Jonah 2

Jonah 2:1

Ambrose of Milan: From my mother’s womb you are my God; for I have been placed in the womb by you and have never departed from it. Like Jonah, who was placed in the belly of the whale, I was interceding for the people. And he truly was with God in his mother’s womb, as it is written: ‘Before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste’ (Isaiah 7:16). — Interrogation of Job and David, Chapter 6

Augustine of Hippo: Either all the miracles wrought by divine power may be treated as incredible, or there is no reason why the story of the miracle should be believed. The resurrection of Christ Himself upon the third day would not be believed by us, if the Christian faith was afraid to encounter ridicule. I would be surprised that it would be reckoned what was done with Jonah to be incredible; unless, perchance, one would think it be easier for a dead man to be raised in life from his tomb, than for a living man to be kept alive in the belly of a whale.

Basil of Caesarea: Since the holy God has promised those who hope in him a means of escape from every affliction, we, even if we have been cut off in the midst of the seas of evils and are racked by the mighty waves stirred up against us by the spirits of wickedness, nevertheless endure in Christ who strengthens us. We have not slackened the intensity of our zeal for the churches, nor do we, as in a storm when the waves rise high, expect destruction. We still hold fast to our earnest endeavors as much as is possible, sensible of the fact that he who was swallowed by the whale was considered deserving of safety because he did not despair of his life but cried out to the Lord. So then, we ourselves, having reached the uttermost limit of evils, do not give up our hope in the Lord but watch and see his help on all sides. — LETTER 242

Cassiodorus: The word for depth (profundum) stands for porro fundum, the far bottom, whose lowest levels are wholly submerged. From here the prophet cried to the Lord so that he could be more easily heard. It was from this depth that Peter poured forth his glorious tears and from here that the tax collector, who had fallen so deeply into sin that he could not even raise his eyes to heaven, beat his blameworthy breast. Finally from these depths Jonah, who was set in the whale’s belly and had entered hell alive, spoke to the Lord with silent vehemence. The whale was a house of prayer for the prophet, a harbor for him when shipwrecked, a home amid the waves, a happy resource at a desperate time. He was not swallowed for sustenance but to gain rest; and by a wondrous and novel precedent the beast’s belly yielded up its food unharmed, rather than consumed by the normally damaging process of digestion. Jonah bears witness to this in his book when he says, “And the Lord commanded a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights,” and the rest. In that same passage he recounted his prayers as well with prophetic truth. What an outstandingly and wholly glorious repentance, a humility that experiences no fall, grief that rejoices people’s hearts, tears that water the soul! Indeed this depth, which conveys us to heaven, has no inkling of hell. So observe the power of holy prayer, believing as it does that it must be heard the more quickly, the deeper the depths from which it cried to the Lord. So finally there follows, “Lord, hear my prayer,” for those who have buried themselves in the bowels of holy humility are all the closer to the Highest. Thus when he prayed from the depths he quickly gained the gifts of the highest Redeemer. — EXPOSITION ON THE Psalms 129:1

Cyril of Alexandria: The event would rightly be taken to be truly remarkable and surpassing rhyme or reason. If God were said to be responsible however; who would still demur? the Divinity is powerful, and easily changes the nature of living things to whatever he chooses, nothing standing in the way of his ineffable wishes. — Commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets, Jonah

Gregory of Nazianzus: Do you praise the fearlessness of Elijah in speaking to tyrants and his translation in fire and the noble heritage of Elisha, the sheepskin mantle, accompanied by the spirit of Elijah? Then praise also the life of Basil passed in the midst of the fire, I mean in the multitude of temptations, and his preservation through fire which burned but did not consume, the miracle of the bush. Praise also the fair garment of skin, which came to him from on high, his fleshlessness. I shall omit other parallels, as the young men bedewed in the flames and the fugitive prophet praying in the belly of the fish and coming forth from the monster as from a chamber. I shall pass over the just man in the den, restraining the ferocity of lions, and the struggle of the seven Maccabees, who with a priest and their mother was perfected by blood and all kinds of tortures. Basil emulated their endurance and achieved their glory. — ON BASIL THE GREAT, ORATION 43:74

Haimo of Auxerre: He prepared the fish, that is, He made it come next to the ship, in order that it might take Jonah in its mouth when he was thrown overboard.

