Jonah as a type of Christ. Very fitting for this Easter time - 3 days - 3 nights. Most of this article explains the similarities between the mission of Jonas - all focused on the Mission, Death and Resurrection of Jesus.
http://www.liberius.net/livres/Le_livre_des_figures_prophetiques_000000157.pdf453 pages. Extraordinary French book. *****
Translated by : pdftranslator.org (Excellent site!)
The Book of Prophetic Figures, written by Abbé Stéphane Maistre. Antique book. (c.1890 )
Comparison between Jonah and Jesus: 1. Jonah; 1a. Jesus etc. ----> 17. 17a.
͠________________________͠__________________________͠__Chapter V
JONAH, figure of Jesus Christ.
I. —
First way to present this figure. Jonah predicted the Messiah through his very actions, and he embodied what other prophets proclaimed in their speeches. This is the only aspect in which he is a prophet; for he only predicted in words an event that did not come to pass: the destruction of Nineveh.
It is therefore true to say that Jonah only prophesied through actions. Moreover, all the ancient Hebrews understood this well; they knew that this prophet had been raised up to be the figure and prophecy of the Messiah. Jesus himself provided as irrefutable evidence of his divine mission the forthcoming fulfillment of the figurative sign of Jonah, and the Jevvs could not possibly be unaware of what this sign of Jonah meant, nor could they misunderstand what it was meant to prove in favor of the One who would fulfill it in his person.
* * * * *
1. Jonah and Jesus are from Galilee of the Gentiles, and they alone were commissioned to preach repentance to the Gentiles.
JONAH was from Geth-Opher (2 Kings XIV, 25), a city in Zebulun {Joshua, XIX, 13} in the Galilee of the Gentiles (Isaiah IX, 1). He is the only Prophet who was
Galilean (John VII, 52).
1a.JESUS was from Nazareth, a city in Zebulun, in Galilee: this is what caused him to be called the Galilean.
2. JONAH was sleeping deeply at the bottom of a ship when a tremendous storm arose, threatening to overwhelm the vessel and all the sailors because of him. He was awakened with the words:
‘Call upon your God, so that we do not perish.’ {Jonah, c.I, v. 1-6.)
The entire crew of the ship rose up against the Prophet Jonah and demanded his death.
2a. JESUS was peacefully sleeping in a boat when a great storm, stirred up by Satan (Estius), arose on the Sea of Tiberias and threatened to cause the death of all the
sailors and his Disciples. They woke him, saying: 'Master, save us, we are perishing.' Furthermore, during his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, Jesus seemed to be set to enjoy much glory and safety within Judea, when suddenly Satan, by God's permission and through the means of the leaders of the people, instigated a general uprising against him.
3. The pilot supernaturally knew, v. 7, that Jonah had to perish for the entire vessel to be saved.
3a. It was then that Caiphas, the high priest of the Sanhedrin, prophesied (St. John,XVII, 11) and said: 'It is advantageous that one man die for the people.'
4. Jonah voluntarily offered himself to be thrown into the sea for the salvation of his companions. v.12.
4a. Jesus had voluntarily delivered himself into the hands of the Jews, in order to be sacrificed for the salvation of his brothers. (St. John, XVIII, 6-8.) — Previously, he had offered himself to be sacrificed: 'Ecce venio'!
5. The Pilot and the sailors therefore condemned Jonah to die, for fear of dying
themselves because of this man.
5a. Caiphas and the seventy judges of the Sanhedrin therefore condemned Jesus to
die, so that their nation would not perish because of him.
6. They recognized, however, that it was by the will of God that the innocent blood
of this Prophet was thus delivered for them.
6a. Pilate acknowledged and declared openly that in delivering Jesus to death, innocent blood was being shed. This blood fell only upon the unrepentant Jevvs.
7. These Gentiles therefore cried out to the Lord, saying: We ask you, Lord, that the death of this man may not be the cause of our destruction; and do not let the innocent blood fall upon us; for it is you, Lord, who do in this what you wish.
