Jonah and the ???

What a coincidence. I just taught the book of Jonah in Sunday School two weeks ago.[We just started the minor prophets.] I have heard non-believers claim the Bible has a contradiction because the Old Testament says "great fish" and the KJV New Testament has Jesus saying "whale".

I wanted my class to know that non-believers sometimes purposely try to discredit the Bible and here's what I found in my getting ready for the lesson.

Here's the Hebrew word for "fish" = דָּג. It is tranlated as the word fish, but carries with it more of a meaning of "squirming as propelled through the water by a tail". That could mean a lot of things. A HUGE fish. It could also mean a whale. Were it not for the word "great" as an adjective, it could mean a sea snake or even a goldfish.

Here's the rub. The word in the Jonah passage is NOT trying to convey the classification of the animal but how, as a sea creature, it moved.

The Greek word, found in Matthew where Jesus is comparing himself to Jonah is κήτους. When the early, EARLY people were translating from Greek they found that Plato, Socrates, and many more ancients used this word in three capacities.

• whale = [used by the King James]
• great fish = [used by modern versions]
• sea monster = [used by the Berean Bible]

So, which animal was it? I don't know. But here's what I DO know.

Whatever animal is was, the whole thing was a miracle. Why?

• If is was a true fish, even as large as the largest fish on earth - the whaleshark, that creature's mouth is super large enough to encase a human being, but it's gullet or esophagus is only inches across and could never swallow anything larger than very small fish or other creatures.
• If it was a true whale, such as a sperm whale, which is VERY huge - the only documented case there is of a human being completely swallowed by a sperm whale and living to tell about it - it could not digest the man and it killed the whale. [The man was inside the sperm whale for about 24 hours and was a stark raving lunatic for about 2.5 weeks before he came back to himself.]
• If neither of these, God miraculously created a creature that could swallow a man, undigested for three days, and live to vomit him out and swim away.

 

Yes, when we think of stomach issues that cause vomiting, that's the norm. Not to be gross, but vomited contents that come up are usually digested or partially digested. Blech!!

In the case of Jonah's whale or great fish, the Bible says God commanded the creature to vomit Jonah up.

In the case of the other man from modern times [late 19th century], it appears that he was big enough to "stop up" the digestive process and the animal could not digest/pass him or vomit him up.

I think the stomach issues were not typical ones.