Jonah 1:17
Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
In providence God prepared the great fish to swallow Jonah, using severe affliction to teach him obedience. The swallowing and the confinement in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights was the affliction that taught the lesson of obedience. The lesson learned during those three days and three nights in the belly enabled Jonah to fulfill God's purpose in behalf of the inhabitants of Nineveh.
The three days and three nights Jonah spent in the belly foreshadowed Christ spending the same length of time in the heart of the earth. As Jonah's preaching was a sign to Nineveh, so Christ's preaching was a sign to His generation. Although that generation had a greater messenger than Jonah, it did not receive the warning as Nineveh did.
Connected with this verse, Jonah's delivery of God's message through three days and nights led the city to repent. The episode shows that a warning can truly be from God and accomplish its purpose even when the announced event does not happen, because God may lengthen a people's probation in response to repentance. Jonah's distress that the city was spared shows how personal humiliation can obscure perception of God's mercy. The account of this experience in the first two chapters of Jonah deserves the most careful study.