Methodius of Olympus: As, then, Jonah spent three days and as many nights in the whale’s belly, and was delivered up sound again, so shall we all, who have passed through the three stages of our present life on earth – I mean the beginning, the middle, and the end, of which all this present time consists – rise again. For there are altogether three intervals of time, the past, the future, and the present. And for this reason the Lord spent so many days in the earth symbolically, thereby teaching clearly that when the fore-mentioned intervals of time have been fulfilled, then shall come our resurrection, which is the beginning of the future age, and the end of this. For in that age there is neither past nor future, but only the present. Moreover, Jonah having spent three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, was not destroyed by his flesh being dissolved, as is the case with that natural decomposition which takes place in the belly, in the case of those meats which enter into it, on account of the greater heat in the liquids, that it might be shown that these bodies of ours may remain undestroyed. For consider that God had images of Himself made as of gold, that is of a purer spiritual substance, as the angels; and others of clay or brass, as ourselves. He united the soul which was made in the image of God to that which was earthy. As, then, we must here honour all the images of a king, on account of the form which is in them, so also it is incredible that we who are the images of God should be altogether destroyed as being without honour. Whence also the Word descended into our world, and was incarnate of our body, in order that, having fashioned it to a more divine image, He might raise it incorrupt, although it had been dissolved by time. And, indeed, when we trace out the dispensation which was figuratively set forth by the prophet, we shall find the whole discourse visibly extending to this.

Paulinus of Nola: Now that I have made mention of the great prophet, who typifies the holy mystery, foreshadowed the death which lasted three days and the salvation it restored, I should like to retrace the footsteps of my poem and briefly hasten back to Jonah. Wondrous are the Lord’s stratagems. Though plunged in the sea, he tossed on the waves unharmed. Though devoured, he lived on, and the beast that swallowed him remained unfed by the living food [of his body]. He was the booty but not the food of the whale whose belly he used as a home. What a worthy prison for God’s holy runaway! He was captured on the very sea by which he had sought to flee.Translated to the deep belly of the massive beast, he was imprisoned in a living jail. Thrown from the ship to destruction, he yet sailed upon the waters, an exile from land, a guest of the brine. He walked in the cavern of the whale’s body, a prisoner both captive and free. He was free upon the waves as he floated in that whale, both within the sea and outside it. And though physically incarcerated, the prophet emerged in spirit to return to God. His body was constrained by the great body [of the whale], but the bonds of earth did not constrain the flight of his mind. Though enclosed in that belly, he broke out of his prison by prayer and reached God’s ears. Free for prayer but detained from flight, he proved himself by his faith. He had attempted to escape God by sea, to hide from God in a ship, but now he believed that the Lord was with him even inside that whale submerged in the sea. — POEM 24:205

Rabanus Maurus: The fish which swallowed Jonah in the sea, shows forth the death which Christ suffered in the world. Three days and nights was the one in the whale’s belly, the other in the tomb.

Theodoret of Cyrus: “I cried out,” he says, “to the Lord my God in my affliction, and he heard me. Out of the belly of hell he heard my cry.” “I,” says Jonah, “who previously thought that God appears to prophets only in Jerusalem, found him present even in the whale’s belly. And having prayed to him, I was delivered by his love of humanity.” He calls the whale’s belly “the belly of hell” because the beast is deadly. In fact, Jonah was already presumed dead. He survived only by God’s grace. Moreover, Jonah says that he was in the “belly of hell” because this is also a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” It is especially surprising that the one who really tasted death said that he was three days and three nights in the belly of earth, yet the one who saw just the shadow of death called the whale’s belly “the belly of hell.” This was because the life of Jonah was beyond his control, while in the case of the Lord both his death and his resurrection were voluntary. That is why the Gospel calls the place of hell and death “the heart of earth,” while here the belly of whale is called “the belly of hell.” “He heard my voice,” says Jonah, since otherwise he would not be alive to say this. — COMMENTARY ON Jonah 2:3

