Albert Barnes Commentary Jonah 2:7

"When my soul fainted within me, I remembered Jehovah; And my prayer came in unto thee, into thy holy temple." — Jonah 2:7 (ASV)

When my soul fainted — literally, it “was covered, within me,” and was dizzied, overwhelmed. The word is used of actual faintness from heat (Jonah 4:8), thirst (Amos 8:13), or exhaustion (Isaiah 51:20), when a film comes over the eyes, and the brain is, as it were, covered over. The soul of the pious is never so full of God as when everything else fades from him. Jonah could not but have remembered God in the tempest, when the lots were cast, and when he adjudged himself to be cast forth.

But when it came to the utmost, then he said, I remembered the Lord, as though, in the intense thought of God then, all his former thought of God had been forgetfulness. So it is in every strong act of faith, love, or prayer; its former state seems unworthy of the name of faith, love, or prayer. It believes, loves, and prays as though all before had been forgetfulness.

And my prayer came in unto Thee — No sooner had he so prayed than God heard. Jonah had thought himself cast out of His sight, but his prayer entered in there. His holy temple is doubtless His actual temple, toward which he prayed. God, who is wholly everywhere but the whole of Him nowhere, was as much in the temple as in heaven; and He had manifested Himself to Israel in their degree in the temple, as to the blessed saints and angels in heaven.