7a. For the Gentiles and the Hebrews who converted, the blood of the Just became a cause of salvation. Jesus was for all peoples a victim of propitiation and a source of redemption and prosperity.
8. Jonah was thrown into the sea. The fury of the waves calmed immediately. Peace was restored to the sailors, who honored the true God and offered Him sacrifices.
8a. As soon as Jesus Christ was delivered to death, the waves of heavenly wrath subsided, and peace was restored to humanity: the converted Gentiles no longer offered sacrifices except to the true God.
9. Jonah stayed three days and three nights in the sea, in the belly of the whale, or, according to others, in the belly of a sea dragon.
9a. Jesus remained three days and three nights in the tomb, under the power of Death and, in some way, under the sting of the Dragon of Hell.
10. (Let us note here that the whale, which plays in the midst of the seas,
represents, in the Scriptures, the infernal Dragon...)*
11. Prayer of Jonah when he was at the bottom of the sea. c. II.
The prayer that Jonah made in the belly of the Fish clearly indicates that the circuмstance in which this Prophet found himself symbolized the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For,
1° Jonah cries out to the Lord in the midst of his affliction, stating that he is abandoned and as if rejected by God: Abjectus sum a conspectu oculorum tuorum, v. 5. Jesus Christ, dying on the cross, said to God: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabacthani?
Jonah says he is in the 'belly of Hell', v. 3; however, he was only in the belly of the fish**. He was thus foretelling Jesus Christ, who truly descended into Hell and was placed in the tomb. The Prophet also says that all the waves of God's wrath have passed over him; which fits very well with Jesus Christ, upon whom all the waves of heavenly wrath have passed like a torrent, enveloping him like a criminal burdened with all the sins of the world.
2° It should be noted that Jonah seems intentionally to repeat here the main psalms of David that prophetically describe the death and resurrection of the Messiah. First, there is Psalm 68, where it is certain that the death of Jesus Christ is literally announced. The Savior applied it to himself. Then there is Psalm 15, where it is said: Lord, you will not allow your Holy One to see corruption. Jonah, c. II, 7, also says like Christ: ‘You will rescue my life from the corruption of the grave, and I will see your holy Temple again’. Thus, Jonah prophesies here the death and resurrection of the Messiah in two ways: first by his actions, and then by the new sanction he gives to the prophetic oracles regarding the resurrection of Christ.
12. After three days, the Dragon, according to God's order, was compelled to vomit Jonah onto the shore. It is believed he was forced to give up his victim because it was tearing at and gnawing at his belly.
12a. After three days, Jesus was restored to life; He had broken the gates of hell, shackled the power of Satan, and destroyed the reign of eternal death, which no longer had any dominion over Him. ‘Death shall no longer dominate him.’
13. After coming out of the belly of the fish, Jonah went to preach repentance to Nineveh, the greatest city of the Gentiles (it had a circuit of twenty leagues), and he converted it to the Lord.
In forty days, Nineveh would have been destroyed if it had not repented.
13a. It was after His resurrection that Jesus Christ ordered His Apostles to go and announce repentance to the Gentiles. The nations converted to the true God, and
Rome in particular received the word of Jesus Christ, brought by St. Peter. After forty years, Jerusalem, having not repented at the voice of Jesus Christ
and His Apostles, was completely destroyed.
14. Jonah is the only one of all the Prophets who was sent to the Nations.
14a. Only Jesus formed a Church among the Gentiles.
15. He was named 'Jonah', which means 'Dove', undoubtedly because of his candor and admirable gentleness.
15a. He wanted His Disciples to be like Him, that is, simple and gentle like doves; He said to them: 'Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.'
16. Just as Jonah was a sign for the Ninevites, Jesus said (St. Luke, xi, 30), so the Son of Man will be a sign for this generation.
