Ron: Certainly Jonah needed a miracle to survive inside the fish that swallowed him. While it is true that there are some accounts of sailors being swallowed alive by whales and surviving the experience,¹⁵ many people doubt these accounts and the stories cannot now be verified. The arrival of the fish was a miracle, too, as was the fact that it took Jonah safely to land. But why is it so hard to believe that Jehovah God could have preserved Jonah miraculously in the belly of the fish? Brad, don’t you believe in the resurrection of Jesus? That required miraculous help from Jehovah God.

Brad: That’s different.

Ron: Is it? Jesus apparently didn’t think so. Look at what he said here in Matthew 12:40.

Brad: “For just as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish three days and three nights, so the Son of man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.”

Ron: What happened to Jesus was certainly factual, wasn’t it? Is it likely that Jesus would have used Jonah’s account to illustrate his own death and resurrection if Jonah’s story were not true?

Jesus himself said that Jonah’s experience inside the huge fish foreshadowed his own experience “in the heart of the earth.” Notice what Jonah said while inside the fish. Here, in Jonah 2:2.

Brad: “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried for help. You heard my voice.”

Ron: Sheol is the Hebrew word for grave, not fish. Jonah was inside a fish, but Jesus was literally in Sheol, or the grave. So Jesus could refer to Jonah’s experience as a “sign” of what would happen to him. In Matthew 12:39 Jesus said, “A wicked and adulterous generation keeps on seeking for a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.”

Nancy: So there was a reason for Jonah’s being swallowed by the fish!

Ron: A very good reason.