So Jonah disobeyed God and was punished by setting a whale to engulf him in its mouth; then when he saw himself in such situation, he admitted his fault, repented and prayed God to save him and he would then go to Nineveh and warn its people against the idolatry and the association with God; so God answered his prayer, and let the whale carry and vomit him on the sea shore; so he was ill for few days then he restored his health and went to Nineveh.
The story of Prophet Jonah in the Quran is in
Soora 37: 39-48, which mean:
{
[Then God – be glorified – reminded them with another incident, and He said:]
139. And Jonah a was surely [one] of the messengers [sent to the people of Nineveh.]
140. When, [having disobeyed God] b, he ran away by the laden ship.
141. And [Jonah] cast lots [with the crew of the ship], and was [one] of the losers [in that lot, so they cast him in the sea.]
142. So the whale ‘engulfed him in its mouth’, and he being blameworthy c.
143. But had he not been [in the past] of those that glorify [God d],
144. he would have remained in its belly till the day when they would be sent [from their bodies to the Afterlife. e]
145. And We cast him upon the wilderness f, while being sick g.
146. And We made a tree of gourd to grow [for shade for him, and the tree climbed] over his [booth.]
147. And We sent him to a hundred thousand [persons, without counting the fetuses], or more [than that, if you count the fetuses in the wombs.]
148. And they believed h, so We let them enjoy living [in the World] for a [stated] time. i}
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a The son of Amittai. His book in the Torah collection is called the Book of Jonah. His grave is in Mosul city.
b That is because God revealed to him to go to the people of Nineveh [near the present Mosul in Iraq] and warn them of the punishment, in order to abandon the worship of idols and to correct their acts, and to give them a respite of forty days; so if they do not repent, then the punishment will come on and terminate them.
But Jonah feared to go to Nineveh: for that they might kill him, so he fled to Jafa and came to the sea shore where he found a ship intending to go to Tarshish and he embarked on the ship with them. Then when it was in the middle of the sea, a tempest and waves arose, and the ship was about to be drowned, so those who were on the ship said: “Let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.
Therefore, they cast him in the sea, and a big whale came and swallowed him. Then the winds and storms calmed down; and Jonah started to pray in its belly and call on God to deliver him from that distress, and said: “If you, Lord, save me from this, I will go to the people of Nineveh as have you commanded me, and I will not abstain.”
So God revealed to the whale to cast him on the shore, and it cast him on the dry land.
So he arose and went to Nineveh and warned them of the punishment as did God command him, but they denied and mocked him, so he left them and went to the east of the city, and sat on a hill waiting the punishment to befall them.
And God sent on the people of Nineveh a comet to burn them, which when came through their sky and they saw it from faraway, they repented and supplicated God, broke up their idols and corrected their acts, so the comet went to another place, got away from them and fell in an uninhabited desert.
While Jonah took for himself, a small hut to shade him from the sun. And when he knew that the punishment did not come on the people of Nineveh, in its stated time, he resented that, because he promised them and broke his promise; so God – be glorified – planted beside his hut a tree of gourd, which grew quickly and climbed on his hut, so he was exceedingly glad about seeing it and its green color, then next day God sent on it a worm that attacked the lower part of the tree, which consequently withered and dried up, so on seeing that he grieved and was sad about it.
God – be glorified – said to him: “You have grieved for a tree which you did not toil concerning it; so won’t I be Kind to one hundred thousands of people!? Go to them; they have believed and they wait for your return to them.”
c Because he did not comply with God’s command at the beginning, but he abstained, fearing of the people of Nineveh.
d And had he not prayed God in the belly of the whale,
e The meaning: Had Jonah not been one of those that glorified God, then he would have died in the belly of the whale and remained there forty days until the punishment would have come on the people of Nineveh who would have died also and their souls would have been sent from their bodies to the Barzakh world or the Afterlife. The ‘forty days’ was the period with which he respited them to repent.
f i.e. We revealed to the whale to cast or vomit him on the shore or the dry land.
g i.e. ill, because of what afflicted him in the stomach of the whale.
h In God and His messenger.
i When their death appointment was due.
[A story of a similar incident of a fisherman:]
This is an incident, which happened to a fisherman, similar to the incident of Jonah who was engulfed by the whale; I quote it from ‘The World’ magazine, the issue no. 5 dated October 1962:
“This incident occurred to a British sea-man named James Bartley who worked as a seaman on the whaling ship (Star of the East); that was when the Falkland Islands were a big base for hunting whales.
This ship spent most of the time roaming to the south of these islands, searching about sperm whales, whose heads are like barrels and whose stomachs include the substance of the “spermaceti”, and whose lengths are about 60-70 feet.
