Fish

Fish enter the canon as one of the swarms God speaks into being on the fifth day, and they keep showing up — under food law, behind hooks and nets, swallowed around a fleeing prophet, multiplied beside loaves on a hillside, breaking nets in a Galilean draught. Alongside the ordinary fish of the sea sit the great sea-monsters and leviathan, whom Yahweh forms, breaks, and one day will slay.

Sea Creatures at the Creation

The waters are populated by divine command: "And [the Speech of] God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living souls, and let birds fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven" (Gen 1:20). What is then created is named with deliberate scale — "And [the Speech of] God created the great sea-monsters, and every living soul that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind: and God saw that it was good" (Gen 1:21). The creatures are blessed: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas" (Gen 1:22). Psalm 8 places fish under the human dominion granted at the creation: "The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, Whatever passes through the paths of the seas" (Ps 8:8).

After the flood, fish are explicitly named in the food grant: "And the fear of you⁺ and the dread of you⁺ will be on every beast of the earth, and on every bird of the heavens; With all by which the ground teems, and all the fish of the sea, into your⁺ hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives will be food for you⁺, as I have given you⁺ everything of the green herb" (Gen 9:2-3).

Clean and Unclean — the Fins-and-Scales Rule

The Levitical food law sorts water creatures by a single physical test. "These you⁺ may eat of all that are in the waters: whatever has fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, that you⁺ may eat" (Lev 11:9). The complement is binding: "And all that don't have fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of all the living souls that are in the waters, they are detestable to you⁺, and they will be detestable to you⁺; you⁺ will not eat of their flesh, and their carcasses you⁺ will detest. Whatever doesn't have fins and scales in the waters, that is detestable to you⁺" (Lev 11:10-12). Deuteronomy restates the rule in the same terms: "These you⁺ may eat of all that are in the waters: whatever has fins and scales may you⁺ eat; and whatever does not have fins and scales you⁺ will not eat; it is unclean to you⁺" (Deut 14:9-10).

Fishing Tackle — Nets, Hooks, Spears

The canon catalogs the means of catching fish. Nets are spread on the lake — "and he saw two boats standing by the lake: but the fishermen had gone out of them, and were washing their nets" (Lu 5:2) — and they are also figural for sudden, unwitting capture: "For man also doesn't know his time: as the fish that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, even so are the sons of man snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly on them" (Eccl 9:12). Habakkuk turns the same image into a complaint against an oppressor who treats the nations as fish without a ruler: "and make man as the fish of the sea, as the creeping things, that have no ruler over them? He takes up all of them with a fishhook, he catches them in his net, and gathers them in his dragnet: therefore he rejoices and is glad. Therefore he sacrifices to his net, and burns incense to his dragnet; because by them his portion is fat, and his food plenteous" (Hab 1:14-16).

Fishhooks and dragnets belong to the same fishery. Egypt's Nile economy is mourned through them: "And the fishers will lament, and all those who cast a fishhook into the Nile will mourn, and those who spread dragnets on the waters will languish" (Isa 19:8); the wage-earners of that fishery share the grief — "And the weavers will be broken in pieces; all those who work for wages [will be] grieved in soul" (Isa 19:10). Amos uses fishhooks as a deportation image against the cattle of Bashan: "The Sovereign Yahweh has sworn by his holiness, that, look, the days will come upon you⁺, that they will take you⁺ away with hooks, and your⁺ remainder with fishhooks" (Amos 4:2). Spears appear in the leviathan-challenge: "Can you fill his skin with barbed irons, Or his head with fish-spears?" (Job 41:7).

The metaphor also runs the other way: a snare is laid for human steps. "They have prepared a net for my steps; My soul is bowed down: They have dug a pit before me; They have fallen into the midst of it themselves. Selah" (Ps 57:6). Wisdom warns, "For in vain is the net spread In the sight of any bird" (Pr 1:17), and again, "A [noble] man who flatters his fellow man Spreads a net for his steps" (Pr 29:5). Micah laments a society in which "all of them lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net" (Mi 7:2).

Fish Ponds and Fish Markets

Domestic fishery is glanced at in only a few places. The Song reads, "Your eyes [as] the pools in Heshbon, By the gate of Bath-rabbim" (Song 7:4). Tyrian merchants traffic in fish at Jerusalem in violation of the Sabbath: "Men of Tyre also dwelt in it, who brought in fish, and all manner of wares, and sold on the Sabbath to the sons of Judah, and in Jerusalem" (Neh 13:16). Tyre herself is judged into a fishery: "She will be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea; for I have spoken it, says the Sovereign Yahweh; and she will become a spoil to the nations" (Eze 26:5).

Jonah and the Great Fish

The most extended fish narrative in the canon is the Jonah story. The word of Yahweh comes to Jonah son of Amittai with a Nineveh commission (Jon 1:1-2), and Jonah flees by sea: "But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh; and he went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid its fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh" (Jon 1:3). Yahweh raises a tempest; the mariners cast lots, the lot falls on Jonah, and Jonah identifies himself: "I am a Hebrew; and I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven, who has made the sea and the dry land" (Jon 1:9). At his own direction the sailors cast him overboard, "and the sea ceased from its raging" (Jon 1:15).