Jonah 2:2

Jerome: “And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and you heard my voice.” LXX: similar except: ‘from the belly of hell I threw out my cries’. He does not say, “I cry”, but “I cried”. He does not pray for the future, but gives thanks for the past. That shows us that from the moment he is thrown into the sea and sees the whale, that great bulk, that immense mouth which opened wide to swallow him, he remembered God and cried out, either by the waves giving passage for his cry, or by a feeling from the depths of his heart, according to that which the apostle says: “crying in your hearts” [Col. 3:16]: “Abba! Father” [Rom. 8:15]. He cried to him who alone knew the hearts of men and said to Moses, “why do you cry out to me?” [Ex. 14:15], while the Scriptures remember that Moses had never cried out before this speech. This is the text that we read in the first psalm of the steps: “I cried to the Lord in my distress and he replied to me.” [Ps. 119:1] By the “belly of hell” we understand the stomach of a whale of such great size that it took the place of hell. But this can better be referred to the person of Christ, who under the name of David, sings in the psalm: “you will not leave my spirit in hell, and you will not allow your saint to see putrefaction” [Ps. 15:10], living in hell free among the dead. — Commentary on Jonah, Chapter 2

Tertullian: God is not one who heeds the voice; rather, it is the heart which He hears and beholds. Even the speechless He hears, and the silent petition He will answer. Do the ears of God await a sound? If they did, how could Jonah’s prayer from the depths of the whale’s belly have made its way to Heaven, up through the organs of such a great beast from the very bottom of the sea, up through such a vast amount of water? As for those who pray in such a loud voice, what else will they attain but the annoyance of their neighbors? (Prayer Chapter 17)

Jonah 2:3

Haimo of Auxerre: he cried with the whole passion of his heart, according to the Apostle who says, “You have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by virtue of which we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’”

Jerome: “For you had cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about.” LXX: ‘you cast me into the deep of the heart from the sea, and the waves surrounded me’. The interpretation of the person of Jonah is not difficult: from the moment when he was closed in the stomach of the whale and found himself at the deepest and middle of the sea, he was surrounded by waves. For the Lord, the Saviour, prefiguring Psalms 68 in which he says, “I am enshrouded in the deep mud where there is no ground. I have come to the deepest part of the sea and the storm engulfs me” [Ps. 68:3]. It is said of him in another psalm: “but you, you have rejected, despised and disquieted your Christ; you have cursed the covenant of your master, you have dishonoured his sacred place on earth, you have destroyed all its walls” [Ps. 88:39-41], and so on. For in this comparison of divine blessing and that place about which is written, “his home is in sacred peace” [Ps. 75:3], all habitation on earth is full of waves, full of storms. And the “heart of the sea” means hell, for which we read in the Gospel, “in the heart of the earth” [Mt. 12:40]. For just as the heart is at the middle of animal, so we say that hell is in the middle of the earth. Or according to anagoge he recalls that he is “in the heart of the sea”, that is in the middle of temptations. However, although he has been among the bitter waters and been tempted by all things without sin, he has not felt the bitter waters, but has been surrounded by the waves about which we read elsewhere, “an impetuous wave rejoices in the city of God” [Ps. 45:5]. Others drank the salty waves; myself, surrounded by temptation, I endured sweeter currents. And do not think what the Lord says now is impious: “you have cast me into the deep”, who says in the psalm, “for they have followed him that you smote” [Ps. 68:27], according to the phrase which in Zechariah is spoken by the Father: “I will smite the shepherd, and the flocks will be scattered” [Zechariah 13:7].

