel them, although it sees and feels them to the highest degree, and wants to see and feel grace and goodness, although they are hidden to the deepest degree.
(11) Behold, it is such a great thing to come to God, that one may break to Him through His wrath, through punishment and disgrace, than through vain thorns, yea, through vain spears and swords. This is a cry of faith, which must be felt in the heart, that it may meet God; just as Christ felt that a power had gone out from Him when He stopped the woman's bleeding [Marc. 5, 30]. For the word and work of the Spirit are felt to meet and not to fail. But those who cry out and pray to the wind that it does or does not come to pass are nothing and accomplish nothing; it is more a mockery and hypocrisy before God.
(12) The other part of this verse is the same as that which is now spoken. For it is one thing to cry unto the Lord in trouble, and to get an answer; and to cry unto God out of the belly of hell, and to have the voice heard. But he shows it twice, that
so that it is all the more certain, and we believe it all the more constantly, that it is so, as he says, in the sight of God. For the Scriptures have a way of saying one thing twice in succession, so that it is certain, as Joseph 1 Mos. 41, 25. also points the two dreams of Pharaoh to one thing, because of the reasons that it is certain etc.
013 But when he saith, In the belly of hell, he meaneth the belly of the fish, and calleth it the belly of hell: not that the fish is hell, but that the belly was unto him as much as hell, and Jonah hath his hell within; even as he would speak: Out of the belly of death; not that the fish is death, but that Jonah suffers his death within. For he does not say here what the fish is, but how it was to his mind in the fish, namely, that he was afraid it would lead down into hell, when it went into the belly of the fish, and might well say, Out of the belly of my hell, or out of that which was my hell.
14 But what hell is before the last day, I am not yet too sure. For that there should be a special place, where the damned souls are now inside, as the painters paint, and the belly servants preach, I consider nothing. For the devils are not yet in hell, but, as Peter says [2. Ep. 2, 4.], "bound with cords to hell", St. Paul calls them [Eph. 6, 12.] "rulers of the world and mighty men who hover above in the air"; Christ also calls the devils "princes of the world" [Joh. 14, 30.]. And indeed it could not be, if they were in hell, that they ruled the world, and did so much mischief and sorrow; the chastisement would well resist them. The Scriptures also speak of many saints as going down to hell, as Jonah did here. Item, like Job [Cap. 17, 13.j and as Jacob 1 Mos. 37, 35. says: "I must go down into hell sorrowful to my son."
(15) For this reason, the Scriptures almost use the word Sheol to indicate the final distress and anguish of those who die. For as they are minded, so it speaks. But it seems to them that they are going down to hell, that is, they are sinking into God's wrath, even though they know no place where they can go.
go there. For everyone has his hell with him where he is, as long as he feels the last hardships of death and God's wrath. In this way, St. Peter interprets Acts 2, 27, the 16th Psalm, v. 10, of Christ: "You will not leave my soul in hell," etc., and says, v. 24: "God has dissolved the pains of death"; that St. Peter wants to mean that through the pains of hell Christ felt when he died on the cross and sank there, and went into God's power. But on the last day it will be a different thing, because a special place will be hell, or because those will become very, who are so damned in hell or eternal wrath of God. But enough of that. It does not matter much whether someone thinks about hell, as it is painted and said. It will be so and still much worse now and then, because 1) someone can say, paint or think.
V. 4 Thou didst cast me into the deep in the midst of the sea, and the floods compassed me about. All your waves and billows went over me.
(16) Now here he tells the pieces in which one can see how his heart stood before he cried out to God, and faith in the battle, and was almost defeated. Then he forgets the people who threw him into the sea and says: God has done it. "You (he says), you were the one who warned me" etc.
For so it is in the conscience, that all misfortune that befalls us is God's wrath, and all creatures seem to be vain God and God's wrath, even if it is a rustling leaf, as Moses says [3rd book, 26, 36. 1: "It shall frighten them with a rustling leaf". Is it not a great wonder? Nothing is less and more despicable than a scrawny leaf that lies on the ground, where all the little worms run over it, and cannot resist a little stick, so that even Job, when he wanted to estimate himself in the least, could find nothing less than that he compares himself before God to a scrawny mat [Job 13, 25.Nor, when the hour cometh, shall horse, man, spear, harness, kings, princes, all the host, and all the power, be afraid of his noise; and such defiant, thunderous, and sovereign as he is, shall not be afraid of him.
