Jonah #68

Jonah, son of Amittai, was a prophet from Gath-hepher in the north of Israel, mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25 as one who spoke a favorable word during the reign of Jeroboam II in the eighth century BC. The short book that bears his name tells how God sent him to preach to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, an enemy power of Israel, and how he resisted the mission. It is one of the most familiar stories in the Bible, and the way it ends is often overlooked.

Biblical Significance

Told to go to Nineveh, Jonah instead went to Joppa and boarded a ship bound for Tarshish, in the opposite direction (Jonah 1:1-3). God sent a great storm, the sailors cast lots and identified Jonah as the cause, and at his own request he was thrown overboard, whereupon the sea grew calm and the sailors worshiped the Lord (Jonah 1:4-16). A great fish, appointed by God, swallowed him, and he remained inside for three days and three nights, praying a psalm of thanksgiving from within it before being cast up on dry land (Jonah 1:17 through 2:10).

Commanded a second time, Jonah went to Nineveh and proclaimed that in forty days the city would be overthrown (Jonah 3:1-4). To his surprise, the people from the king down believed God, fasted, and turned from their evil, and God relented from the disaster he had announced (Jonah 3:5-10). Jonah’s reaction was anger. He explained that he had fled at first because he knew God to be gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and so would likely spare the city (Jonah 4:1-3). The book ends on a question rather than an answer. God shows Jonah that he pities a plant more than the people of Nineveh, more than 120,000 who did not know their right hand from their left, and the closing question about whether God should not pity them is left open (Jonah 4:6-11).

Scholars differ over whether the book is best read as historical narrative, as a parable, or as satire with a historical core. Jewish tradition reads it aloud on the Day of Atonement, and the moral is the same in any reading: God’s compassion extends beyond Israel and can respond to repentance even from those who seem beyond hope.

Legacy

Jesus refers to the sign of Jonah, saying that as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man would be three days and nights in the heart of the earth, and that the people of Nineveh would rise in judgment against a generation that would not repent at something greater than Jonah (Matthew 12:38-41; Luke 11:29-32). The story has been a source of reflection on running from calling, on the reach of God’s mercy, and on the tendency of God’s own people to resent grace shown to others.