“All thy billows and thy waves passed over me.” LXX: ‘all your whirlwinds and your waves passed over me’. No one can doubt that the swelling waves of the sea encompassed Jonah, that there was fierce thunder in the storm. But we ask how all the whirlwinds, billows and the waves of God encompassed the Saviour. “The life of men on earth is temptation” [Job 7:1], or as there is in the Hebrew, “a military service”, for we serve here to be crowned elsewhere. There is no man who can sustain all the temptations, except him who has been tempted by all, in our image, except sin [Heb. 4:15]. This is why it is said in Corinthians, “no temptation will take you, I hope, unless it is human. God is faithful, he will not let you try beyond your ability, but he will produce an exit that you may hold on to.” [1 Cor. 10 ,13] And like all persecutions and all wicked things that happen to us they do not happen without the will of God, we speak of whirlwinds and waves of God, which have not crushed Jesus, but have come down upon him with a simple threat of shipwreck which does not happen. Thus all persecutions and whirlwinds which tortured mankind and broke all the ships have passed thundering on my head. And myself, I have sustained storms and broken whirlwinds which were raging, to allow others to sail more easily. — Commentary on Jonah, Chapter 2

Jonah 2:4

Jerome: “Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight;” LXX: ‘I said, I am cast far from your sight’. Before I cried out from the depths of my distress and before you heard me, me who had taken the position of slave and imitated its weakness, I said, “I am cast out of your sight”. When I was with you enjoying your light and you, light, being light, I did not say “I am cast out”. But once at the bottom of the sea and surrounded by the flesh of a man, I say: “I am cast out of your sight”. I said this as a man. And as God being in that condition I did not think of my equality with you, because I wanted to raise mankind to you, so that wherever I am with you they are there as well and those who have believed in me and in you, I say: yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. LXX: ‘do you not think I will be able to see your holy temple again?’. To express the Greek ara, the Vulgate edition’s ‘do you think’ can be interpreted as ’therefore’, like the last conclusion of the proposition, of the assumption and of the confirmation and syllogism, not in the uncertainty of someone who hesitates but in the confidence of someone who affirms. This has been translated by, “yet I will look again on your holy temple”, according to that which is said in another psalm by the spokesperson of Christ: “Lord, I have loved beauty of your house and the tabernacle where your glory lives” [Ps. 25:8], and the passage of the Gospel in which it says, “Father, glorify me with you by that glory which I had before the world existed” [John 17:5]. And the Father replied to heaven: “I have glorified him, and I shall glorify him” [John 12:28]. Or even because he says, “the Father is in me, and I am in Him” [John 10:38; 14:10.11; 17:21], for the temple of the Father is the Son, thus the temple of the Son is the Father. He Himself said, “I left my Father and have come” [John 16:28], and “the word was with God and the word was God” [John 1:1]. Or even the Saviour, the one and the same, asks as man and promises as God, and he is sure of the right that was always his. For the person of Jonah you can clearly see that with a feeling of desire and confidence, at the bottom of the sea, he wished to see the temple of the Lord, and with a prophetic spirit he found himself elsewhere and thought of other things. — Commentary on Jonah, Chapter 2

Jonah 2:5

Haimo of Auxerre: Jonah either says this wishfully, or with a certain trust he promises himself that he will return to Jerusalem and see the temple of the Lord.

Irenaeus: If any one imagine it impossible that men should survive for such a length of time, and that Elias was not caught up in the flesh, but that his flesh was consumed in the fiery chariot, let him consider that Jonah, when he had been cast into the deep, and swallowed down into the whale’s belly, was by the command of God again thrown out safe upon the land. Neither the nature of any created thing, therefore, nor the weakness of the flesh, can prevail against the will of God. For God is not subject to created things, but created things to God; and all things yield obedience to His will. Wherefore also the Lord declares, “The things which are impossible with men, are possible with God.” — Irenaeus Against Heresies Book 5

Jerome: “the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever:” LXX: ‘my head has penetrated to the base of mountains; I descended to into the earth whose bars are eternal bonds’. No one doubts that the ocean covered Jonah’s head, that he went down to the roots of mountains and came to the depths of the earth by which as bars and columns by the will of God the earthly sphere is supported. This earth about which is said elsewhere, “I consolidated her columns” [Ps. 74:4]. With regard to the Lord Saviour, according to the two editions, this seems to me to be what is meant. His heart and his head, that is the spirit that he thought worthy to take with a body for our safety, went down to the base of the mountains which were covered by waves; they were restrained by the will of God, the deep covered them, they were parted by the majesty of God. His spirit then went down into hell, into those places to which in the last of the mud, the spirits of sinners were held, so too the psalmist says: “they will go down to the depths of the earth, they will be the lot of wolves” [Ps. 62:10.11]. These are the bars of the earth and like the locks of a final prison and tortures, which do not let the captive spirits out of hell. This is why the Septuagint has translated this is a pertinent way: “eternal bonds”, that is, wanting to keep in all those whom it had once captured. But our Lord, about which we read these lines of Cyrus in Isaiah: “I will break the bronze bars, I will crack the iron bars” [Is. 45:2], He went down to the roots of the mountains, and was enclosed by eternal bars to free all the prisoners. — Commentary on Jonah, Chapter 2

