THIS MIGHT SURPRISE YOU

The Hebrew word for Jonah's fish is masculine in Jonah 1:17 and feminine in Jonah 2:1. What did a later Jewish retelling, Midrash Jonah, make of that?

The answer

There were two fish. In Midrash Jonah a male fish swallows Jonah first, and its belly is roomy and comfortable. Jonah does nothing there, so he is moved into a female fish, and there he prays.

Why it’s interesting

The female fish was pregnant with 365,000 little fishes, which is why it was so crowded. A synagogue mosaic at Huqoq from the fifth century AD may show a chain of fish as well: one swallowing Jonah, a larger one eating it, and a still larger one eating that.

Scholarly consensus

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