Distress and Deliverance

The giant fish is incidental to the story. While it does lend a miraculous component that sets up an irrefutable case for God’s involvement in the events of Jonah, the fish simply serves to remind us, in a story where the book’s namesake has disobeyed God, that God is still in control. That is seen even brighter, not in the swallowing and subsequent vomiting of a giant fish, but in the prayer of Jonah that comprise the whole of chapter 2.