On the 14th of February 2025, BBC News headline reads, “’I felt a slimy texture brush my face’: Man describes being swallowed by whale”, a report by Andrea Díaz and Ayelén Oliva.
From the article:
The first thing kayaker Adrián Simancas noticed after he was eaten by a whale was the slime.
“I spent a second realising I was inside the mouth of something, that maybe it had eaten me, that it could have been an orca or a sea monster,” the 23-year-old told BBC Mundo.
Adrián had started to think how he might survive inside the humpback whale “like Pinocchio” – then the creature spat him back out.
Hi, my name is Terence and I’m your host for the Daily Monsoon, a podcast where I connect current events to matters of faith. And I think you know where I am going with today’s topic.
When I read this, the first thing that came to my mind was: “This confirms that the Jonah being swallowed by the big fish story is real!”
The Bible records that Jonah was in the belly of the big fish for three whole days. But scientists believe the biblical account is impossible because whales can’t hold anything that big for so long.
And… it looks like today’s article proved them right because within seconds of being swallowed, Adrian was spat out unto the surface.
In the article, Brazilian conservationist Roched Jacobson Seba explains:
They physically cannot swallow large objects like kayaks, tires, or even big fish like tuna.
Ultimately, the whale spit out the kayak because it was physically impossible to swallow.
Isn’t that damning fact for Christians? Doesn’t this show that the Jonah and the whale story is a child’s tale?
There are a few ways to interpret this.
One is what I just said. Everything is a lie. The Jonah story has been proven false based on what we know of whales. It is understandable why people in the past believed the story. They didn’t know better. But for us who live in the age of science, we have no excuse. The story of Jonah must be dismissed alongside the entire Bible.
The problem with that interpretation is that you can’t be a Christian. One of the non-negotiables of Christian faith is the Bible is the inspired word of God. God is not a liar. Therefore, the Bible is true.
The second way of interpreting is to say the story of Jonah is not a story to be judged true or false because its themes are eternal. More important is what the story tells us of God and ourselves. When Jesus told the Parable of the Prodigal Son, was he inviting hearers to ascertain the name of the prodigal son and his father? No, it was to present a spiritual lesson and that is what the Jonah story is about. It is a spiritual lesson.
The problem with that interpretation is that it tries to wriggle its way out of a problem by forcing a change in genre. If the Jonah story was written as a parable or fiction, then the interpretation is correct. But if the Jonah story was written as a true account, then when we say it’s not true, we are at best misunderstanding God’s Word, at worst, we are calling God a liar.
Jesus referred to Jonah, and there is no indication he sees it as anything but a true story. Listen to this, Matthew 12:40 (ESV):
For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
The way Jesus puts it, if you believe in the Resurrection, you must believe in a literal Jonah.
Does this mean we have to abandon science in order to have faith? Because if we look at the science of whales, the Jonah story just doesn’t make sense.
You know what else doesn’t make sense?
Evolution. Just hear me out. Let’s not talk about the entire study of evolution. There is a spectrum of thought among Christians when it comes to evolution. I don’t want to get into it.
I just want to remark on something that both Christians and Atheists can agree is… weird. Or doesn’t make sense.
The big idea is that the human species come from a long evolutionary process. If we could start at the beginning of time, then fast forward our way through time, we would see in the primordial past, single cell organisms becoming multi-cell organisms becoming sea-swimming fish becoming land-crawling fish becoming tree-climbing monkeys becoming land-walking monkeys becoming humans.
The weird part is that scientists have been searching for a long time for what is called the missing link: the bones that show the human species in the middle of that process from monkeys to humans. If we could find the missing link, then we could conclusively show that humans came from monkeys.
We can find lots of human bones. We can find lots of monkey bones. But we cannot find monkey turning into human bones. That is not to say there are no contenders. There were some claims and there are probably still some claims today, but nothing to really knock your socks off.
And yet, considering all the dinosaur bones that we managed to find, and some are teeny tiny bones, I’m not talking about those big giant Tyranosaurus Rex bones, archaeologists, God bless them, managed to dig up small fossils. But not the missing link. Weird, huh? You would think we would have found the missing link by now. You could even say the scientists failure to do so does not make sense.
But that doesn’t stop people from believing its true. Despite a lack of evidence. In fact, you could hear them say, “Just because it’s not been found yet, doesn’t mean it’s false.”
And this is where I suggest a third interpretation to the Jonah story. The first is it’s all nonsense. The second is it’s fiction with a true message. The third is, “Just because it’s not found yet, doesn’t mean it’s false.”
Maybe it’s a deep sea creature that we have not seen yet. Marine biologists would be the first to tell you that there is much we don’t know in the deepest parts of the sea.
Maybe it’s a species of whale that has gone extinct. A whale that would have been quite happy to swallow a guy for three days and spit him out after.
Or maybe, and this is the interpretation that is supported by Adrian’s experience of being swallowed by the humpback whale. We know from his experience that:
- A humpback whale can swallow a human.
- The human can survive in the belly. He doesn’t get all chewed up.
- A whale can spit out a human whole. The human doesn’t get chewed up in the process.
So physically, Jonah’s story has a lot going for it. The question is whether a whale can do it for three days and three nights. That is a very good question. And here, I call Miracle!
The same miracle that allowed Moses to stay with the Lord for 40 days and 40 nights without food or water. It’s not natural for a human to fast. It takes will power. And some people can do it better than others, a genetic disposition.
So, maybe the big fish that swallowed Jonah, was for God’s purpose given the genes to hold a man within itself for three days and three nights, and by God’s decree did so to Jonah to demonstrate God’s power to the wonder and amazement and endless speculation of everyone thereafter.
Wouldn’t it be great if one day in Heaven, Adrian is telling everyone about how he once was swallowed by a whale for a few seconds, up comes Jonah who pats him on the back and says, “That’s a nice story, I have a better one.”
This is the Daily Monsoon, a podcast where I connect current events to matters of faith. Thanks for listening, bye!