Jerome: “The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about,” LXX: ’the water ran about me up to my spirit; the last depth closed around me’. These waters, near to the deep, which cycle and slide about the earth, which drag much mud with them, tend to kill not the body but the soul, for they are friendly to the body and warmed by its desires. This is why, according to that which I have said above, the Lord says in the psalm, “save me, Lord, because the waters have penetrated even to my soul” [Ps. 68:2], and in another passage, “my soul has passed a torrent” [Ps. 123:5], and, “let not the well press its mouth on me” [Ps. 68:16], let hell not imprison me! Let it not refuse me an exit! I freely made the descent; so let me make the ascent back again freely. I became a captive voluntarily, I ought to free the captives so that this verse is fulfilled: “ascending into the higher parts he led the captives” [Eph. 4:8]. For those who were beforehand captives in death, he brought them to life again. We must heed certain wicked forces in the deep, or the specific powers in torture and supplication; demons, in the Gospel, ask not to be forced to go to them [Mt. 8:30; Mk. 5:10; Lk. 8:31]. This is why “the darkness was over the deep” [Gen. 1,2]. Sometimes the deep is taken to mean the sacraments in a deeper sense, the judgements of God: “the judgements of the Lord are a great abyss” [Ps. 35:7], and “the deep cries out to the deep in a cry of your cataracts.” [Ps. 41:8] — Commentary on Jonah, Chapter 2

Jonah 2:6

Cyril of Jerusalem: Jonah fulfilled a type of our Savior when he prayed from the belly of the fish and said, “I cried for help from the midst of the netherworld.” He was in fact in the fish, yet he says that he is in the netherworld. In a later verse he manifestly prophesies in the person of Christ: “My head went down into the chasms of the mountains.” Yet he was still in the belly of the fish. What mountains encompass you? But I know, he says, that I am a type of him who is to be laid in the sepulcher hewn out of rock. While he was in the sea, Jonah says, “I went down into the earth,” for he typified Christ, who went down into the heart of the earth. — Catechetical Lecture 14:20

Jerome: “yet have you brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.” LXX: ‘and from corruption my life comes up to me, O Lord my God.’ He says rightly “you have brought up” or “let my life come up from corruption”, because it had descended to corruption in hell. This is what the apostles interpret in the fifteenth psalm as prophetic speech of the Lord: “for you will not leave my spirit in hell, and you will not permit your holiness to see the corruption” [Ps. 15:10], given that David is dead and has been buried, but the Saviour’s flesh has not known corruption. Others understand that compared to celestial blessing and to the Word of God the body of man is corruption itself, for “it is sown in corruption” [1 Cor. 15:42], and in the psalm one hundred and two, the meaning is applied to a righteous man: “he who cures all illnesses, who has brought his life back from death” [Ps. 102:3.4]. This is why the Apostle says, “O wicked man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” [Rom. 7:24]. It is called “the body of death”, or “body of misery”. These people take the text in the sense of their heresy, to see an Antichrist in the place of Christ, and to take the Churches in order to feed a fat stomach and discuss contrary to the flesh living in the flesh. But we, we know that the body taken from the pure Virgin was not the corruption of Christ, but his temple. If we pass then to the thought of the Apostle in Corinthians, where there is the question of a spiritual body, we would say, in removing any appearance of chicanery, that the same body, the same flesh rises again, which has been buried and placed in the soil; but the only thing that changes is the glory, not nature. “for this corruptible being must cover incorruptibility, this mortal being must clothe immortality.” [1 Cor. 15:53] When he says “this being” it is almost as if one showed the body by pinching it between two fingers: in which we are born, in which we die, that those who are guilty fear to receive as punishment, that virginity awaits in recompense, that the adulterer fears in punishment. For Jonah, this is how we can understand it: he who would have had to corrupt himself physiologically in the belly of the whale, and get by on the food of beasts and survive by drinking from the veins and arteries, still managed to remain safe and sound. And when he says, “Lord my God”, this is a feeling of flattery: he thinks that God, who is common to all, is also common to him, and feels he is his own because of the greatness of his benevolence. — Commentary on Jonah, Chapter 2