When it was the season of hunting, the watching man (or the lookout) sighted a whale about three miles away smiting the water with its tail, so he warned the sailors. Then two boats were lowered into the water, chasing started, and one of the sailors threw his harpoon violently which was inserted in its flesh.
Then events succeeded quickly because the injured whale started to move and rotate causing a great noise and high pillars of water.
Inspite of this, the first boat could approach it, while the second boat was unlucky, for the whale put its tail under it and hurled it to a considerable height above, so the hunter Bartley fell from it into the water.
He heard, while sinking, a tremendous noise which he deemed the echo of the movements of the whale tail in the water. Then a deep darkness overwhelmed him, and he deemed himself going into an automoving passage.
So he closed his eyes in terror and expectation of death at any moment. But he felt that he was transmitted into a wide dark room. He outstretched his arms and touched the walls of the room to find it smooth and covered by a sticky layer.
Afterwards, he thought of the whale having swallowed him alive, so he was extremely terrified, and was about to faint out. He then realized that he can breathe, but the heat of the place was unbearable, and worse than that were the liquids which rained down on him out of the stomch of the whale, so he started to hit with his two fists the walls of the whale hoping that it might vomit him, and he shouted until his larynx exhausted and he was like the mad.
Then he kneeled on his knees, supplicating God to save him from his great distress, until he lost his power and consciousness.
After the whale dived in the water, a boat took the task of rescuing the sailors who fell in the sea, while the other boat continued the chasing, and the saving of the sailors was completed for all except two, one of them was James Bartley. Then the boat returned to the ship carrying those whom they saved.
After wards the other boat returned, after its sailors killed the whale and brought it to the ship, and all of them prayed for the behalf of the souls of the two lost sailors, and they went to sleep.
Next day, shortly before sunrise, the sailors carried out the cutting up and flensing of the tremendous whale body; when one of them noticed a mild movement issuing from the whale stomach. The oldest and the most experienced among them said: “There is a fish in the belly of the whale.” For it was usual that whale hunters might find a seal with a length of ten feet or even sixteen feet sometimes. So they cut open the belly of the whale to find their peer Bartley who was unconscious, while the upper part of his body was covered with a thick layer of the stomach juice, but he was still alive.
Some of them shouted and others kneeled and prayed, then they took him out gently and removed the stomach juice which covered his body. They also noticed his black hair becoming snow white, and he appeared before them like an elderly man.
Some of them bent over to find him still breathing, so they made Bartley drenched with sea water, until he opened his eyes. Many days later, he was cured of his illness and pains, and he told them what happened to him in the belly of the whale.”
See, dear reader, about the incident of Bartley when he supplicated God and asked of Him to save him from the belly of the whale, He answered his prayer and saved him, but in a way other than that of Jonah.
God – be glorified – said in the
Quran 27: 62, which means:
(
[Are your associates better], or is He Who answers the distressed one when he cries to Him, and removes the evil [from him?])
So He removed the evil from Bartley when he prayed him, and He delivered him from the belly of the whale.
The interpretation is by Mohammed-Ali Hassan Al-Hilly.
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Such lion of Juda had been in the past, when the Children of Israel obeyed God and His messengers: Joshua, Saul, David and Solomon,
but later on the Children of Israel fell in the idolatry and worshiped the idols and associated with their Lord, and killed the prophets. So
God divorced Israel and
it is no more the chosen people of God.
http://quran-ayat.com/conflicts/english2.htm#Israe_ is_divorced
Israel Is Divorced
According To the Words of the Torah Itself
God Divorced Her and Chose the Islamic Nation Instead Of Her
The following is written in the Book of Jeremiah, chapter 3:
“6- And the Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: Have you seen what rebellious Israel has done?
She has gone of herself upon every high mountain and under every green tree and has played the harlot there[
1].
7- And when she had done all these things, I said: Return to me. And she did not return. And her treacherous sister Juda saw.
8- That because
the rebellious Israel had played the harlot,
I had put her away and given her a bill of divorce: yet her treacherous sister Juda was not afraid, but went and played the harlot also herself.
9- And by the facility of her fornication she defiled the land and played the harlot with stone and with stocks.”
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[
1] i.e. she served stones and idols instead of God, and by doing so, she betrayed her Lord.
[In this respect, Jesus Christ said, as in the Gospel according to Matthews 21: 43
“Therefore I say to you that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you
* and shall be given to a nation
** yielding the fruits thereof.”
…………………………………………………………………………………
* Jews.
** It shall be given to a nation that shall work according to God’s commandments, i.e. the Islamic nation – the translator.]
So the Lion now is the Islamic nation (after turning them back to God alone without associate and to His Quran).