Yahweh prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
World English Bible
Jonah 1:17
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WEB World English Bible Public Domain ✓ - Modern English
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- TCENT Text-Critical English New Testament A modern reasoned-eclectic New Testament (2022) · CC BY 4.0
- F35 Family 35 New Testament Wilbur Pickering's Byzantine-priority New Testament, with text-critical commentary notes · CC BY-SA 4.0
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- KJV King James Version Public Domain
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- LEESER Isaac Leeser Tanakh (1853) The first Jewish English translation of the Hebrew Bible (1853, Old Testament only) · Public Domain
- KJVCP KJV Cambridge Paragraph Bible David Norton's critical Cambridge edition of the King James Version, set in paragraphs · Public Domain
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Science (1)
Historical claims about the natural world, weighed against the scientific record.
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A man survived living inside a great fish or whale for three days.
Medicine · Jonah 1:17
The scientific record: The physiological conditions inside a whale or large fish are immediately fatal to a human. (NIH)
Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
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Did a fish or a whale swallow Jonah?
Jonah 1:17 (Hebrew 2:1) says YHWH appointed a dag gadol — a great fish — to swallow Jonah. Matthew 12:40 has Jesus refer to the same incident, but the Greek word used is kētos, traditionally rendered 'whale' in English versions following the KJV.
Critical scholarship: Usually considered reconciled.
More on this question
The proposed answers and sources for each reading are on the question page.
Each section sets the viewpoints side by side; you weigh the evidence. Here, "critical scholarship" means academic study, not a value judgment. How this is built →
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This citation refers to this GEBible page — the verse and the analysis gathered here. To cite the underlying scholarship, cite those sources directly.
"Jonah 1:17 — Scripture Analysis" GEBible, https://gebible.app/analysis/verse/jonah/1/17?version=WEB (retrieved 27 August 2026).