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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 2:6 and LXX Jonah 2:7

Hebrew Bible · Septuagint

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Summary

In the Hebrew version of Jonah, the prophet declares that God has already brought him up from the netherworld, treating his rescue as already accomplished. The Greek Septuagint changes this to a plea for him to be raised, his rescue not yet complete.

Passages

Jonah 2:6

Hebrew Bible
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.
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Jonah

LXX Jonah 2:7

Septuagint
5 And I said, I am cast out of your presence: shall I indeed look again toward your holy temple? 6 Water was poured around me to the soul: the lowest deep surrounded me, my head went down to the clefts of the mountains; 7 I went down into the earth, whose bars are the everlasting barriers: yet, Lord my God, let my ruined life rise up.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Jonah

References

... All of this may seem obvious, except that some of the versions apparently treated the passage differently. To begin with, there seems to have been a concerted effort not to have Jonah rising from “the Pit,” possibly because the prophet should not presume the certainty of his rescue when God had not yet ordered the fish to vomit him. Therefore, the noun sahat is derived from the verb sahat, “to go to ruin,” allowing renderings connected with “corruption, perdition.” The Vulgate regards the verbal form as an imperfect with a simple conjunction waw. Thus the Vulgate has “And you will make my life rise up from corruption,” et sublevabis de corruptione vitam meam. Greek versions, however, treated the verb as a precative and equated hayyay with a word that is feminine singular; see Hill 1967: 163–75. Thus we have the Septuagint’s Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, “yet may my corrupt life be restored,” kai anabeto phthora zoes mou ...
Jack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 191.

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 2:6 and LXX Jonah 2:7

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