hard to bring the boat to land, but they could not, for the
sea wrought and was tempestuous against them." Still
however they were unwilling to put the fate of the lot into
execution ; and they cried, says the account, unto the Lord,
saying, " We beseech thee, O Lord, let us not perish for
this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood ; for
thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee." Meaning
thereby, that they did not presume to judge Jonah guilty,
since that he might be innocent ; but that they considered
the lot that had fallen upon him as a decree of God, or as it
pleased God. The address of this prayer shews that the
Gentiles worshipped one Supreme Being, and that they were
not idolaters as the Jews represented them to be. But the
storm still continuing, and the danger encreasing, they put
the fate of the lot into execution, and cast Jonah in the sea;
where, according to the story, a great fish swallowed him up
whole and alive !

We have now to consider Jonah securely housed from
the storm in the fish's belly. Here we are told that he
prayed ; but the prayer is a made-up prayer, taken from
various parts of the Psalms, without connection or con-
sistency, and adapted to the distress, but not at all to the
condition that Jonah was in. It is such a prayer as a Gen-
tile, who might know something of the Psalms, could copy
out for him. This circumstance alone, were there no other,
is sufficient to indicate that the whole is a made-up story.
