12
And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek
after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this
generation.
Sorry,
just had to go off on a tangent here. It’s too interesting to pass by.
In
another place Jesus promises the Jews only the sign of the prophet Jonah;
Matthew
12:38 ¶ Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying,
Master, we would see a sign from thee. 39 But he answered and said unto them,
An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign
be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: 40 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. 41 The men of Nineveh shall
rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they
repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.
By
this statement we can understand that Jonah did die and was brought back to
life in this passage;
Jonah
2:1 ¶ Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish’s belly, 2 And
said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out
of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. 3 For thou hadst cast
me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about:
all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. 4 Then I said, I am cast out of
thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. 5 The waters compassed
me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were
wrapped about my head. 6 I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth
with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from
corruption, O LORD my God. 7 When my soul fainted within me I remembered the
LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. 8 They that
observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. 9 But I will sacrifice unto
thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed.
Salvation is of the LORD.
As
an interesting aside, notice how the great fish, a unique one of a kind fish
for those people running off to try to prove that this or that sea creature can
or has swallowed a man whole, was prepared by God for Jonah and is a type of
Hell, as you read the passage in Jonah again. The fish is also a type of
something else, though, or someone else, rather.
Jonah
1:17 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.
Jesus
calls this great fish, a whale. Modernists, steeped in modern taxonomic
expressions will scream, “A whale is not a fish! Ha, a mistake!” But man’s
taxonomic classifications are just that, man’s. Notice the creatures around
God’s throne in Revelation 4 are classified in categories; domestic, wild,
flying, man-like (primates?). God mentions whales in Genesis 1:21 as the first
creatures coming out of the water where He started life.
Genesis
1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which
the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl
after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
In
Job 7:12, in Job’s lament, it is implied that God would set a guard over a
whale as if you select all the verses that contain “watch” you see that it is
an alert guard over something or at a certain time. (Genesis 31:49; Exodus
14:24; Judges 7:19, etc. etc.)
Job
7:12 Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?
Pharaoh
is likened to a whale in Ezekiel 32:2
Ezekiel
32:2 Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say unto
him, Thou art like a young lion of the nations, and thou art as a whale in the
seas: and thou camest forth with thy rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy
feet, and fouledst their rivers.
I am
going to put forward that, rather than being a specific reference to a specific
taxonomic classification, a whale represents a large sea creature; what we
would call a large fish, which is God’s obvious classification by comparing
verses between Matthew and Jonah, in that case a specially modified fish, or
the Leviathan of Psalm 104:26 as in BIG.
Which
then, links these large creatures to the reptilian Lucifer or Satan, which are
titles rather than personal names.
Isaiah
27:1 In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish
leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he
shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
This
verse links the serpent of Genesis 3 with the dragon of Revelation 12, which is
the Devil.
Revelation
12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and
Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his
angels were cast out with him.
Satan
is likened to a dragon, which is the word we used for giant reptiles before the
word dinosaur was invented. You can see the description in Job 41 as the word
Leviathan in the first verse links the whale, Satan, the dragon, and the Devil
in one as typified by a giant reptile.
Keeping
in mind that the Philistine god, Dagon, is part man and part fish, imported
from the Assyrian and Babylonian pantheon of gods (Judges 16:23; 1 Samuel 5:2).
Perhaps he is also referenced in Revelation 13:1, linking him to Satan as well.
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