Show Bible Commentary For A Bible Verse

Click here to show/hide instructions.

Selected Verse: Jonah 2:3 - King James

Verse	Translation	Text
Jon 2:3	King James	For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.

Summary Of Commentaries Associated With The Selected Verse

Open All | Close All Open All | Close All

A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown [1882]
thou hadst cast . . . thy billows . . . thy waves--Jonah recognizes the source whence his sufferings came. It was no mere chance, but the hand of God which sent them. Compare Job's similar recognition of God's hand in calamities, ; ; and David's, .

A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown [1882]

thou hadst cast . . . thy billows . . . thy waves--Jonah recognizes the source whence his sufferings came. It was no mere chance, but the hand of God which sent them. Compare Job's similar recognition of God's hand in calamities, ; ; and David's, .

Notes on the Bible, by Albert Barnes, [1834]
For Thou hadst ("didst") cast me into the deep - Jonah continues to describe the extremity of peril, from which God had already delivered him. Sweet is the memory of perils past. For they speak of God's Fatherly care. Sweet is it, to the prophet to tell God of His mercies; but this is sweet only to the holy, for God's mercy convicts the careless of ingratitude. Jonah then tells God, how He had cast him vehemently forth into the "eddying depth," where, when Pharaoh's army "sank like a stone" (Exo 15:5, add Exo 15:10), they never rose, and that, "in the heart" or center "of the seas," from where no strong swimmer could escape to shore. "The floods" or "flood," (literally "river,") the sea with its currents, "surrounded" him, encompassing him on all sides; and, above, tossed its multitudinous waves, passing over him, like an army trampling one prostrate underfoot. Jonah remembered well the temple psalms, and, using their words, united himself with those other worshipers who sang them, and taught us how to speak them to God. The sons of Korah Psa 42:7. had poured out to God in these self-same words the sorrows which oppressed them. The rolling billows and the breakers , which, as they burst upon the rocks, shiver the vessel and crush man, are, he says to God, "Thine," fulfilling Thy will on me.

Notes on the Bible, by Albert Barnes, [1834]

For Thou hadst ("didst") cast me into the deep - Jonah continues to describe the extremity of peril, from which God had already delivered him. Sweet is the memory of perils past. For they speak of God's Fatherly care. Sweet is it, to the prophet to tell God of His mercies; but this is sweet only to the holy, for God's mercy convicts the careless of ingratitude. Jonah then tells God, how He had cast him vehemently forth into the "eddying depth," where, when Pharaoh's army "sank like a stone" (Exo 15:5, add Exo 15:10), they never rose, and that, "in the heart" or center "of the seas," from where no strong swimmer could escape to shore. "The floods" or "flood," (literally "river,") the sea with its currents, "surrounded" him, encompassing him on all sides; and, above, tossed its multitudinous waves, passing over him, like an army trampling one prostrate underfoot. Jonah remembered well the temple psalms, and, using their words, united himself with those other worshipers who sang them, and taught us how to speak them to God. The sons of Korah Psa 42:7. had poured out to God in these self-same words the sorrows which oppressed them. The rolling billows and the breakers , which, as they burst upon the rocks, shiver the vessel and crush man, are, he says to God, "Thine," fulfilling Thy will on me.