1) In the original: when.
and angry tyrants, who otherwise cannot be frightened by any hell, nor by any wrath of God, nor by any judgments, but only become more proud and hardened by it. Are we not fine fellows? Before God's wrath we are not afraid, and stand stiffly, and yet fear, and flee from the wrath of an impotent dry leaf; and such a leaf's rustling shall make the world too narrow for us, and become our wrathful God, who before could throb and defy heaven and earth. We may indeed boast of our strength and power. If a dry leaf can do this over us, what should not the deep sea do, as Jonah says here about it? Yes, what will the hellish fire do on the last day, and the majesty of God himself with all the angels and creatures?
(18) Neither saith he, The waves and the billows of the sea are gone over me; but, Thy waves, and thy billows; because he feeleth in his conscience how the sea with her waves and her billows serve God and his wrath to punish sin. And says, "All the waves and billows went over me." For so he feels and feels as if all the waters of heaven and earth were upon him, and there were none else whom God's wrath oppresses but him, but all creatures, with God, against him. So also speak some who are in great anguish: Methinks heaven and earth are upon me. Now these are the right pieces and chastisements that come upon sinners after this life. Thus the wrath of God and his judgment begin and endure forever. This verse is similar to Psalm 42:8, where the prophet also says: "All your waves and your waves went over me." And Jonah may have taken it from the same Psalm.
V. 5 For I thought that I would be cast out of your sight, that I would no longer see your holy temple.
019 And the punishment was upon the conscience. For he wanted to flee from the Lord, so that he would not go to Nineveh; that was his sin and disobedience. Now he feels how he must be cast out from the presence of the Lord, as a punishment he does not like, who did not want to stay in the presence of God before, because of his sin and disobedience.
Sin. Then his heart beat, and said, Behold, I think thou hast fled rightly, and art come far enough from the Lord. Sin bites at the same time, and chastisement also presses.
(20) But it may be understood in two ways that he was cast out of God's sight. In the first, bodily, so that his heart decided that he must die, and despaired that he should always come back to life, and walk again among his people before God in the land of Israel, from which he had fled. As we heard above [Cap. 1, ยง 22], that "to flee from the presence of the Lord" was that he fled from the land of Israel, where God dwelt and where God's service was. Just as it is often said in the other book of Kings that God has removed Israel from His presence and is threatening to remove Judah also from His presence, that is, from the land where His word and service were. This understanding is given in the following passage, where he says: "I would no longer see your holy temple, which was at Jerusalem. With this he testifies that he was in the throes of death, and completely surrendered, he would be of death. Faith was in great distress and anguish; there was not much crying out to God, but only despair of life. And is it not a wonder who would hope for life in such a case, if he had been swallowed up and sunk in the deep sea and in the whale? 1)
21 Secondly, spiritually, that he felt as if he had also been eternally rejected by God because of his disobedience, like the damned. Just as David in the Psalter often says this, as in Psalm 31:23: "I said in my anguish, I am rejected from thy presence." And this, of course, is what sin brings with it in the conscience, especially in death. That is why Jonah certainly felt the same way, and also stood in the struggle with despair of God's grace and mercy before he came to faith again and called out. Then all kinds of examples of God's wrath occurred to him, since he punished the sinners, as Adam and Heva, Cain, the flood,
1) In the German editions: "versunken war", but the Latin has correctly: absorbkretur.