17. The Ninevites, moved to learn that Jonah had been delivered by God from the belly of the dragon, after having stayed there for three days; (a miracle that made waves far and wide and even led the Gentiles to feign that Hercules, returning from Colchis with the Argonauts, had fallen into the sea in the midst of a storm and had been swallowed by a fish which, after three days, returned him full of life to the shore;) the Ninevites, struck by this single miracle, immediately believed in Jonah’s message, and all that great pagan city converted.
17a. The Gentiles, admiring the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who had remained three days in the tomb, and who, after coming out of the grave and
of Hell, everywhere bringing down the empire of the Demon and silencing its Oracles, they converted at every point on earth and repented at the voice of his
Apostles.
Thus, according to Jesus Christ and according to St. Paul, the resurrection of the Savior has been the main foundation of the faith and conversion of the Gentiles, and in particular, the Romans.
____
* English here for number 10:
https://www.cathinfo.com/catholic-living-in-the-modern-world/our-lady-of-guadalupe-mother-of-the-americas/msg1010830/msg1010830** These words of Jonah confirm the idea of the previous note, no. 10. Being in the sea and in the loins of the dragon of the abyss marks the captivity of one who is in Hell and under the reign of Satan, prince of the abyss.
͠
________________________͠__________________________͠__II. —
The same Figure, presented in a different way. Jonah was not only a prophet but also a prophecy.
1. Jonah is sent to preach repentance to the capital of the Gentiles.
1a. Jesus is sent to preach repentance to all the Gentiles.
2. Jonah does not want to be the apostle of Nineveh at first.
2a. Christ does not want to listen to the Canaanite woman at first, nor send his Apostles to the nations.
3. Wanting to limit his ministry to the people of Israel only, this prophet stirs up a great storm while he sleeps deeply in the midst of it.
3a. Sending his apostles only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, He incites a fierce conspiracy against him, even within Israel, amidst which He remains calm, just as when He sleeps on the boat during the storm.
4. Jonah, thrown into the sea, humanly delivered to death, is the Savior of those who were with him on the ship.
4a. Christ, plunged into a sea of afflictions, put to death according to human nature, is the Savior of those who are with Him in the same boat.
5. Descended into the belly of the whale, like into a living hell, he praises God there, celebrates his wonders, and blesses Him for his forthcoming deliverance.
5a. Descended into Hell, to the lower parts of the earth, he announces God's wonders to the captive souls, and, free among the dead, he rejoices with them at his soon-to-be resurrection.
6. He is three days and three nights in the belly of the whale.
6a. The Son of Man has been three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
7. Jonah, returned from the waters, departs from Judea and converts the first capital of the Gentiles.
7a. Christ, risen from the dead, sends his apostles to the ends of the earth, and, along with the first capital of the Gentiles, he converts the entire Gentile population.
8. Jonah, witnessing the conversion of Nineveh and the impenitence of Israel, wishes for death in his pain.
8a. Christ, in the person of St. Paul, seeing the conversion of the Gentiles and the hardening of the Jevvs, who are his brothers, wishes, in his pain, to be accursed for them. […,d’être anathême pour eux.].***
*** Universal History of the Church, by Rohrbacher, vol. II, pp. 324-325.
Source: learnreligions.com͠
________________________͠__________________________͠__III. —
The figure of Jonah, explained by Bossuet. Troubled by one of those raptures observed in the prophets, Jonah does not want to go preach to the Ninevites about their impending doom, for fear that if God were to forgive them, as His immense goodness always inclined Him to do, the pagan peoples would remain firm in their disbelief and scorn His threats and the words of His prophets.
And pressed by this prophetic spirit, which urged him from within with an invincible forceto announce the ruin of Nineveh, he said: ‘Here is a word, Lord, that I cannot bear; I know that You are a compassionate God, full of mercy and patience, of infinite compassion, and always ready to forgive men their wickedness; You will forgive this unfaithful city as well.’
