What Does Jonah 2:10 Mean in the King James?
And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The creature that swallowed Jonah becomes the one that expels him onto dry ground when the LORD speaks.
THE MEANING
The release is physical: Jonah comes out of the fish and reaches dry land. For you now, what contains you is not necessarily where your story ends; the LORD’s word reaches into that enclosure, and release carries Jonah back to ground.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that an enclosing place has the last word: the fish’s interior is temporary, and Jonah’s way out ends on land.
THE ROOT
וַיָּקֵא
wayyaqe
GROWS FROM
קיא
q-y-ʾ
To vomit out, expel.
“vomited” in this verse is wayyaqe. The verb names a forceful ejection: Jonah is not merely carried out but expelled from what enclosed him. The same root describes the land expelling its inhabitants, showing that this word carries the force of being cast out, whether the outcome is rescue or judgment.
ALSO GROWS
vattāqē: And it vomited out.
וַתָּקֵא
The same verb describes the land expelling its inhabitants, making Jonah’s release part of a wider image of forceful ejection.
tāqīʾennû: You will vomit it out.
תָּקִיאֶנּוּ
This form shows the root’s direct sense of expelling what has been taken in.
הַיַּבָּשָׁה
hayabbashah
GROWS FROM
יבש
y-b-sh
To be dry or become dry.
The word for dry land grows from the same root as dry or withered. Here it names the exposed ground where Jonah can stand after being enclosed in the sea; the release ends in a place made firm beneath him.
ALSO GROWS
yabbāshāh: Dry land.
יַבָּשָׁה
This same noun names the ground that appears when the sea opens, connecting Jonah’s arrival with passage out of engulfing water.
yāvēsh: Dry, withered.
יָבֵשׁ
This form makes the root’s basic sense audible beneath “dry land”: Jonah emerges into what is no longer submerged.
THE PATTERN
A divine act or word opens a way out of what holds a person.
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not.THE THREAD
And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.The same root קיא (q-y-ʾ, “to vomit out” or “expel”) describes the land expelling its inhabitants. In Jonah, expulsion from the fish returns him to land; here, expulsion from the land is judgment, so the root names forceful ejection without promising that every release is rescue.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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