This climax portrays Jonah at ‘death’s door’, imprisoned for ever in the land of Sheol. But this is the turning point. He can descend no further. Magonet suggests that Jonah needed new words to express his experience. In the chiastic arrangement suggested above, these new words, reaching to the heart of Jonah’s position, are at the centre of the psalm helping to focus that possibility of meaning. His self-centredness is dispelled as the awful truth of his descent to the Pit becomes clear to him.