Then I said, I am cast out of your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.
All Commentaries on Jonah 2:4 Go To Jonah 2
Jerome
AD 420
LXX: 'you cast me into the deep of the heart from the sea, and the waves surrounded me'. The interpretation of the person of Jonah is not difficult: from the moment when he was closed in the stomach of the whale and found himself at the deepest and middle of the sea, he was surrounded by waves. For the Lord, the Saviour, prefiguring psalm 68 in which he says, "I am enshrouded in the deep mud where there is no ground. I have come to the deepest part of the sea and the storm engulfs me". It is said of him in another psalm: "but you, you have rejected, despised and disquieted your Christ; you have cursed the covenant of your master, you have dishonoured his sacred place on earth, you have destroyed all its walls", and so on. For in this comparison of divine blessing and that place about which is written, "his home is in sacred peace", all habitation on earth is full of waves, full of storms. And the "heart of the sea" means hell, for which we read in the Gospel, "in the heart of the earth". For just as the heart is at the middle of animal, so we say that hell is in the middle of the earth. Or according to anagoge he recalls that he is "in the heart of the sea", that is in the middle of temptations. However, although he has been among the bitter waters and been tempted by all things without sin, he has not felt the bitter waters, but has been surrounded by the waves about which we read elsewhere, "an impetuous wave rejoices in the city of God". Others drank the salty waves; myself, surrounded by temptation, I endured sweeter currents. And do not think what the Lord says now is impious: "you have cast me into the deep", who says in the psalm, "for they have followed him that you smote"[98], according to the phrase which in Zechariah is spoken by the Father: "I will smite the shepherd, and the flocks will be scattered"
