Jonah and the Whale

Q. Was Jonah swallowed by a whale or a fish?

A. Both. It is a whale (Matthew 12:40, κήτος) and a fish (Jonah 1:17, דָג). The Old Testament book says God prepared a fish to swallow Jonah and Jesus said that fish was a whale. Yet scientists say the whale is not a fish; it is a mammal, and the Bible is wrong. Who shall we believe? Believe God. We should look the scientist and skeptic in the eye and say, “God is sovereign.” God is the Sovereign of the universe and the Creator of all things. He is under no obligation to categorize fish and whales by some modern classifications or man-made distinction that some modern scientists have chosen. God is the creator of the whale. He can (and does) call it what he wants.

When puny humans can place a man inside a whale and keep him alive for three days and three nights, maybe we will have earned some right to call him what we wish against what God says. Of course, we can’t, and won’t, and don’t! This issue might become a complicated debate for some, but let us reserve the debate over technicalities to within “the family.” There is no reason for Christians to run from this issue like a frightened schoolchild. We should and must stand for the Bible, truth against falsehood.

In modern English whale may mean (scientifically) any of various large marine mammals of the order Cetacea, or (popularly) any large sea creature or something that is impressive in size. The word comes from the Old English hwæl, Old Saxon hwal, apparently going back to the German hwal/wal, and Latin squalus (a kind of large sea fish).

• Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. (KJV, Jonah 1:17)

The Old Testament Hebrew is gadowl (גָּדֹ֔ול) dag (דָּ֣ג), meaning “great fish.”

• for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (KJV, Matthew 12:40)

The Greek used in the New Testament is ketos (κητος). Divry’s Modern English-Greek and Greek-English Dictionary (1974), is just a Greek/English dictionary. It has nothing directly to do with the Bible (i.e., it is a Greek language dictionary, not a Bible dictionary). If you look up the Greek word ketos, it has “whale.” If you look up the English word whale, it has “ketos.”

Notice also that the Greek LXX of the Old Testament translates (דָּג גָּדֹול) as κήτει μεγάλῳ and (הַדָּג) as κήτους – which Lancelot Brenton translates into English as great whale and whale (1:17 in the KJV, is 2:1 in LXX).

καὶ προσέταξεν κύριος κήτει μεγάλῳ καταπιεῖν τὸν Ιωναν καὶ ἦν Ιωνας ἐν τῇ κοιλίᾳ τοῦ κήτους τρεῖς ἡμέρας καὶ τρεῖς νύκτας

Now the Lord had commanded a great whale to swallow up Jonas: and Jonas was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights.

As late as 1952, the new Revised Standard Version still used the word “whale.”

• For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (RSV, Matthew 12:40)

The modern pressure to be “scientific” has called forth a number of substitutes: great fish (ESV, NKJV, TLB), huge fish (CSB, LEB, NET, NIV), sea creature (ISV), sea monster (AMP, EXB, LSB, NASB, NRSV), and possibly others. I do not see these as wrong, in the sense that, in biblical terms the whale is a great or huge fish, and a sea creature. I see them as compromising, jellyfish translations (gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria), that bow to science when science should instead bow to God.

As if it matters, we notice that some people who attack the King James Bible in particular or the Bible in general claim that scientific terminology labeling whales as mammals predates the 1611 translation of the Bible. So the translators should have had their fingers in the wind, and not used the word “whale” (in their opinion). However, this assertion appears to be chronologically false. The information that I have found indicates that this system (re whales) dates to 1758 (of course, there were earlier folks developing taxonomic ideas, such as the Bauhin brothers, botanists). It was in the 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae that Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish biologist and taxonomist, classified cetaceans as mammals rather not fish. The taxonomic system of Linnaeus formed the basis of modern whale classification. That does not matter in terms of biblical truth, but the timing nevertheless seems to be a false claim that deserves debunking. Regardless, Bible translators are not beholden to modern classifications as sources for translation.

As far as a whale or fish swallowing Jonah, if we believe in a sovereign God who can do all things, and we believe that fish was “prepared by God” – that should remove all difficulties believing the story. God made a creature that, due to his preparation, was able to swallow an adult human. It was a miracle!

As far as a whale being a fish, if we believe God made all things, we allow him to call those things whatsoever he will – regardless of what anyone else decides to call them. God is the eternal sovereign Creator.

As William Jennings Bryan said to Clarence Darrow, “If the Bible said so…”

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Note: I do not have a problem with the principle of scientific classifications. I myself have engaged in a good bit of religious taxonomy – working on how to classify Baptists within their denominational landscapes. It has a place in the field of knowledge, as long as it doesn’t overstep its bounds and start overriding what a biblical classification of a church is. I recognize it is man-made, but it can help make sense out of who we are as Baptists. So with scientific classifications of plants and animals. They are derived to help us understand the world around us. Let it do that, as long as it doesn’t overstep its bounds and start overriding what the Bible says. Search the scriptures, whether these things are so. Let God be true, but every man a liar.