Jonah's Whale | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Apr 25, 1878

Jonah's Whale.

SKEPTICS are often troubled about what kind of a fish it was that swallowed Jonah. They say the account in the Bible cannot be true, for a whale's throat is too small to admit a human body. That may be true, and the Bible correct after all. One of the definitions of the words keetos (translated whale, in Matt. 12:40) is "a large fish." The Emphatic Diaglott renders it a "great fish," which agrees with the Old Testament in Jonah 1:17; 2:1. Jonah was swallowed by a fish. Are there fish large enough to swallow an entire human body? Let those who have made the subject a study, answer:--

"The white shark is seldom seen on our coast, but is abundant in the Mediterranean [where Jonah went on his voyage], and is found in great numbers in tropical climates. It is often thirty feet in length, and swims with great swiftness." Cuvier says:--

"The French name of this terrible animal is Requin, or Requiem, 'the rest or stillness of death,' in allusion to the deadly character of its habits; and when we consider its enormous size and powers, the strength and number of its teeth, the rapidity of its movements, its frequent appearance during all the turmoil and horrors of a tempest, with death and destruction apparently in every blast and every wave, we must admit the propriety of a name expressive of the natural association of ideas which connects this cruel monster of the deep with death."

"It is a well authenticated fact that some of these monsters, at a single bite, have cut a man in two; and an entire human body is said to have been found, on one occasion, in the stomach of one of them." Willson's Fifth Reader, pp. 26, 262.

So, then, there are great fish in the sea, and of sufficient size to swallow a man entire. And when the mariners cast Jonah forth into the sea it might have been one of these great monsters of the deep that swallowed the disobedient prophet, who upon repentance was safely brought to land. B. S.

THE above was placed in my hands with the request to examine it. I do not see any necessity for departing from the words of the text in Matthew that "Jonah was in the whale's belly," because it depends only on what kind of whale you are speaking, whether its throat is large enough to swallow a man or not. By examining Chambers' Encyclopedia, Vol's ii and x, we find there are two kinds of whales, the bone whale proper, inhabiting the northern seas, and the sperm whale of the southern seas. While the northern whale has a small throat, the sperm whale has a very large throat.

Of the Greenland, or bone whale, Chambers says, "The gullet of whales is very narrow; it is said not to be more than an inch and a half in diameter even in a large whale, so that only very small animals can pass through it." Vol. x, page 151, Article whale.

Of the Cachalot, or sperm whale, Chambers says, "It may almost be said to inhabit all seas, although it is most abundant in those of the southern hemisphere. It is not of frequent occurrence on the European shores, although it sometimes enters the Mediterranean, and is occasionally stranded on the coasts of Britain ... The Cachalot sometimes reaches the length of seventy or eighty feet. The head is enormously large forming about one-half of the entire bulk of the animal, and occupying more than one-third of the entire length . . . The mouth is very large and wide; and the throat, unlike that of the Greenland whale, is very wide, sufficiently so to admit the body of a man." Vol. ii, pp. 480, 450. Article Cachalot or Sperm whale.

While in the case of the white shark which is a native of the Mediterranean sea, there was no "preparation" to be made, as it was in its own home with its massive throat all ready to swallow a man, in the case of this sperm whale the preparation would be the causing of one to wander into the Mediterranean, and be at the point in time to take up Jonah. J. N. L.