Sodom and Gomorrah. This is also one of the right pieces of the hellish torment that will come over the wicked after this life. And you see here in the two pieces, what the sinners do after this life, think and do, that there is only fear of death and distress, trembling and despair forever. But Jonah came to such thoughts and despair because he felt the wrath and punishment of God bodily and outwardly, as he was thrown into the deep and surrounded by the floods, overtaken by waves and billows, when he said above, v. 4, and told further, and said:
V. 6 For the waters compassed me about to my life; the deep compassed me about, the reeds covered my head.
(22) How could I be assured of life, or be comforted, when I was caught in waters round about, as in the midst of the sea, and reeds stood over me, and covered me? This is said: At the edge and shore of the sea and large lakes or ponds reeds and canes are used to grow. Now he who is drowned in the sea lies covered under the reeds, that is, under the water, since reeds grow inside; so that everything that is in the sea and around the sea has him under it, even the earth on the shore; as follows.
V. 7. I sank down to the bottom of the mountains; the earth had shut me up forever.
(23) For all the seas, lakes, and deep waters are in the bottoms between mountains; they cannot abide on the level land. So now the deepest valley of the mountains and the bottom of the sea, where the mountains meet at the bottom, are the bottoms of the mountains. Jonah speaks all these things as one who is drowned in the sea and thinks about himself, or as one who is entitled to or thinks about one who is drowned. For when he thinks about himself, he sees the waves of water above him, and on either side the shore, reeds, and land or earth. Because he then sinks and sinks, it is as if he sinks down to the ground between mountains.
(24) Then the earth has locked him up forever, that is, he does not think otherwise than that he must remain there and can never come out again. For like one who must remain in the tower or prison, so the
If the door and the window are locked, he too must remain in the sea where he sinks. So the earth, that is, the mountains, where the sea is between, has locked him up, that is, caught him with water and kept him so that he cannot get out. Now you see what thoughts Jonah had in the whale. Eating and drinking and all things are well forgotten; only he fights with deadly thoughts; yes, he despairs of life, and is completely at death's door. There is still no call to God.
You have brought my life out of destruction, O Lord, my God.
(25) Now here it wants to become better, and other thoughts want to come; there faith raises its head and wants to win; there the despondent thoughts subside. Just when I was deepest in death, and had the least hope, and it was impossible for me to live, you came with your power and miraculous work, and brought my life out of death and destruction. So, when the rope holds hardest, it breaks. That is why God is called a helper of emergencies, that he helps when all things are desperate and impossible. But how does he do when he helps like this? Listen:
V. 8 When my soul was in despair, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you in your holy temple.
26. First, he gives grace and the Spirit to lift up the heart so that it remembers God's mercy, and lets go of thoughts of anger, turning from God the Judge to God the Father. But this is not man's power. For Jonah speaks here: "his soul had despaired with him". Fear was its power and work. But that he remembers the Lord and begins to believe, that is not the work of his soul; the spirit, and no one else, can remember the Lord.
But when the memory of the Lord enters the heart, a new light arises, life looks forward again, the heart is again bold to call and to ask, and it is certainly heard. This is what Jonah says in the third 1) verse: "I
1) In the original: in the first.
cried out to the Lord in my anguish, and he answered me." Here, death, wrath, sin, hell and all destruction have come to an end, and are all overcome and swallowed up through faith, based on God's goodness.
But when he says: "My prayer came to you in your holy temple", he means the temple in Jerusalem, where God dwelled in the flesh at that time. For the people of Israel had the law that they had to worship nowhere except where God's place was, which He had appointed and chosen, as He says in Exodus 20:24: "Where I make remembrance of My name, there will I come and bless thee." So all those who wanted to pray, in the land or out of the land, had to direct their prayers there and set their hearts on the place where God dwelt bodily through His Word, so that they would worship no other God than the One who sat above the cherubim on the mercy seat. All prayers had to come to this place; just as in our time in the New Testament all our prayers have to come to Christ, who is our mercy seat, so that we should neither know nor worship nor call on any other God, except the one who dwells bodily in the man Jesus Christ. For there is none else either.
V. 9 But those who rely on vanity in vain forsake mercy.
29. the Hebrew says: They let their mercy go. But because this reads in German as if he speaks of the mercy of men, which they are to prove, I have omitted the little word "their", and have put "mercy" instead, so that it would be all the clearer. For Jonah speaks of God's mercy and goodness, which is ours, that is, offered, promised and set forth to us. Just as when I said of Christ, "Those who let their Christ, or their faith, or their gospel go," etc., when none of it is ours, but all of it is God's alone, who gives it; and yet it is called ours, because it is all offered and presented to us, that we should take it and have it for ours.
