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Jonah

About this book
Chapter 2

1 Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish⁠ 2 and said, “I called out to the Lord from my distress, and he answered me; from the belly of Sheol I cried out for help,⁠ and you heard my prayer. 3 You threw me into the deep waters, into the middle of the sea; the ocean current engulfed me; all the mighty waves you sent swept over me.⁠ 4 I thought I had been banished from your sight and that I would never again see your holy temple.⁠ 5 Water engulfed me up to my neck; the deep ocean surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head.⁠ 6 I went down to the very bottoms of the mountains; the gates of the netherworld barred me in forever,⁠ but you brought me up from the Pit,⁠ O Lord, my God.⁠ 7 When my life was ebbing away, I called out to the Lord. And my prayer came to you, to your holy temple.⁠ 8 Those who worship worthless idols forfeit the mercy that could be theirs.⁠ 9 But as for me, I promise to offer a sacrifice to you with a public declaration of praise; I will surely do what I have promised.⁠ Salvation belongs to the Lord!”⁠ 10 Then the Lord commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah out onto dry land.

Texts in conversation

Compare Jonah 2:1 and LXX Jonah 2:2

Hebrew Bible · Septuagint

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Summary

Jonah describes his prayer from the belly of a “fish,” a term that ancient readers understood to be a mythological sea monster. The Greek Septuagint translation may have known about this background, as it identifies the creature as a “sea monster.”

Passages

Jonah 2:1

Hebrew Bible
1 Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish 2 and said, “I called out to the Lord from my distress, and he answered me; from the belly of Sheol I cried out for help, and you heard my prayer. 3 You threw me into the deep waters, into the middle of the sea; the ocean current engulfed me; all the mighty waves you sent swept over me. 4 I thought I had been banished from your sight and that I would never again see your holy temple. 5 Water engulfed me up to my neck; the deep ocean surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head.
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Jonah

LXX Jonah 2:2

Septuagint
1 Now the Lord had commanded a great sea monster to swallow up Jonah: and Jonah was in the belly of the sea monster three days and three nights. 2 And Jonah prayed to the Lord his God out of the belly of the sea monster, 3 and said, I cried in my affliction to the Lord my God, and he listened to me, even to my cry out of the belly of hell: you heard my voice. 4 You cast me into the depths of the heart of the sea, and the floods surrounded me: all your billows and your waves have passed upon me.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Jonah

References

"... Though Jonah refers to the creature as a דָּג (fish) four times (1:17 [2x], 2:1, 2:10), the ancients were acutely aware of the term’s ambiguity ... In Jonah, the ambiguity of the דָּג, coupled with its enormous size, naturally encouraged the ancients to identify it as a type of giant sea monster known as a תַּנִּין “Tannîn.” Thus, the authors of the LXX rendered הַתַּנִּינִ֖ם הַגְּדֹלִ֑ים “the great sea monsters” in Genesis 1:21 similarly: τὰ κήτη τὰ μεγάλα. The term תַּנִּין refers generally to a type of serpentine creature of which Leviathan is one kind. Thus, the word תַּנִּין takes the definite article (Genesis 1:21, Isaiah 27:1, Jeremiah 14:6, 51:34, Ezekiel 29:3, Nehemiah 2:13), whereas לִוְיָתָן never does. Nevertheless, traditions concerning Leviathan are not entirely consistent. Thus, some texts understand the creature as possessing multiple heads, others see it as having one. Sometimes it also is equated with a lion or a sea monster with lionlike features ..."
Scott B. Noegel, “Jonah and Leviathan: Inner-Biblical Allusions and the Problem with Dragons,” Hen 37.2 (2015): 236–260.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Jonah 2:1 and LXX Jonah 2:2

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