Jonah 2:7

Cyril of Alexandria: Having been saved by the ineffable power of God, he wished to send up more splendid odes of thanksgiving. He surely recounts in some way what happened, and he teaches subtly with what calamity he was encompassed, and again he proclaims how he was saved. That he was, then, in the sea, and in a great abyss, and in the clefts of mountains, as the sea monster likely plunged down among rocks and the caves in the sea, he was not ignorant as a prophet; but he says he reached a land whose bars are eternal bolts, that is, Hades, not that he had been there; for we shall not find him to have died; but that the greatness of the danger and the weight of what had happened was in no way short of seeming to have died completely, and to have arrived in Hades itself, from where no one could depart, and one who had once been entrapped would in no way return. For I think this is what signifies to have its bars as possessors forever, as it were unbreakable and never overcome or loosened by anyone. But that he did not die, but lived, as I said, in the sea monster, and was in it, having suffered nothing that leads to death or corruption, would easily show that he was also in hope of being saved again. For this reason he says, “Let my life come up from corruption, O Lord my God.” For he prays to be given to the light, and to be brought up, as it were, from Hades, from the belly of the sea monster. — Commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets: Jonah

Haimo of Auxerre: Although he ought to have been corrupted and digested in the belly of the whale and diffused through the veins and joints of the fish, he came out safe and whole. calling the God who is common to all his own and personal God; because of the magnitude of such great favor, he especially feels that God is his God ad Lord.

Jerome: “When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD.” LXX: ‘when my spirit failed in me, I remembered the Lord’. Although I hoped for no aid, he says, the memory of the Lord saved me, according to this passage: “I remembered the Lord and I rejoiced” [Ps. 76:4], and in another passage, “I remembered former days and I remembered the days of eternity” [Ps. 76:6]. I had lost all hope of finding a way out: my body was so frail in the intestines of the whale that I could not hope for my life. And so, everything that seemed impossible I found to be surpassed by the thought of the Lord. I saw myself imprisoned in the intestines of the whale, and all my hope was the Lord. From this we can learn that, according to the Septuagint, at the time when our spirit fails us, it is wrenched from its union with the body, and we ought not to turn our thoughts from Him who inside and outside our body is the Lord. For the Saviour the interpretation is not very difficult because he said, “my spirit is sad to die” [Mt. 26:38; Mk. 14:34], and “My Father, if it is possible let this cup pass me by” [Mt. 26:39], and, “I place my spirit in your hands” [Ps. 30:6; Lk. 23:46], and other passages which are similar to this. And my prayer came in unto you, into thine holy temple. LXX: similar. In my distress I remembered the Lord so and my prayer came in to heaven from the depths of the sea and from the roots of the mountains, and came to your holy temple where you reside in eternal beatitude. This new kind of speech should be noted here: a prayer made for a prayer. Jonah asks that his prayer rise up to the temple of God. He wishes like the Pope that in his body the people should be freed. — Commentary on Jonah, Chapter 2

John of the Cross: When this purgative contemplation oppresses a man, he feels very vividly indeed the shadow of death, the sighs of death, and the sorrows of Hell, all of which reflect the feeling of God’s absence, of being chastised and rejected by Him, and of being unworthy of Him, as well as the object of His anger. The soul experiences all this and even more, for now it seems that this affliction will last forever.

