With his final breath, Jesus "uttered a loud cry", according to Matthew and Mark. It's only Luke who tells us what he cried out: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." But even Luke doesn't let us know that Jesus, with his last breath, was quoting from a psalm. He had earlier quoted from Psalm 22. Here at the end, he quotes Psalm 31:5, more accurately, he quotes half the verse. As he loses consciousness, he surrenders his breath to the Father-and with his next breath, I believe, he finishes the verse: "You have redeemed me O Lord, faithful God!"

His dying breath is a prayer, and his waking breath is a praise.

Back during his ministry, when opponents demanded a sign, Jesus answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matthew 12:39-40)

He cited the sign of Jonah more than once. Jesus seems to have identified himself with Jonah pretty strongly. I think it may go deeper than the three days parallel.

Take a closer look at Jonah's prayer in chapter 2 of his book. It seems to be saying that the three days went by before Jonah prayed. That doesn't sound right, just on the surface. Wouldn't you start praying a whole lot earlier? The content of the prayer itself gives us pretty strong indication of the timing. He says he cried out to God, and was answered. He says he was in Sheol (v 2), in "the pit" (v 6). In v 5 he says the water closed over him to take his life, and in v 7 he says his life was fainting away. Also note that it's all past tense, including the Lord's answer and the deliverance., highlighted in verse 9.

You might come to a different conclusion, but it appears to me that when he hit the water, Jonah cried out to God...as he was drowning. The great fish ate him (or his body), and three days later vomited the body out, and at that moment Jonah was raised from the dead. The prayer is poetic, and beautiful. To me it looks like the careful, considered product of a mind that has been completely reshaped by the ordeal, putting into poetic language the raw emotions of succumbing to, and then being delivered from, death. Like Jesus, Jonah prayed at his death, and completed the thought with praise when he rose.

Actually, we should say it the other way around: Jesus prayed like Jonah. Jesus had known for a long time that Jonah was a forerunner, a type. There was no other prophet who ever died and then was raised. That was the sign Jonah brought to Nineveh. And it would be the sign Jesus brought to the world.

On the cross, the Psalms were clearly on Jesus's mind. I think it likely that Jonah was on his mind too, in fact that Jonah had been on his mind for quite some time. Not Jonah's failures, but his redemption. The message is in the final sentence of Jonah's prayer: "Salvation belongs to the Lord!"

Neither Jonah nor Jesus wanted to die. Nor do you or I. Both cried out to the God who could save them-and He did! Our salvation belongs to the same God. It is to Him we cry in our extremity, and to Him that we will offer praise with our waking breath.

Love, Paul