Jonas 2:6

6 Water was poured around me to the soul: the lowest deep compassed me, my head went down

Jonas 2:6 Meaning and Commentary

Jonah 2:6

I went down to the bottom of the mountains
Which are in the midst of the sea, whither the fish carried him, and where the waters are deep; or the bottom of rocks and promontories on the shore of the sea; and such vast rocks hanging over the sea, whose bottoms were in it, it seems are on the shore of Joppa, near to which Jonah was cast into the sea, as Egesippus ^F6 relates: the earth with her bars [was] about me for ever;
that is, the earth with its cliffs and rocks on the seashore, which are as bars to the sea, that it cannot overflow it; these were such bars to Jonah, that could he have got clear of the fish's belly, and attempted to swim to shore, he could never get to it, or over these bars, the rocks and cliffs, which were so steep and high: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God;
notwithstanding these difficulties, which were insuperable by human power, and these seeming impossibilities of, deliverance; yet the Lord brought him out of the fish's belly, as out of a grave, the pit of corruption, and where he must otherwise have lain and rotted, and freed his soul from those terrors which would have destroyed him; and by this also we learn, that this form of words was composed after he came to dry land: herein likewise he was a type of Christ, who, though laid in the grave, was not left there so long as to see corruption, ( Psalms 16:10 ) .

---

FOOTNOTES:

F6 "De excidio", Urb. Hieros. l. 3. c. 20.

Jonas 2:6 In-Context

4 Thou didst cast me into the depths of the heart of the sea, and the floods compassed me: all thy billows and thy waves have passed upon me.

5 And I said, I am cast out of thy presence: shall I indeed look again toward thy holy temple?

6 Water was poured around me to the soul: the lowest deep compassed me, my head went down

7 to the clefts of the mountains; I went down into the earth, whose bars are the everlasting barriers: yet, O Lord my God, let my ruined life be restored.

8 When my soul was failing me, I remembered the Lord; and may my prayer come to thee into thy holy temple.

Footnotes

• [a]. last.