Yahweh prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Ancient Near Easterners viewed the trip to the underworld land of the dead as a three-day journey. [Note: George M. Landes, "The ’Three Days and Three Nights’ Motif in Jonah 2:1," Journal of Biblical Literature 86 (1967): 246-250.] Original readers of this story would have concluded that the fish gave Jonah a return trip from the land of the dead to which Jonah, by his own admission, had descended (Jonah 2:2; Jonah 2:6).