What was the "Huge Fish" that swallowed Jonah?

This is not a debate if this is a true story, but a discussion about the type of fish /shark/whale that God might have used. It had to be huge, and have a large mouth with little to no teeth.

Jonah 1:17
17 Then God assigned a huge fish to swallow Jonah. Jonah was in the fish's belly three days and nights.

I think he might have used this type

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b052eaf9cd26.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/267d487de580.jpg[/atsimg]

It's a Basking Shark, they have caught one as long as 40 feet once, certainly classified in layman's terms as a huge fish.


[edit on 24-3-2009 by Blue_Jay33]

Or maybe a humpback whale, check how huge it's mouth can open when it wants to feed.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/cbd714ab2ed0.jpg[/atsimg]

reply to post by Blue_Jay33


This thread cracked me up!

I don't know about the first picture. I recall they swim with their mouths wide open like this all the time to eat plankton, so Jonah could have just swum right back out!

As for your second choice, possibly. I've always imagined that something like Moby Dick is what got him!

I thought the story was allegorical. I know Jesus later refers to the story as well in an allegorical way.

It was an allegory to his death for 3 days but it's quite clear he referred to to it as an actual event.

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Matthew 12:38-40

I think you're onto something Blue_Jay33. It had to be a large fish for sure. Just wondering how Jonah got off in a good place. Maybe the poor fish got Jonah lodged in it's throat and it washed up on the beach and coughed him up.

And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Jonah 2:10

reply to post by dbates


I was thinking about this some more, and if he was in there for three days he would need to breath, a shark never goes up for air, he would die from a lack of oxygen. But whales go up for air, with their blowholes. So I am thinking it must have been a whale, so he could at least breath. And sharks never beach themselves that I know of. But whales commonly do. That is when he could have been vomited up onto dry land. The bible never goes on to say if the fish then swam away.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/2d74582618fb.jpg[/atsimg]

[edit on 26-3-2009 by Blue_Jay33]

True, you don't hear of sharks beaching themselves do you?

It's most likely a true story even Pinocchio had to borrow from it being swallowed up by a whale and all.


Yet we all know how Walt Disney despised the you know who's and so does Cartman...




[edit on 20-4-2009 by hezekiah]

More likely a shark because a whale is not a fish, it's a mammal.

It could even be a Megalodon due to a possibility they may have been around until the last Ice Age.

reply to post by ahnggk


Since Jonah was written by Jonah in 844 BCE, I highly doubt he knew the difference between how to biologically classify large sea creatures like sharks and whales. A large swimming creature like a whale or a shark would just be a "Big Fish" to him.

What is very obvious today, because we learned it in elementary school, was unknown 2800 years ago.

But what you say could be true maybe the "Big Fish" that swallowed Jonah is extinct today.

[edit on 21-4-2009 by Blue_Jay33]

I remember there was a case of a sailor being swallowed by a whale, which was later butchered and he was found delusional but alive a few hours later as they were butchering the whale.
The whale's body temperature, lack of clean air, helped to make him pretty wasted.

Something like this maybe???

www.hattoncoc.org...:shk::shk:

[edit on 29-4-2009 by nick_napalm]