For you had cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods surrounded me: all your billows and your waves passed over me.
All Commentaries on Jonah 2:3 Go To Jonah 2
Jerome
AD 420
LXX: similar except: 'from the belly of hell I threw out my cries'. He does not say, "I cry", but "I cried". He does not pray for the future, but gives thanks for the past. That shows us that from the moment he is thrown into the sea and sees the whale, that great bulk, that immense mouth which opened wide to swallow him, he remembered God and cried out, either by the waves giving passage for his cry, or by a feeling from the depths of his heart, according to that which the apostle says: "crying in your hearts": "Abba! Father". He cried to him who alone knew the hearts of men and said to Moses, "why do you cry out to me?", while the Scriptures remember that Moses had never cried out before this speech. This is the text that we read in the first psalm of the steps: "I cried to the Lord in my distress and he replied to me." By the "belly of hell" we understand the stomach of a whale of such great size that it took the place of hell. But this can better be referred to the person of Christ, who under the name of David, sings in the psalm: "you will not leave my spirit in hell, and you will not allow your saint to see putrefaction", living in hell free among the dead.
