Friendly Whale

- Matthew 12:40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
The translators in that latter verse above thereby identified the "great fish" of the book of Jonah as a whale. It is apparent that Jeremiah recognized that some great fish are mammals. The English word "monster", (used in the ordinary sense of a "huge animal",) is used in the Bible in Jeremiah's Lamentations to refer to whales:
- Lamentations 4:3 Even the sea monsters draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones: the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.