Commentary on the Old Testament, by Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch [1857-78]
3 Thou castedst me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, And the stream surrounded me; All Thy billows and Thy waves went over me. 4 Then I said, I am thrust away from Thine eyes, Yet I will look again to Thy holy temple. The more minute description of the peril of death is attached by Vav consec., to express not sequence in time, but sequence of thought. Jehovah cast him into the depth of the sea, because the seamen were merely the executors of the punishment inflicted upon him by Jehovah. Metsūlâh, the deep, is defined by "the heart of the seas" as the deepest abyss of the ocean. The plural yammı̄m (seas) is used here with distinct significance, instead of the singular, "into the heart of the sea" (yâm) in Exo 15:8, to express the idea of the boundless ocean (see Dietrich, Abhandlung zur hebr. Grammatik, pp. 16, 17). The next clauses are circumstantial clauses, and mean, so that the current of the sea surrounded me, and all the billows and waves of the sea, which Jehovah had raised into a storm, went over me. Nâhâr, a river or stream, is the streaming or current of the sea, as in Psa 24:2. The words of the second hemistich are a reminiscence of Psa 42:8. What the Korahite singer of that psalm had experienced spiritually, viz., that one wave of trouble after another swept over him, that had the prophet literally experienced. Jonah "does not say, The waves and the billows of the sea went over me; but Thy waves and Thy billows, because he felt in his conscience that the sea with its waves and billows was the servant of God and of His wrath, to punish sin" (Luther). Jon 2:4 contains the apodosis to Jon 2:3: "When Thou castedst me into the deep, then I said (sc., in my heart, i.e., then I thought) that I was banished from the sphere of Thine eyes, i.e., of Thy protection and care." These words are formed from a reminiscence of Psa 31:23, נגרשׁתּי being substituted for the נגרזתּי of the psalm. The second hemistich is attached adversatively. אך, which there is no necessity to alter into אך = איך, as Hitzig supposes, introduces the antithesis in an energetic manner, like אכם elsewhere, in the sense of nevertheless, as in Isa 14:15; Psa 49:16; Job 13:15 (cf. Ewald, 354, a). The thought that it is all over with him is met by the confidence of faith that he will still look to the holy temple of the Lord, that is to say, will once more approach the presence of the Lord, to worship before Him in His temple, - an assurance which recals Psa 5:8. The thought that by the grace of the Lord he has been once more miraculously delivered out of the gates of death, and brought to the light of the world, is carried out still further in the following strophe, in entirely new turns of thought.

Commentary on the Old Testament, by Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch [1857-78]

3 Thou castedst me into the deep, into the heart of the seas,

And the stream surrounded me;

All Thy billows and Thy waves went over me.

4 Then I said, I am thrust away from Thine eyes,

Yet I will look again to Thy holy temple.

The more minute description of the peril of death is attached by Vav consec., to express not sequence in time, but sequence of thought. Jehovah cast him into the depth of the sea, because the seamen were merely the executors of the punishment inflicted upon him by Jehovah. Metsūlâh, the deep, is defined by "the heart of the seas" as the deepest abyss of the ocean. The plural yammı̄m (seas) is used here with distinct significance, instead of the singular, "into the heart of the sea" (yâm) in Exo 15:8, to express the idea of the boundless ocean (see Dietrich, Abhandlung zur hebr. Grammatik, pp. 16, 17). The next clauses are circumstantial clauses, and mean, so that the current of the sea surrounded me, and all the billows and waves of the sea, which Jehovah had raised into a storm, went over me. Nâhâr, a river or stream, is the streaming or current of the sea, as in Psa 24:2. The words of the second hemistich are a reminiscence of Psa 42:8. What the Korahite singer of that psalm had experienced spiritually, viz., that one wave of trouble after another swept over him, that had the prophet literally experienced. Jonah "does not say, The waves and the billows of the sea went over me; but Thy waves and Thy billows, because he felt in his conscience that the sea with its waves and billows was the servant of God and of His wrath, to punish sin" (Luther). Jon 2:4 contains the apodosis to Jon 2:3: "When Thou castedst me into the deep, then I said (sc., in my heart, i.e., then I thought) that I was banished from the sphere of Thine eyes, i.e., of Thy protection and care." These words are formed from a reminiscence of Psa 31:23, נגרשׁתּי being substituted for the נגרזתּי of the psalm. The second hemistich is attached adversatively. אך, which there is no necessity to alter into אך = איך, as Hitzig supposes, introduces the antithesis in an energetic manner, like אכם elsewhere, in the sense of nevertheless, as in Isa 14:15; Psa 49:16; Job 13:15 (cf. Ewald, 354, a). The thought that it is all over with him is met by the confidence of faith that he will still look to the holy temple of the Lord, that is to say, will once more approach the presence of the Lord, to worship before Him in His temple, - an assurance which recals Psa 5:8.

The thought that by the grace of the Lord he has been once more miraculously delivered out of the gates of death, and brought to the light of the world, is carried out still further in the following strophe, in entirely new turns of thought.

Adam Clarke Commentary on the Whole Bible - Published 1810-1826
All thy billows and thy waves passed over me - This may be understood literally; while the fish, in whose belly he was, sought its pleasure or sustenance in the paths of the deep, the waves and billows of the sea were rolling above. This line seems borrowed from Psa 42:7.

Adam Clarke Commentary on the Whole Bible - Published 1810-1826

All thy billows and thy waves passed over me - This may be understood literally; while the fish, in whose belly he was, sought its pleasure or sustenance in the paths of the deep, the waves and billows of the sea were rolling above. This line seems borrowed from Psa 42:7.

Top