We will no longer be listened to when we speak in your name; we will proclaim
in vain to Judah and Israel the severity of your judgments. Your ease and indulgence will only harden men in wickedness; for this must be supplemented, as we have already found in other prophets. 'O Lord, take my life,' Jonah continued, 'for it is better to die than to be found a lying prophet and subject the prophecy to ridicule.'
It can be observed, in passing, that souls touched by these divine impressions are elevated above all, and death holds no cost for them. In this extreme distress, not only did he try, like Jeremiah, to avoid listening to the prophecy and to numb himself against that voice; but pressed by this prophetic spirit, he fled from the Lord and embarked at Joppa to go from the Holy Land where he was, to Tarsus, a city very far to the West.
One must not be persuaded that the holy Prophet believed that God would not see him anymore, or that he would escape from His empire when he went to distant
lands; for he knew that one cannot escape His power, nor leave His domain.This face of God that he attempts to flee, this presence he wishes to avoid, is the face that God internally showed to His prophets; it is the presence that illuminated their minds when He graciously inspired them. It is this face that Jonah thought he could evade by distancing himself from the Holy Land and from the midst of the people of Israel, where God had been accustomed to bestow prophecy. Hence, he distanced himself both from the Holy Land and from Nineveh, where he did not believe that God would wish to bring him back against his will from such a far country. But no sooner had he boarded than God caused a fierce wind to blow; and the storm was so violent that at every moment they feared the ship would break apart. While everyone cried out to their god in horror, and they threw the entire cargo of the ship into the sea,Jonah, without being surprised by such great danger,... for we have often seen that those strong souls who are in the hand of God fear nothing but Him alone.
‘He went down to the bottom of the ship and fell into a deep sleep.’
This is something like Jesus, who, in a similar storm, sleeps peacefully on a cushion, allowing the waves to fill the boat where he was with his disciples. Through a similar mystery, and to demonstrate that there is nothing to fear when one has God with them, and that one should simply surrender to His will, Jonah slept amidst so much shouting and the horrible hissing of the winds and waves, until he was awakened, much like the Savior, by being told: ‘Why are you sleeping? Call upon your God, so that He may remember us, and that we do not perish
(Jonah, i, 6.)’.
The hand of God did not leave the holy Prophet. He first felt that the storm was sent against him. He saw the lot being cast calmly by the passengers among themselves, to discover the cause of the storm; he saw it fall upon him without fear; for he always held in his spirit that death was better for him than going to prophesy, only to be discredited and cause the prophecy to be blasphemed; and he boldly said to the sailors, who wanted to spare him:
‘Throw me into the sea without hesitation, and the storm will cease; for I know well that it is stirred up because of me.’
However, they respected him, astonished by his prodigious tranquility, and even more by the greatness of the God he served; for when they asked him who he was,
‘he had answered that he was Hebrew, and that the God he served was the God of heaven, the Creator of the earth and the sea; and they were making their last
efforts to reach land,’ without it costing the life of such a great man. But the more they rowed, the more the sea swelled; so they were forced to throw Jonah into the sea, taking God as witness that it was with regret they drowned him, and that they were innocent of his death. 'And immediately the agitation of the sea ceased.'
And here already, in the figure of our Savior, is all this people saved by the death, as it was believed, of the holy Prophet, to which he voluntarily offered
himself. But that is not all the mystery, and the rest is explained to us by the Savior Himself when He says:
'This wicked generation asks for a sign; no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah; for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.'
The spirit of prophecy did not leave Jonah in the belly of that enormous fish; for he sang this divine song:
'I cried out from the depths of the abyss, and you heard my voice; the waters surrounded me; all your billows and all your waves passed over me; and I said: I am cast out from before your eyes; yet I will look again toward your holy Temple.'
He therefore feels that he will emerge from this abyss; and he begins again in this manner: ‘The waters have penetrated me to the depths; the abyss surrounds me; the sea has covered my head. I have descended to the bottom of the sea, and to the roots of the mountains; I am forever confined in the supports of the earth!’
