Friendly Whale

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.