Jonah 2:2

and said The prayer which follows falls naturally into three parts or divisions. In each of these the two elements of danger and deliverance, of need and help, appear. But they enter into them in very different proportions. Faith grows, and the prospect brightens at each fresh stage of the hymn. The first rises to prayer, the second to confidence, the third to thankfulness and praise.

1 John 2:2; 1 John 2:2.

(1) Introduction, containing the general subject of the hymn: I cried and was heard, I was in trouble and was delivered. Jonah 2:2.

(2) Description of the danger and distress. Jonah 2:3.

(3) Faith triumphing over despondency and prompting to prayer. Jonah 2:4.

2 John 1:5; 2 John 1:5.

(1) More vivid description of the danger and distress. Jonah 2:5 a.

(2) Deliverance not only prayed for, but possessed. Jonah 2:6 b.

3 John 1:7; 3 John 1:7.

(1) Prayer, offered in danger and distress, has been heard. Jonah 2:7.

(2) God, no longer forsaken, but sought and recognised as the fountain of mercy, has granted deliverance which shall be acknowledged with sacrifices of thanksgiving and vows joyfully paid. Jonah 2:8 a.

(3) All salvation, as this typical instance shows, is of God. Jonah 2:9 b.

The prayer is remarkable for its many resemblances in thought and expression to passages in the Book of Psalms. The words of the Psalter, however, are not exactly and literally quoted, but its ideas and phrases are freely wrought into the prayer, as if drawn from the well-stored memory of a pious Israelite, familiar with its contents, and naturally giving vent to his feelings in the cherished forms, which were now instinct for him with new life and meaning. The manner in which our English literature (not only sacred, but secular and even profane and infidel) abounds in Scripture imagery and phraseology may help us to understand how coincidences of this kind may have arisen, without any deliberate intention on the part of a later writer to copy from an earlier, or even any direct consciousness that he was doing so.

by reason of mine affliction Rather, as in A.V. and R.V. margin, out of mine affliction, i.e. out of the midst of it, while it still compassed me about. The time referred to is when he was in the sea.

The first half of this verse is identical in the Heb. words, though not in their order, with Psalms 120:1, except that in the Psalm we have "in," instead of "from" or "out of" mine affliction, and a lengthened form of the word for affliction is used. The coincidence cannot, however, be properly said to affect the date of the Book of Jonah. The Psalm, it is true, belongs to a collection which "in its present form must have been made after the return from Babylon," but it by no means follows that no ode of the collection had been composed before that time. Besides, the whole sentence is, both in language and idea, too commonplace, so to speak, to be safely insisted upon as a quotation at all. Two quite independent writers may easily have lighted on it. And moreover, if quoted at all, it may owe its origin no less probably to Psalms 18, between which and the prayer of Jonah the resemblance, though less exact in this particular verse, is as a whole more close and striking. Comp. Psalms 18:6 (1st clause).

of hell The unseen world, the place of the dead, amongst whom, when cast into the sea, he seemed already to be numbered. Comp. Psalms 18:5. "the sorrows of hell (or rather "the bonds of the unseen world") compassed me about."