There is no resource in created power.
‘But you, O Lord my God, you will lift me up from such great evil, and you will preserve me from the corruption of death. In the midst of my anguish, I remembered the Lord, so that my prayer might reach You in your holy Temple...;
you will save me, and I will fulfill the vows I made to the Lord for my deliverance.’
‘Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it threw Jonah onto the land’; in the figure of Our Lord, of whom it is written: I always kept the Lord in view, for He is at my right hand, to prevent me from being shaken; that is why my body, placed in the tomb, rested in hope; it is because You will not leave my soul in hell, and You will not allow your Holy One to see corruption from death. In the midst of death, you have shown me the way to return to life, and at your right hand, You will fill me with the joy that comes from seeing your face.’ It is with strength suitable more to the Savior than to Jonah that he accomplished what the Prophet had said:
‘I will see your holy Temple again.’
It did not belong to Jonah, who was merely a figure, to possess all the traits of truth, nor to have among the dead that freedom which was reserved for the Savior, nor to predict his own death and resurrection. Nevertheless, aside from that, there was nothing that resembled death and the tomb more than the belly of that fish; nor was there anything that represented a true and perfect resurrection more vividly than Jonah's deliverance. Let us therefore worship Him who left no trait, nor any 'iota' in the Prophets, nor in the Law, that He has not perfectly fulfilled…
Preaching of Jonah to Nineveh.— To complete the story of Jonah,— as soon as the whale had vomited him onto the shore, he was again filled with the spirit of prophecy, and the Lord commanded him 'to go preach to Nineveh, that it would perish in forty days.' God did not want Jonah to impose the condition: if they did not repent. However, this city did repent in sackcloth and ashes; and God wanted to show that He was always ready, in His goodness, to retract His sentence, without even having promised it. Let us listen to the words of Jesus Christ on this subject:
‘The people of Nineveh will rise up against this generation at the judgment and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, someone
greater than Jonah is here.’
Let us therefore do penance, since Jesus himself urges us to do so through his Gospel, and let us not wait for the Ninevites to rise against us on the last day; for the conviction would be too strong, and the confusion too unavoidable. Jonah did not resist this time; the hand of God was too closely gripping him; but after God had shown mercy to Nineveh, the Prophet was afflicted with extreme distress, and in his anger, he prayed to the Lord, and said to Him:
‘I pray You, Lord, is this not what I said while I was still in my country: That You were good and infinitely gracious;’
that thus You would forgive Nineveh; that the words of Your prophets would be despised, and that without caring for Your threats or breaking the course of their crimes, the peoples would always expect to bend You through penance after having fulfilled their evil desires without consequence.
‘ Lord, I beg you, let me die; death will be sweeter to me than life. At the same time, he withdrew from the city and waited nearby to see what would become of it; for he could hardly believe that God would forgive so many crimes and would increase license through this example of impunity.
But God, who wanted to clothe him with the Spirit of the New Covenant, which is a covenant of mercy, reconciliation, and forgiveness, removed that hard spirit that
was reigning at that time because of the hardness of men's hearts.
As we know, He caused the green branch that had grown over Jonah's head, to protect him from the burning heat of the sun and the winds of those lands, to wither, which he had deliberately stirred up. And as Jonah was distressed by this, even wishing for death, the Lord said to him, ‘You are concerned about this green branch that you did not create and whose growth cost you no effort; and you do not want Me to have compassion for the work of my hands and for this vast city, so
deserving of pity, even if it were just for the countless number of children who do not know good and evil and so many animals?'
So let us take the spirit of gentleness; and let us not be carried away by that zeal, which can even be seen in the Saints of the Old Testament; for Jesus said to his disciples, who wanted to imitate Him, and, following the example of Elijah, to bring down fire from heaven:
"You do not know of what spirit you are."
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The end.
Topic: Jonah, as a figure of Jesus. Three days in the WHALE. Suited for Eastertide. (Read 164 times)