Week 13 Jonah 2
Yesterday I read where David said that the Lord spared me from going down to the pit.
Today the prayer of Jonah had a similar sound: the engulfing waters threatened me…seaweed was wrapped around my head…I sank down. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.
I checked some other versions and most of them used the word pit. A couple capitalized it: the Pit. A couple called it the pit of death.
Pit sometimes just means a deep hole in the ground. But the bible also uses it in a figure-of-speech kind of way:
…let’s swallow them alive, like the grave, and whole, like those who go down to the pit
…you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit
I will make you dwell in the earth below…with those who go down to the pit, and you will not return or take your place in the land of the living.
So the Pit is one of the names of the place where dead people go. It’s the place where some people – like Jonah (who was right on the doorstep of doom) – were rescued from at the-very-last-second.
People can come very close to the netherworld without landing inside. But – barring a miracle – once a person is there they’re there for good.
Note: quotes from Psalm 30:3 (NIV) Jonah 2:5-6 (NIV CSB RSV EXB & NCV) Proverbs 1:12 Isaiah 14:15 Ezekiel 26:20 (NIV)