Symeon the New Theologian: When a person has completely abandoned the world, it seems to one that one is living in a remote desert, full of wild beasts. One is filled with unutterable fear and indescribable trembling, and cries to God like Jonah from the whale, from the sea of this life, or like Daniel from the pit of the lions and the fierce passions, or like the three children from the burning furnace and the flames of innate desire, or like Manasseh from the brazen statue of this earthly mortal body. The Lord hears that person and delivers him from the abyss of ignorance and love of this world, just like the prophet who came out of the whale, never to go back again. — THE PRACTICAL AND THEOLOGICAL CHAPTERS 1:76

Jonah 2:8

Cyril of Alexandria: When my soul was fainting within me, I remembered the Lord; and let my prayer come to you, into your holy temple. For those who wish to be well-pleasing, toil is not without profit, nor would affliction be considered burdensome. And the blessed David will bear witness, saying, “In my affliction I called upon the Lord;” and another of the holy prophets, “O Lord, in affliction we remembered you.” And it seemed very fitting to the divine Paul to accept and praise affliction, that is, the affliction that happens for the sake of virtue. For he said, “Because affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put to shame.” So then, as the Prophet’s soul was fainting, that is, enduring the toil that leads to danger and to the last extremities, something profitable was again being done. For not, as some, having immediately slipped into despondency, did he make a denunciation of the divine judgments, but he remembered the one who saves. For he cried out to him, he thirsted for help, not ignorant of his gentleness and the preeminence of his strength, he made his supplications to him, begging that his own life be delivered from death and corruption. — Commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets: Jonah

Jerome: “They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.” LXX: ’those that keep mistaken vanities lose their mercy’. By nature God is merciful and ready by his mildness to save those whom he can’t save by justice. But because of our vices we lose the mercy which is reserved for us and is offered to us. Jonah did not say, “those who make vanities”, for “vanity of vanities, all is vanity” [Eccl. 1:1], not to have an air of condemning everyone, and of refusing mercy to all mankind, but “those who keep vanities” or the lie “those who have come to love their heart” [Ps. 72:7], who are not happy with doing, but who keep their vanities as if they cherished them, thinking they have found some kind of treasure. Note too the greatness of the prophet’s spirit: at the bottom of the sea, surrounded by an eternal night in the intestines of a great beast he is not thoughtful of his danger, but philosophises on the question of nature. “they will lose” he says “their mercy”. Although mercy is offended and we can understand that it is God Himself: for “God is merciful and good, patient and full of pity” [Ps. 144:8], yet mercy does not abandon those who keep their vanities, she does not curse them, but waits for them to return, while they intentionally abandon the mercy which is before them, offered to them. This can also be prophesised for the Lord on the subject of the infidelity of the Jews, who think themselves to observe the precepts of mankind [Mk. 7:7] and the commandments of the Pharisees, this is vanity and a lie, and they have abandoned God who always had pity for them. — Commentary on Jonah, Chapter 2

Jonah 2:9

Cyril of Alexandria: Those who keep to vain and false things have forsaken their own mercy. But I with the voice of praise and thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay to you for my salvation by the Lord. For others, he says, being ignorant of you, the Master of all, the Creator, then being entangled in the snares of vanity, and assigning reverence to falsely-named gods, and chasing flying birds—that is, the hope in them—and shepherding the winds, do not ask mercy from you, nor have they ever come within such a hope. But I am not like them; how could I be? But I know you as the helper, the good and merciful one. Therefore with voice and supplication I will confess to you, he says, and just as some of the most fragrant incenses I will offer up odes, that is, I will bring to you thanksgiving and spiritual sacrifices, doxology, praises. And I will complete, and very eagerly, the vows for salvation, that is, whatever things work out my salvation and benefit my soul. And this was obedience to anything whatsoever that seems good to God, and the fulfillment of the prophetic ministry, with all hesitation and faint-heartedness removed. — Commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets: Jonah

