In
2:1 of the book of Jonah, the fish (דג) has a masculine gender, but in the very
next verse, 2:2, the fish is feminine (דגה). Its femininity has led modern
scholars to associate the sea with amniotic fluid, the fish with the womb, and
Jonah with an embryo. At the very least, the fluctuation in gender reveals the
author’s ambivalence about the nature of the fish (Zimmerman 582). The text
itself indicates that the great fish is female, thus protective and sheltering
of the “new” being inside it. In the womb the little life can grow because it
is safely held and nurtured. (Janet Howe Gaines, Forgiveness in a Wounded
World: Jonah’s Dilemma [Studies in Biblical Literature 5; Atlanta: Society
of Biblical Literature, 2000], 59)
