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
Cyril of Alexandria
AD 444
Jonah fulfilled a type of our Savior when he prayed from the belly of the fish and said, ‘I cried for help from the belly of Hell.’ He was in fact in the whale, yet he says that he is in Hell. For he manifestly prophesies in the Person of Christ. For he typified Christ, who went down into the heart of the earth (Mt. 12:40).
Jonah only appeared to be dead. Since the whale gulps down its prey fiercely, the belly of Hell is called the belly of the whale. (Catechetical Lecture 14:20)
