However, the hopeful thing about Jonah is that nearly all of the details of this book would have been known only to him, which means that he either authored the book and is personally responsible for the unflattering light in which he is portrayed or, at a minimum, relayed what happened to others who did. I think the unflinching honesty with which Jonah presents himself might be indicative of transformation and a change in his heart over time. The book of Jonah, from the first word to the last, is written in the form of a retrospective testimony with a strongly confessional flavor. One gets the sense that a wiser, older, more godly Jonah documented these things as a cautionary tale about his experiences as a younger, more foolish servant of God. To his credit, in the telling of his story Jonah does not try and clean himself up at all.

I think that perhaps the most surprising thing about Jonah’s prayer in chapter 2 is not something that he says, but what he does not say. In this prayer nowhere does Jonah tell God that he was wrong or that he is sorry for what he did. What are we to make of that?

Another surprising thing in Jonah’s prayer is that he thanks God for causing a fish to swallow him. Those are not his words exactly, but when he speaks about God’s deliverance he indicates that he has been saved from the sea and drowning (past tense), and he prays from within the fish (present tense) about how God has saved him. We are left scratching our heads, “How is the claustrophobic and unspeakably foul digestive system of a great fish deliverance?” God’s grace sometimes comes in an unusual form. As we take up the second chapter of Jonah, we’ll dissect the surprising prayer of a man who calls out to God from a dark place.