Was Jonah swallowed by a whale or a special fish made by God?
A viewer asks whether Jonah was swallowed by a whale or by a special fish created by God.
Answer
I prefer to think of it as a whale, because we do not have to follow the Linnaean taxonomy that was developed in the 1700s. That system classifies whales as mammals, not fish, because they have live births. Yes, in that technical sense, but if you used a taxonomy based on other criteria, that it swims, has fins, takes in water and lets it out, and eats sea creatures, you could put it in the fish category. Scripture does not have to go by a system developed eighteen hundred years after Jesus. Genesis chapter one uses a general system: the birds and the fish were made on day five, and the animals and man on day six. When Scripture uses the word fish there, it refers to anything swimming in the sea. So you could place the whale on day five, and there is no problem calling the creature that swallowed Jonah either a whale or a great fish.