Then the great fish: "And Yahweh prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the insides of the fish three days and three nights" (Jon 1:17). From inside the fish Jonah prays — "Then Jonah prayed to Yahweh his God out of the insides of the fish" (Jon 2:1) — recounting his descent through the seas: "For you had cast me into the depth, in the heart of the seas, And the flood was round about me; All your waves and your billows passed over me" (Jon 2:3); "The waters surrounded me, even to the soul; The deep was round about me; The weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; The earth with its bars [closed] on me forever: Yet you have brought up my life from the pit, O Yahweh my God" (Jon 2:5-6). The prayer ends in vow and confession — "But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that which I have vowed. Salvation is of Yahweh" (Jon 2:9) — and the deliverance follows: "And Yahweh spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah on the dry land" (Jon 2:10).

The recommissioned prophet preaches in Nineveh, the city repents, "and God repented of the evil which he said he would do to them; and he did not do it" (Jon 3:10). Jonah is angry at the mercy, and the book ends with Yahweh's question over the gourd and over Nineveh: "and should I not have regard for Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than sixscore thousand of man who can't discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?" (Jon 4:11). The 2 Kings notice locates this same prophet earlier, in Jeroboam II's reign: "He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the sea of the Arabah, according to the word of Yahweh, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his slave Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher" (2 Ki 14:25). Luke 11 names Jonah as the only sign granted to the gathering crowds: "This generation is an evil generation: it seeks after a sign; and there will be no sign given to it but the sign of Jonah" (Lu 11:29). The psalmist's hand-leads / right-hand-holds couplet reaches into the same uttermost-sea: "Even there your hand will lead me, And your right hand will hold me" (Ps 139:10).

Loaves and Fish — the Multiplications

In the desert place beside Bethsaida, the Twelve face five thousand men with no provisions. "But he said to them, You⁺ give them to eat. And they said, We have no more than five loaves and two fish" (Lu 9:13). The companies are seated in fifties, "And he took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them, and broke; and gave to the disciples to set before the multitude. And they ate, and were all filled: and there was taken up that which remained over to them of broken pieces, twelve baskets" (Lu 9:16-17). The Markan parallel preserves the same detail with one addition — "and the two fish he divided among them all" (Mr 6:41) — and notes that the disciples afterward "didn't understand concerning the loaves, but their heart was hardened" (Mr 6:52). John keeps the loaves and fish together at the distribution: "Jesus therefore took the loaves; and having given thanks, he distributed to those who were set down; likewise also of the fish as much as they would" (Jn 6:11). The earlier 2 Kings precedent — Elisha's twenty barley loaves for a hundred men — frames the same logic: "But he said, Give the people, that they may eat; for thus says Yahweh, They will eat, and will have some left" (2 Ki 4:43).

A second multiplication follows in Mark, this time for four thousand and with seven loaves. "And they had a few small fish: and having blessed them, he commanded to set these also before them. And they ate, and were filled: and they took up, of broken pieces that remained over, seven baskets" (Mr 8:7-8).

Fishers of Men — the Galilean Calls

Mark's call narrative on the Galilean shore is brief: "And passing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea; for they were fishers. And Jesus said to them, Come⁺ after me, and I will make you⁺ to become fishers of men. And immediately they left the nets, and followed him" (Mark 1:16-18).

Luke records a more extended scene by the lake of Gennesaret. Jesus teaches from Simon's boat, then says, "Put out into the deep, and let down your⁺ nets for a catch" (Lu 5:4). Simon's reply names the night's failure: "Master, we toiled all night, and took nothing: but at your word I will let down the nets" (Lu 5:5). The catch breaks the gear: "And when they had done this, they enclosed a great multitude of fish; and their nets were breaking; and they beckoned to their sharers in the other boat, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink" (Lu 5:6-7). Peter falls at Jesus' knees. "For he was amazed, and all who were with him, at the catch of the fish which they had taken; and so were also James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, Don't be afraid; from now on you will catch men. And when they had brought their boats to land, they left all, and followed him" (Lu 5:9-11).

Leviathan and the Sea-Monster

Beyond ordinary fish, the canon names a class of great sea-creatures. The creation account already speaks of "the great sea-monsters" (Gen 1:21). Job's complaint asks, "Am I a sea, or a sea-monster, That you set a watch over me?" (Job 7:12). The Yahweh-speech in Job 41 opens with the impossibility of catching leviathan by ordinary fishery — "Can you draw out leviathan with a fishhook? Or press down his tongue with a cord? Can you put a rope into his nose? Or pierce his jaw through with a hook? ... Will the bands [of fishermen] make traffic of him? Will they part him among the merchants? Can you fill his skin with barbed irons, Or his head with fish-spears?" (Job 41:1-2, 6-7). Psalm 104 places leviathan in the same waters where the ships sail: "There go the ships; There is leviathan, whom you have formed to play in it" (Ps 104:26). Psalm 74 looks back on Yahweh's mythic victory: "You divided the sea by your strength: You broke the heads of the sea-monsters in the waters. You broke the heads of leviathan in pieces; You gave him to be food to the people inhabiting the wilderness" (Ps 74:13-14). And Isaiah looks forward to its final judgment: "In that day Yahweh with his hard and great and strong sword will punish leviathan the swift serpent, and leviathan the crooked serpent; and he will slay the monster that is in the sea" (Isa 27:1).

The Healing River

Ezekiel's temple-river vision returns the canon to the creation note — fish swarming, fishers spreading nets — but on a redeemed scale. "And it will come to pass, that every living soul which swarms, in every place where the rivers come, will live; and there will be a very great multitude of fish; for these waters have come there, and [the waters of the sea] will be healed, and everything will live wherever the river comes. And it will come to pass, that fishers will stand by it: from En-gedi even to En-eglaim will be a place for the spreading of nets; their fish will be after their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceedingly many" (Eze 47:9-10).