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. The real miracle was that Jonah should survive so long in his strange prison. "That violates the laws of nature." But let us once understand Christ's profound saying about a Father who "worketh hitherto" (John 5:17), that is, who has never taken His hand from off the thing which He has created, but is ceaselessly active and operative in His creation. Once let us understand that all force, in the last reach of our thought, is with force, and that the forces of nature are only the many-sided puttings forth of that force of the will of God, outspoken and expressed in that Word of His power by which He upholdeth all things. Once understand that there are no "laws of nature" to be violated, except the rules which He has laid down for His own ordinary and orderly action in governing His world. Once let it be seen that whilst for our sakes it is generally best and happiest that He should keep to His own rules, and should very seldom indeed do in any way differently, yet He is at perfect liberty to choose whether He will keep to His ordinary and orderly plan, or for some special reason will in any particular instance turn aside. Then, if there is as good evidence for the fact as the case admits of, and, above all, if plainly there is good reason for the fact, we may as reasonably fred no more difficulty in the miracle than in the general providence. What is ordinary is of God, just as much as the extraordinary. The natural is of God, as much as the supernatural. Once more it may be said that if our eyes were not too much the eyes of the children, we should see that the wonder is the orderly, reliable, age-long, ordinary providence, rather than the special thing, done just once, to meet an emergency for which the ordinary rule and method did not sufficiently provide. And the special is not an after-thought. It is provided for in the whole great plan of the Worker. It is one of His rules. It quite as much needed God to keep Jonah alive year after year in the atmosphere and upon the earth, as to keep him alive for three days within the body of the great fish. (H. J. Foster.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
    |