Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish’s belly, And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.
(Jonah 2:1-2) KJV
When Jonah was cast into the sea he drowned. The next thing he was aware of was being in hell, sheol, the underworld realm of the dead. There’s more here than meets the eye.
He gives us a surprising amount of detail in this short passage which helps to correlate the ways in which sheol is modified to the ways in which erets is modified. These both align with the regions of the Earth which we can deduce from geological and seismological data.
The Levels of Hell
| Level | Grave (sheol) Pit (sahat/bowr) | Earth (erets) | World (tebel) |
| Crust | sheol | erets | tebel |
| Mantle | mibbeten sheol tavek sheol yerekah bowr | tachti erets erets tachti | mowcadah tebel |
| Great Gulf (outer core) | bad sheol | erets beriach matsuq erets mayim tachath erets | |
| Core (inner core) | sheol tachti tachti erets bowr, shachath missahat beli | mowcadar erets |
He specifically mentions the belly of hell. The word also refers to a womb. Jonah finds himself in the womb of the Earth, in a chamber in the lower mantle where he’s able to look out across the open chasm between the lower mantle and the surface of the core.
The Naked Prophet 
One Reply to “The Belly of Hell”