The waters surrounded me, even to the soul: the deep closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.
All Commentaries on Jonah 2:5 Go To Jonah 2
Jerome
AD 420
LXX: 'I said, I am cast far from your sight'. Before I cried out from the depths of my distress and before you heard me, me who had taken the position of slave and imitated its weakness, I said, "I am cast out of your sight". When I was with you enjoying your light and you, light, being light, I did not say "I am cast out". But once at the bottom of the sea and surrounded by the flesh of a man, I say: "I am cast out of your sight". I said this as a man. And as God being in that condition I did not think of my equality with you, because I wanted to raise mankind to you, so that wherever I am with you they are there as well and those who have believed in me and in you, I say: yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. LXX: 'do you not think I will be able to see your holy temple again?'. To express the Greek ara, the Vulgate edition's 'do you think' can be interpreted as 'therefore', like the last conclusion of the proposition, of the assumption and of the confirmation and syllogism, not in the uncertainty of someone who hesitates but in the confidence of someone who affirms. This has been translated by, "yet I will look again on your holy temple", according to that which is said in another psalm by the spokesperson of Christ: "Lord, I have loved beauty of your house and the tabernacle where your glory lives", and the passage of the Gospel in which it says, "Father, glorify me with you by that glory which I had before the world existed". And the Father replied to heaven: "I have glorified him, and I shall glorify him". Or even because he says, "the Father is in me, and I am in Him"[106], for the temple of the Father is the Son, thus the temple of the Son is the Father. He Himself said, "I left my Father and have come", and "the word was with God and the word was God". Or even the Saviour, the one and the same, asks as man and promises as God, and he is sure of the right that was always his. For the person of Jonah you can clearly see that with a feeling of desire and confidence, at the bottom of the sea, he wished to see the temple of the Lord, and with a prophetic spirit he found himself elsewhere and thought of other things.
