Here is another excerpt from the series on Jonah back in September. This sermon was on Chapter 2, in which, among other things I coined the term "ichtyodeglutition" (the technical term for being swallowed by a fish-- it has a million uses). Below's an excerpt and you can click here for the whole thing.
No former English Teacher can resist analysing a good poem, and I gotta say: for all its being written by a drowning man in the belly of a fish, this prayer in Chapter 2 ranks among the most carefully crafted poems in the whole Bible. In the poetry biz, we’d call Jonah Chapter 2 a “Hebrew Chiasm.”
A Chias-what? you say? Well, funny you should ask, because a chiasm is a form of poetry where all the ideas are sort of arranged in an “x” shape, where the second half of the poem is like a mirror-opposite of the first half (the word Chiasm itself just means “X”).
Let me demonstrate with this quote here: “Never let a kiss fool you, or a fool kiss you.” Now. That’s not from the Bible (but it is good advice). And it’s memorable because the ideas are arranged in sort of an “X” shape. Do you see it: You’ve got fool, then kiss, then kiss, then fool. Like an “X”.
Does that make sense?
Or how about this one: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Have you heard that one before? Did you ever notice it was sort of written in an “x” shape? Your country, you, then ask, then you, and your country.
Well if this is making sense to you than let me just say that these “x”-shaped thingies (that’s actually the technical word for them)—these x-shaped thingies are all over the place in the Bible. Especially the Hebrew Prophets, like Jonah, they used chiasms all the time. And usually when the prophets started talking in chiasms, they put the key idea right at the dead centre of the x.
Take Jonah’s prayer here, for example. In verse 17, it says a great fish swallowed Jonah, right? And then he starts to pray. In verse 2, he says, “in my distress I called to the Lord”—and note that he uses the special Hebrew name for God there. And then he says, “I called for help and you heard my cry” (though the actual word there is the Hebrew word for “voice”—you heard my voice is what Jonah says, literally.) Okay, but then in verse 4 he talks about how, even though he was expelled from God’s sight, he will look to the Lord’s Holy Temple. And in verse 5 he says that stuff about how the waters engulfed him—though literally he says something like “The waters surrounded my soul” “Soul” is the actual word there.
So we’ve got: the Lord, my voice, his Holy Temple, my soul. You with me?
Well: then we have verse 6: “I went down to the roots of the mountains—but you, O Lord, you brought my life up from the pit.” Put your finger on it: I sank down ... but you, O Lord, brought me up.
Now, keep your finger there, and watch this. In verse 7, Jonah says “When my life—and the word he uses, again, is soul—he says: when my soul was ebbing away, I remembered you O Lord. And my prayer rose (where?) to your Holy Temple. Do you see what’s happening? Maybe it would help if I pointed out that in verse 9, when he says “with a song of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you,” the word he literally uses there is: “Voice.” “With the voice of thanksgiving,” is what it says in Hebrew. And notice that the very last words of his prayer use the special Hebrew name for God, just like he did in the very... first ... words.
“Salvation is of the Lord.” And after that: the great fish vomited Jonah up.
Do you see what I see? We have a perfect “x” shape here. I mean, look: the fish swallowed Jonah, then: the Lord, my voice, your Temple, my soul ... verse 6 ... and then my soul, your temple, my voice, the Lord. And then the fish vomited Jonah up.
Do you hear that? “I sank down to the roots of the Mountain. And you, O Lord brought my life up from the pit.” That’s the heart-beat of Jonah’s prayer. The dead centre of this chiasm.
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