When the Pharisees demanded a sign, Jesus chose one image from all of Scripture: a man three days in the deep, alive on the other side.
The Shadow
The most famous fish story in history is not about the fish, and it is not mainly about the running either. Jonah fled his assignment, was thrown into the sea, and spent three days and nights entombed in a living grave. From inside it he prayed the line that summarizes the whole Bible: “Salvation is of the Lord.” On the third day he came out, preached eight words to Nineveh, and the entire city repented.
The Fulfillment
Jesus told us how to read it. Asked for a sign, He pointed past the Red Sea, past Carmel, to a man in a fish: “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.” The parallels are deliberate, and the differences are where the gospel lives. Jonah went into the deep for his own disobedience; Jesus went into the grave for ours. The prophet's descent was punishment; the Savior's was substitution. And on the third day, the grave could not hold what it had taken. Paul gives the two movements: delivered up because of our offenses, raised because of our justification. The crucifixion proved sin was real. The resurrection proved sin was finished.
Then Jesus added the hinge: the men of Nineveh repented at Jonah's preaching, “and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.” Every prophet and sign was a picture in a gallery, and the Artist had walked through the door.
Him All Along
If you read Jonah and see only your own running, you are reading Jonah instead of reading Christ in Jonah. Jesus did not point to the failure. He pointed to the third day. Because He was raised, you have been justified and have peace with God. Not a ceasefire. Peace. The war is over, and you did not win it. He did.