Jonah
Minor Prophets · Old Testament · Book 32 of 66- Author
- Jonah son of Amittai, or a later writer telling his story
- Written
- c. 760 BC
- Time covered
- c. 785–760 BC, in the reign of Jeroboam II
- Where
- Joppa, the sea, and Nineveh
- Written to
- Israel, comfortable with God’s mercy toward itself
- Genre
- Narrative history
- Chapters
- 4
“But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.”Jonah 2:9 KJV
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Overview
Jonah is the prophet who did not want to preach, to a city he did not want spared, serving a God he understood perfectly well. That is the joke and the point of the book: he ran because he knew God was merciful.
Four short chapters: a storm, a fish, a city that repents from the king down, and a prophet sulking under a withered plant while God asks him a question the book never answers for him.
Background
Nineveh was the great city of Assyria, the empire that would destroy Israel within forty years and was already notorious for cruelty to captives. Asking a Hebrew prophet to warn it was asking a great deal.
2 Kings mentions Jonah as the prophet who foretold Jeroboam II’s expansion — a message of national success. This assignment was the opposite kind of errand.
Key themes
- God’s mercy reaches beyond Israel, and that offends the religious heart.
- You cannot flee from the presence of the LORD.
- Repentance is met with relenting, even in the worst city anyone could name.
- God is patient with the sulking prophet as well as the pagan sailors.
- Salvation is of the LORD — the one line Jonah gets exactly right.
Outline
- RunningChapter 1
A ship to Tarshish, a storm, sailors who pray, and a man thrown overboard.
- PrayingChapter 2
From the fish’s belly — a psalm made of other psalms, ending in salvation is of the LORD.
- PreachingChapter 3
Forty days, and a city in sackcloth from the king to the cattle.
- SulkingChapter 4
A gourd, a worm, an east wind, and God’s last question about a city of six score thousand.
Key passages
- Jonah 1:3 Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.
- Jonah 1:12 Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea.
- Jonah 1:17 The LORD had prepared a great fish.
- Jonah 2:9 Salvation is of the LORD.
- Jonah 3:5 The people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast.
- Jonah 3:10 God repented of the evil that he had said he would do.
- Jonah 4:2 I knew that thou art a gracious God — which is why Jonah fled.
- Jonah 4:11 Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city?
Christ in Jonah
Jesus called it the sign of the prophet Jonas: as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so would the Son of man be in the heart of the earth. He added that the men of Nineveh would rise in judgment against His generation — they repented at Jonah’s preaching, and a greater than Jonah was there.
Reading it
- Read all four chapters at a sitting; the ending only lands if the beginning is fresh.
- Notice that the pagans in this book behave better than the prophet at every turn.
- The last verse is a question. Sit with it rather than answering quickly.