Fish or Whale?

We're now leaving the big fish behind, but before I do, let's take a look at this creature. The first day when we checked out the different Bible versions to see what type of creature they said swallowed Jonah, it was always a fish. We didn't have a KJV at the time, but I looked it up and it said: great fish. So, that led us to wonder why in the children's storybooks, it's always pictured as a whale.

That led me to look up "whale" in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance to see where whales are mentioned in the Bible. There's a reference in Job and another in Ezekiel for "whale." Neither are referring to Jonah. "Whales" is mentioned in Genesis, where it mentions that God created them. That's not referring to Jonah either. Then I saw "whale's." The scripture reference next to it is Matthew 12:40, and the piece of verse was: three nights in the w belly; so shall the . . . Hmmm . . . now this is sounding like the Jonah story, so let's check it out. And just in case we need it, the Strong's number is #G2785.

Let's begin by looking up Matthew 12:40. We seem to be entering into the middle of a conversation, so let's back up and begin reading with verse 38. Read through verse 41, although it gives away some of what we'll soon be learning in Jonah 3.

This is a conversation between Jesus and some scribes and Pharisees. We'll discuss this conversation more later, but for right now, what does Jesus say Jonah was in the belly of? My NASB version translates it as "sea monster." However, if you read this verse in the KJV, it says "whale's belly."

So, what was the Greek word that was used? If you look up #2785 in the Greek dictionary, it has "ketos" as the original word. It referred to a "a huge fish (as gaping for prey)," and is translated as "whale."

Hmmm . . . Jonah took place during Old Testament times. What was the Hebrew word for "whale"? Next to the Job, Ezekiel, and Genesis verses that used "whale," the number is #H8577. The original Hebrew word was "tannin" or "tannim," and it means "a marine or land monster, i.e. sea-serpent or jackal," and it can be translated as: dragon, sea-monster, serpent, whale.

The Hebrew word used in the Jonah passage has the number #H1709. The Hebrew word corresponding to this number is "dag." And it means "a fish," and it's translated as "fish."

Therefore it appears that the writer of Jonah meant a fish. The writer of Matthew used a word that meant a huge fish, but it was translated into the English centuries ago as "whale," back when people hadn't really figured out that whales weren't fish. So, it appears to me to be a matter of translation into our language.

Then there's the whole issue of whether a person could survive three days and nights in the gastric juices of a whale or a large fish. My perspective on that is that this is God we're talking about--God is supernatural. He can transcend the laws of nature, because He's the one who created them in the first place. Anything is possible with God. If God wanted it to happen, it happened.