Jerome: “But I will sacrifice unto you with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.” LXX: ‘but I will sacrifice to you with the voice of praise and the action of thanksgiving. I will pay all that I have vowed to you, Lord, in salutation.’ Those who keep their vanities have abandoned their mercy. But I who have been eaten for the sake of the safety of the multitude, will offer you sacrifices with the voice of praise and thanksgiving, offering myself. For “Christ, our Easter, has been sacrificed” [1 Cor. 5:7]. A as a true Pope and lamb he offers himself for us. And I will give thanks to you, saying, “I bless you Father, lord of heaven and earth” [Mt. 11:25], and I will keep those vows to the Lord that I made for the safety of others, so that all that " you have given me never dies" [John 6:39; 10:28; 17:12]. We see what the Lord promised in his suffering for our safety: let us not make Jesus a liar [1 John 1:10], and let us be pure, delivered from all the uncleanness of sins so that he offers us to God the Father as the victims he had promised. — Commentary on Jonah, Chapter 2

Paulinus of Nola: Hoping for salvation by human resources is no salvation, for mortal means will not rout death. So those who live in a time of anxiety should be anxious to pray to the Lord of heaven, who dispenses sadness or gladness and who alone by his transcendent sway can ensure that troubles are removed and happy times restored.… The power of prayers and the healing efficacy of tears in the presence of God our Father is the lesson we must learn from Nineveh saved by its grief.… So the faith that relies on God should strengthen panicking hearts, and its trust in God should in time of sorrow anticipate untroubled days. For fear of God ensures freedom from fear, whereas the one who does not fear God alone is right to fear everything. Those who have no confidence in Christ as bearer of salvation must put their trust in legions. — POEM 26

Jonah 2:10

Ambrose of Milan: Jonah did not escape the sea by the power of his birth, but by the hidden divine command he was thrown overboard, and a whale received him, vomited him out after three days as a sign of future mystery, and reserved him by the merit of prophetic grace. — The Six Days of Creation, Book 4, Chapter 4

Gregory of Nazianzus: Hence he is tempesttossed, and falls asleep, and is wrecked, and aroused from sleep, and taken by lot, and confesses his flight, and is cast into the sea, and swallowed but not destroyed by the whale. In Defense of His Flight to Pontus, Oration

Gregory of Nazianzus: Hence he is tempest-tossed, and falls asleep, and is wrecked, and aroused from sleep, and taken by lot, and confesses his flight, and is cast into the sea, and swallowed but not destroyed by the whale. — IN DEFENSE OF HIS FLIGHT TO PONTUS, ORATION 2:109

Haimo of Auxerre: The prophet is animated with good hope, and now secure about his liberation, he promises that he will sacrifice thanksgiving and that he will fulfill all vows.

Irenaeus: If, however, any one imagines it is impossible that people should survive for such a length of time, and that Elijah was not caught up in the flesh but that flesh was consumed in the fiery chariot, let them consider that Jonah, when he had been cast into the deep and swallowed down into the whale’s belly, was by the command of God again thrown out safe upon the land. — AGAINST HERESIES 5:5.2

Jerome: “And the LORD spoke unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.” LXX: ‘and he ordered the whale to vomit Jonah out onto the dry land’. That which we read above as being about Jonah, the Lord prayed for in the stomach of the whale about which Job speaks in an unclear way: “let he who curses this day curse him, he who will capture the great whale” [Job. 3:8 LXX]. The great whale, the deep and hell are then ordered to give back the Lord to the dry earth; thus he who had died to free those detained by the chains of death, can lead with him many others towards life. With regard to the expression ‘vomited’ we must take this to be said in a very emphatic way, to mean that triumphant life has emerged from the deepest and most impenetrable parts of death. — Commentary on Jonah, Chapter 2

Tertullian: Jonah was swallowed by the monster of the deep, in whose belly whole ships were devoured, and after three days he was vomited out again safe and sound. Enoch and Elijah, who even now, without experiencing a resurrection (because they have not even encountered death), are learning to the full what it is for the flesh to be exempted from all humiliation, and all loss, and all injury and all disgrace. They have been translated from this world and from this very cause are already candidates for everlasting life. To what faith do these notable events bear witness, if not to that which ought to inspire in us the belief that they are proofs and documents of our own future and our completed resurrection? To borrow the apostle’s phrase, these were “figures of ourselves.” They are written that we may believe that the Lord is more powerful than all natural laws about the body. — ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH 58