Charles Ellicott Commentary Jonah 2:6

"I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; The earth with its bars [closed] upon me for ever: Yet hast thou brought up my life from the pit, O Jehovah my God." — Jonah 2:6 (ASV)

Bottoms of the mountains.— Literally, ends or cuttings off, as in the margin. So the Vulgate extrema montium. Mountains were, in the Hebrew conception, the pillars of the world (Job 26:11), having their foundations firmly planted in the sea. These “hidden bases of the hills” were therefore the verge of the earth itself, and one lost among them would be near the underworld of death.

The earth with her bars ...—Literally, the earth her bars behind me forever; that is, the earth’s gates were closed upon me forever, and there was no possibility of return. The metaphor of a gateway to sheôl is common (Isaiah 38:10 and following), but the earth is nowhere else said to be so guarded. Ewald therefore proposes to read sheôl here. But it is quite as natural to imagine a guarded passage out of the land of the living as into the land of the dead.

Corruption.— Rather, pit. (See the note on Psalm 16:10.)