30 For Jonah punishes with this verse the unwise saints of works and hypocrites, who do not trust in God's grace alone, but in their own works; the same because they
They do not know what faith is, nor have they ever been in need of learning what faith is good for, and how even good works are of no avail; because they remain like this, they regard the graces as small, and they consider their own deeds to be excellent. But Jonah speaks here: It is vanity; that is in German: It is nothing and is good for nothing before God, before whom nothing is valid but his goodness and mercy, grasped and confessed with right faith, given to us without all work and merit. "Now those who rely on such vanity are in vain" (he says), that is, in vain and lost. For it is of no avail to them, that their trust or reliance is of as little avail as their doings or vanity, on which they rely. Hereby he especially touches his people Israel, who relied on the law and works, so that they not only abandoned the gospel or God's grace, but also persecuted it, when it should be theirs before all others, as it was promised to them.
V. 10. But I will offer thanksgiving, I will pay my vows to the Lord,' that I may be helped.
(31) Again he touches the Jews with their sacrifices and works. As if he should say with the 50th Psalm, v. 13: "They sacrifice oxen and goats, as if God lusted for oxen's flesh and goat's blood", yet they think they have done well. But I hold that the sacrifice of thanksgiving is the right sacrifice before God, that one praises Him, extols Him and preaches about His goodness, which is done to us unworthy ones, as Jonah says here: "That I have been helped. But those rather want to be praised and preached by God, as 1) those who have done great service and benefit to God with their works. Such knowledge of God's grace, although Jonah had it before, he did not have it as abundantly as he has now learned in this storm. For here he grasps that God does not consider any person nor merit who helps such unworthy sinners. Earlier Jonah was very deep in the fact that God also looks at the person, and
1) Wittenberger: "more" instead of: rather; this change has arisen through misunderstanding. The meaning is: they rather want to be praised by God, as if they were such people, who with their works etc.
The work, especially of the people of Israel, although it is not yet completely out.
32 But that he says, "I will pay my vows," is not to be understood that Jonah has vowed something. For one does not read anything about it; so he does not indicate it among other thoughts he had in the whale, but only his prayer. Therefore we must be accustomed to the Scriptures, that where the dear saints speak in general of vows and payments, and do not express one in particular, that there the common vow of all who are God's people is understood. But there we vow that we will have no more God but Him alone. Therefore such "paying vows" means nothing else than confessing, praising and preaching, and thus honoring and serving the Lord; as the 50th Psalm, v. 14: "Offer to God the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay to the Most High your vows." And Psalm 116:14: "I will pay my vows unto the Lord before all his people." So Jonah will also pay his vows, that is, praise and preach the Lord as his one God, because he has been helped.
V.11. And the Lord spoke to the fish, and the fish spewed out Jonah onto the land.
33) This is spoken in the right scriptural way, as that God does and makes all things by speaking or word, as John 1:3: "All things.
Things are made by the word, and without the word nothing is made": and Ps. 33, 9.: "He speaks, so it is done; he gives, so it stands." So the fish did not have to digest Jonah, and the nature of the fish did not only have to keep still from its usual effect and swell, but also had to return the food, carry it to the land, and spit it out unharmed, so that God works great miracles on Jonah. There it is all reversed: what before served to death must serve to life; there the fish, which before was the jaws of death, must be the jaws of life, and Jonah must come to life through him, through whom he was caught and led to death. The sea must also give room and let his guest go to the land. Here the foundations of the mountains no longer hold: the bars of the earth are gone; the reeds no longer cover etc.
All this is our comfort and confidence, so that we may learn to trust God, with whom death and life are the same, and as easily as if He were playing with them, giving one thing and taking another, or changing one thing for another. But to us they are great, impossible things, in which he proves to us his power and art, as the 104th Psalm says.
1) Gezau tool (Dietz). Cf. Walch, St. Louis Edition, Vol. XIX, 639.