Three-year Bible reading plan for 22 March 2021

King James Version (en)

King James Version (en)

Jonah, Chapter 1, verse 17

¹⁷ and swallowed by a fish

¹⁷Now 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.

Read more:Jonah, Chapter 2

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1 Jonah disobeys the command of God, Jon 1:1-3.
Is arrested by a storm, Jon 1:4-6.
Discovered to be the cause of the storm, Jon 1:7-10.
Cast into the sea and swallowed by a fish, Jon 1:11-17.

1:17 A great fish - The Hebrew word is, numbered, has appointed him for Jonah's receiver and deliverer. God has the command of all his creatures, and can make any of them serve his designs of mercy to his people.

Jonah, Chapter 2, verses 1-9

¹ The prayer of Jonah

¹Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly,

²And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.

³For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.

⁴Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.

⁵The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.

⁶I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.

⁷When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.

⁸They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.

⁹But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.

Read more:Jonah, Chapter 2

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2 Jonah's prayer and deliverance.

2:2 Affliction - Straits with which he was encompassed, his body and mind being both shut up, the one by the monstrous dungeon of the fish's belly, and the other by the terrors of the Almighty.Heardest my voice - Of which undoubtedly God gave him an assurance in his own soul.

2:4 I said - With myself, I thought in the midst of my fears and sufferings. Cast out - Cut off from all hope of life, and as it were forgotten of God. I will look - Toward heaven.

2:5 The weeds - It seems to mean, my case was as hopeless as that of a man wrapt about with weeds in the depth of the sea.

2:6 I went down - The fish carried him down as deep in the sea as are the bottoms of the mountains. With her bars - I seemed to be imprisoned where the bars that secured were as durable as the rocks, which they were made of. Yet - By what was first my danger, thou hast wonderfully secured me. From corruption - Or the pit, a description of the state of the dead. O Lord - In the assurance of faith, he speaks of the thing as already done.

2:7 Thine holy temple - Heaven, the temple of his glory, whence God gives the command for his delivery.

2:8 They - Whoever they are that depend upon idols.Mercy - The Lord, who is to all that depend upon him, the fountain of living waters; who is an eternal fountain of mercy, and flows freely to all that wait for him.

2:9 Vowed - Which probably was to go to Nineveh, and preach what God commanded him. The Lord - He only can save.

NOTES

For what man could leave the one who behaves towards him with mercy? And what in such case this person would lose? If we speak about relationships between God and His people, the scale of the loss becomes immediately visible. It is no more and no less about salvation, about the...

At first glance, hardly the God of Abraham and Moses will seem to somebody, merciful, especially if we focus on His image of the Old Testament. But do we understand correctly what is this mercy, about which speaks the prophet? By mercy we imply mostly a certain indulgence, the readiness to forgive to somebody his weaknesses not by love...

At first glance, hardly the God of Abraham and Moses will seem to somebody, merciful, especially if we focus on His image of the Old Testament. But do we understand correctly what is this mercy, about which speaks the prophet? By mercy we imply mostly a certain indulgence, the readiness to forgive to somebody his weaknesses not by love for him, but from indifference to the sins that he committed, maybe in the secret hope that one day our sins and our weaknesses shall also be indulgently "forgiven" to us. The God of Israel is not like that: He is demanding and, according to the word of the Holy Scriptures, "jealous", not because He needs the worship of whoever it maybe, but because otherwise, if the man does not surrender into His hands completely, without reserve and without looking behind, He cannot purify and sanctify such a person, and therefore cannot also join him to the new life, to the life of His Kingdom.

This task is of course incompatible with mercy, as we understand it quite often. But in this sense, in which the word "mercy" is used in the biblical books, our understanding of the mercy has nothing common. The mercy in the Bible is the readiness to do to someone more than what requires the law or the contract, more than what is required to do. Such readiness is also possible when it comes to relations between men; it was often for those receiving the help a real salvation in difficult and sometimes critical situations. When it concerns God, His mercy is for man the only hope.

The only because after the fall man lost any rights for any future strictly human, being much closer to the animal kingdom, than to the God, in Whose image he was created. In the less global scale, having in mind only the history of the people of God, we could say that these people lost the right on all that was due to them according to the alliance concluded on Sinai: because the conditions of the union concluded in that period were violated by the people more than once.

One could only hope that God will forgive His people and will still give them a chance to start everything if it is not from the beginning, then at least, on a white leaf. This God's readiness to forgive and to give again another chance is His mercy. Of course, the gods of the heathen could also be sometimes merciful to their fans, but merciful in particular in the human sense of the word. There is nothing surprising here: because these gods were created by man for himself in his image. Here is only, in a critical situation, when help was needed, they couldn’t help at all. Quite as cannot help a man the "mercy" pushing him to his sins and vices.

Each chapter of the book of the prophet Jonah is a concise and accurate outline of how a person behaves after encountering the will of God...

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